Reader's Choice: Fiction Cu-Im

This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

When Emmy sees an advertisement for a job at the London Evening Chronicle, her dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent suddenly seem achievable. But the job turns out to be working as a typist for the fierce and renowned advice columnist, Henrietta Bird.

Set in the years 1950-1970 in a changing America and London, follows two married couples - ministers and academics - whose intricate bonds of faith and friendship, jealousy and understanding, are tested by the birth of an autistic child.

On the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's life is completely devastated when a shocking disaster takes the lives of her daughter, her daughter's fiancé, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend, Luke--her entire family, all gone in a moment.

Surprised to find himself reborn as a rambunctious golden haired puppy after a tragically short life as a stray mutt, Bailey's search for his new life's meaning leads him into the loving arms of 8 year old Ethan.

A boy growing up in the Soviet Union of the 1960s and 1970s visits his French grandmother each summer, accumulating new tales of a Russia he never knew.

Dubliners is a wonderfully engaging and accessible collection of stories by James Joyce, an author famed for being difficult to read. It contains fifteen stories, among them The Dead.

Eleanor Oliphant struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.

Haunted by the memory of his brothers' deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues pulls him back from the brink.

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio.

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet--sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, thrust into premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city.

Born with ocular albinism, small-town eye doctor Sam Hill must finally face a past tragedy that caused him to turn his back on his friends, his hometown, and the life he'd always known--a journey that makes him realize what truly matters.

Dr. Toby Fleishman wakes up each morning surrounded by independent women know what they want--and, against all odds, what they want is Toby. Who knew what kind of life awaited him once he extracted himself from his nightmare of a marriage? Who knew that there were women who would look at him with softness and desire? His optimisim is quickly extinguished when his ex-wife suddenly disappears.

A novel about love and disappointment, about how memories warp and secrets fester, and how fate is written in the body, not in the stars.

Just as Jay Gatsby was haunted by Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fizgerald was haunted by his own great first love -- a Chicago socialite named Ginevra.

A novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris. In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him.

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake, chronicles three generations of the Milton family as they weather love and loss, tragedy and triumph, and the winds of social and political change. Set largely on Crockett's Island off the Maine coast, the story is both family saga and American epic as it spans the 1930s to the present in its examination of the Miltons and their legacy.

He is a Professor with a traumatic head injury leaving him with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young Housekeeper hired to care for him.

The story of Ruth and her sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt.

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die.