National Book Award for Fiction

WINNER OF THE 1973 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 
By the Author of Stoner
In Augustus, his third great novel, John Williams took  on an entirely new challenge, a historical narrative set in classical Rome, exploring the life of the founder of the Roman Empire. To tell the story, Williams turned to the epistolary novel, a genre that was new to him, transforming and transcending it just as he did the western in Butcher’s...

Charming Billy is the winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Fiction.
Alice McDermott's striking novel, Charming Billy, is a study of the lies that bind and the weight of familial love, of the way good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they were meant to hide.
Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered to comfort his widow, and to pay their respects to one of the last great romantics. As

...

The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.

"After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The...

National Book Award Winner: A "harrowing" novel of the Vietnam era filled with "white-knuckled suspense" (Time).

In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action—and profit—by getting involved in a heroin shipment. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of

...

Vollmann presents a mesmerizing series of intertwined paired stories that compare and contrast the moral decisions made by various figures (some famous, some infamous, some unknown) associated with the warring authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR from 1900-1968.

A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog. When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in...

A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

"To call Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby-Dick a novel about whales."
So wrote The New York Times of Tim O'Brien's now classic novel of Vietnam. Winner of the 1979 National Book Award, Going After Cacciato captures the peculiar mixture of horror and hallucination that marked this...

An American Lieutenant stationed in London during the Blitz has a bizarre ability.

A glorious, sweeping new novel from the bestselling author of The Volcano Lover.
The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag's bestselling 1992 novel, retold the love story of Emma Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson with consummate power. In her enthralling new novel—once again based on a real story—Sontag shows us our own country on the cusp of modernity.
In 1876 a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalewska, Poland's greatest actress, travel to California

...