A bestseller in Egypt, THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING revolves around the inhabitants of the apartment building of the title: a womanizing old man, his bitter sister, his scheming one-legged servant, a disillusioned shop girl and her optimistic boyfriend, and an elegant drug dealer seeking to work his way into politics. Alaa Al Aswany writes with a masterful combination of ribald humor, political insight, and psychological depth. He shows how the political corruption of Egypt filters down through every level of society, infecting the hopes, loves, and dreams of the country's hapless population.

In this memoir, a woman records her appreciation of nature and her own personal growth after she leaves her marriage and takes a cottage on Cape Cod. After her period of reflection, she returns to her marriage.

Mayle's humorous true story of his attempts to make a home for himself in the south of France after he fled his advertising job in England.

In THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, Joan Didion writes an account of her life since the 2003 death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Didion's grief was profound and debilitating; she and Dunne had been married for nearly 40 years, during which they were hardly ever apart. But in the course of her mourning period, she also gained crucial insights into herself, her marriage, death, and loss. Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and named one of the 10 Best Books of 2005 by the New York Times.

In THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, Joan Didion writes an account of her life since the 2003 death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Didion's grief was profound and debilitating; she and Dunne had been married for nearly 40 years, during which they were hardly ever apart. But in the course of her mourning period, she also gained crucial insights into herself, her marriage, death, and loss. Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and named one of the 10 Best Books of 2005 by the New York Times.

Tillie Olsen began this novel in 1932, when she was nineteen. It remains unfinished, but is no less powerful because of that. It is a classic story of poverty and struggle during the Depression, of the sufferings of real, believable human beings, and of the attempt of one woman to improve the lot of her family.