On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan | 
The Amateur Marriage
by Anne Tyler | 
Southern Discomfort
by Rita Mae Brown | 
In the Sea There are Crocodiles
by Fabio Geda | 
The Chemistry of Tears
by Peter Carey | 
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini | 
The Hours
by Michael Cunningham | 
Everything is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer | 
The Aviator's Wife
by Melanie Benjamin | 
When the Moon Is Low
by Nadia Hashimi | 
A History of Loneliness
by John Boyne | 
The Submission
by Amy Waldman |
The Blue Between Sky and Water
by Susan Abulhawa | 
Unsheltered
by Barbara Kingsolver | 
A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea
by Dina Nayeri | 
The Shadow Catcher
by Marianne Wiggins |
The Emperor Waltz
by Philip Hensher | 
War Brides
by Lois Battle | 
The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan | 
Winter Garden
by Kristin Hannah |
In a stark, troubling, yet ultimately triumphant celebration of self-determination, award-winning author A. Manette Ansay re-creates a stifling world of guilty and pain, and the tormented souls who inhabit it. It is 1972 when circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Dutifully accompanying her newly unemployed husband, Ellen has brought her two children into the home of her in-laws on Vinegar Hill -- a loveless house suffused with the settling dust of bitterness and routine -- where calculated cruelty is a way of life preserved and perpetuated in the service of a rigid, exacting and angry God. Behind a facade of false piety, there are sins and secrets in this place that could crush a vibrant young woman's passionate spirit. And here Ellen must find the straight to endure, change, and grow in the all-pervading darkness that threatens to destroy everything she is and everyone she loves.