Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads. A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. 

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for 15 years, with not so much as a speeding ticket since. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah's white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek's father, Buddy Lee, was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed that his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though...and he wants to know who killed his boy.

Combine an offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose, and the result is the remarkable story Dance Dance Dance: high-class call girls billed to MasterCard, a psychic 13-year-old dropout has a passion for talking heads, and meet a hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. Don’t forget the one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem.

Paul Auster's signature work, The New York Trilogy, consists of three interlocking novels: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room - haunting and mysterious tales that move at the breathless pace of a thriller.

This transcendent story follows four college friends who move to New York City, buoyed by ambition: Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, an artist; Malcolm, an architect; and, at the center, Jude, a withdrawn, brilliant attorney haunted by an unspeakable past. Through decades of shared and separate lives, Jude’s suffering - and its impact on those who love him - raises questions about the limits of human endurance, the possibility for redemption, and the meaning of friendship. 

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born - a history whose epicentre is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class and masculinity. 

1893, in einem Amerika, das anders ist, als wir es aus den Geschichtsbüchern kennen: New York gehört zu den Free States, in denen die Menschen so leben und so lieben, wie sie es möchten – so jedenfalls scheint es. Ein junger Mann, Spross einer der angesehensten und wohlhabendsten Familien, entzieht sich der Verlobung mit einem standesgemäßen Verehrer und folgt einem charmanten, mittellosen Musiklehrer.

Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends - some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness.

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the 20th century to the teens of the 21st, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of 12 characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope....