When Stewart, his roommate, dies in an accident, an aspiring writer named Cal pretends that Stewart's novel-in-progress--a masterpiece, especially compared to Cal's lame efforts--is actually his own. The book is published, acclaimed, and snapped up by the movies, and Cal becomes rich and famous. Then Stewart's old girlfriend threatens to tell the world the truth.

Traveling through caves, shrines, and war zones, Bruce Feiler, the author of WALKING THE BIBLE, sets out in search of one of history's defining religious figures, the man who encompasses three of the world's major religions--Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. In the second half of the book, Feiler takes a look at Abraham from the perspective of each of the three religions. The author manages to combine historical and spiritual quests with travel memoir in a way that general readers, especially those interested in world religions, may find intriguing.

This sensitive mystery is set in post-9/11 New York. Captain James McCaffery, one of the rescuers who died on September 11, represented the best of the New York Fire Department, credited with numerous examples of almost superhuman heroism throughout his career. But what of the rumors dug up by a reporter indicating that McCaffery had mob ties and was connected to a mysterious death? After the reporter dies in an apparent suicide, his lover continues to search for answers to these troubling questions, which prove to be rooted in the story of McCaffery's friends, a tight-knit circle of seven who grew up together in Staten Island.

This ambitious historical novel analyzes the experience of working-class Americans through the 20th century by tracing the fate of an accordion, brought to America in 1890 by a Sicilian immigrant. Annie Proulx's novel tells the successive stories of each person who acquires it, in the process providing a brief tour through American history.