Notes: A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.

Notes: With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.

Notes: This classic exploration of desire, jealousy and fate from the Nobel Prize winning Garcia Marquez enchants the reader with its beautiful and haunting love story.

Notes: Spiritual memoir from one of America's best-loved actors that reflects on his career, family and life.

Notes: A man and his son travel across the devastated countryside of a dystopic America.

Notes: This textured family saga starts in pre-World War Greece and brings the reader through Detroit in the volatile sixties to modern, sex-confused San Francisco.

Notes: Human drama and community politics during the tumultuous construction of a cathedral in 12th century England.

Notes: This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century.

Notes: One of America's superlative writers conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real and takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition.

Notes: Oprah's Book Club selection. A novel that, among other themes, explores the dynamics of dogs as human companions.