J. D. Salinger-The Catcher in the Rye

Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel)

The novel covers 48 hours in the life of Holden Caulfield, a tall, skinny, anxious and depressed teenager who academically flunked out of Pencey Prep, a boarding school. Holden is 17 when he tells the story; he was 16 when the events occurred.

His story starts on Holden's last day at Pencey Prep. He is standing on the crest of a hill that overlooks the American football field. It is the final game of the season, but Holden has never cared much for established tradition. He instead runs across the street to the residence of Mr. Spencer, his history teacher. It is revealed here that Holden has been expelled and that he doesn't particularly care.

Holden talks with old acquaintances at school and ultimately leaves for New York City, electing to stay there. He considers hitchhiking out west and building a cabin away from everyone he knows. At one point he propositions an ex-girlfriend to join him on the trip, even though he doesn't particularly like her. She declines.

The next day, he arranges to have his younger sister, Phoebe, meet him at lunchtime. She is carrying one of Holden's old suitcases full of clothes. Phoebe tells Holden that she is going with him. He angrily refuses, feeling that he has influenced her to want to go with him instead of staying in school. She cries and refuses to speak to him. Knowing that she will follow him, Holden walks to the zoo, letting her anger lift. Phoebe starts talking to Holden again, and Holden promises to forget about his plan to run away and return home on Wednesday. He buys her a ticket for the carousel in the park and watches her ride an old horse on it. As Holden watches her ride the carousel, his own mood lifts. Soon he is nearly moved to tears with remorse, longing, and bittersweet happiness.

At this point in the book, he explains that he will be going to another school in the fall again but doesn't know for sure if he will start applying himself. He mentions that he is being psychoanalyzed and finishes with the words, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

John Irving-A Widow for One Year

Drama

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character--a "difficult" woman. By no means is she conventionally "nice," but she will never be forgotten.

Ruth's story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her--on Long Island, in the summer of 1958--Ruth is only four.

The second window into Ruth's life opens in the fall of 1990, when Ruth is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. She distrusts her judgment in men, for good reason.

A Widow for One Year closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's about to fall in love for the first time.

Richly comic, as well as deeply disturbing A Widow for One Year is a multilayered love story of astonishing emotional force. Both ribald and erotic, it is also a brilliant novel about the passage of time and the relentlessness of grief.

Judith Lennox-The Dark-eyed Girls

Drama

Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, "The Dark-Eyed Girls" tells the story of three friends, Liv, Katherine and Rachel, and their changing relationships over the years. Liv, the book's central character, is romantic and looking for love. Katherine is envious of others' good fortune, hungry for experience and determined to avoid the domesticity that has, in her eyes, enslaved her mother. Only Rachel, the beautiful only child of wealthy parents, seems to want for nothing. Then a terrible tragedy occurs, and the girls' friendship is altered forever...

Lolly Winston-Good Grief

Humorous fiction

When Sophie Stanton is widowed at thirty-six, instead of cycling through the typical five stages of grief, she careens through fifteen: Denial, Oreos, Anger, Depression, Escrow, Ashes, Lust, Bargaining, Waitressing, Mentoring, Dating, Baking, Acceptance, Goodwill, and Thanksgiving.

In a high-achiever age when women are expected to be good at everything, Sophie wants desperately to be a good widow. A graceful, composed, Jackie Kennedy kind of widow. But Sophie is more the Jack Daniels type. Self medicating with cartons of ice cream for breakfast, and showing up at work in her bathrobe and bunny slippers, soon she's lost not only her husband, but also her job, her house, and her waistline. In Sophie's words: “The Funny thing about rock bottom is there's stuff underneath. You think, This is it: It's all uphill from here! Then you discover the escalator goes down one more floor to another level of bargain basement junk.” With a darkly comic edge Sophie manages to start over, and ultimately she discovers her own happily-ever-after.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips-Breathing Room

Romance

Isabel Favor is a life-style coach whose life is falling apart. Her accountant has run off with her money, her reputation is in tatters and her fiance has just dumped her for an older woman. Isabel needs to escape so she heads for Tuscany determined to find a little perspective - breathing room - and start over. Instead she ends up in a hotel room with Hollywood bad boy Lorenzo Gage. He makes his living killing people...on the screen at least. Ren's reputation is blacker than black. But when you're everyone's favourite villain, it goes with the territory. Isabel's always prided herself on her neatly ordered life. But look where being good has got her. Maybe it's time to live a little...?

Susan Elizabeth Phillips-This Heart of Mine

Romance

Molly Somerville has long had a secret crush on the Chicago Stars' key player, quarterback Kevin Tucker. Kevin's career is hard for Molly to escape, given that Molly's older sister, Phoebe, is the owner of the team. Consequently, Molly also knows about Kevin's penchant for dating gorgeous bimbos and his puzzling need to partake of risky, life-endangering hobbies, a trait that drives Phoebe crazy. Molly, however, can relate to this part of Kevin, as she has shown a tendency toward some pretty reckless behavior herself.

When fate places Molly and Kevin alone together for a weekend in Phoebe's isolated cabin, sparks fly and passions flare when both refuse to leave. In the end, Molly makes her most reckless decision yet by climbing into bed while Kevin is sleeping and seducing him before he knows what's happened. When she ends up pregnant, Kevin insists on marrying her for propriety's sake. And when Molly then has a miscarriage, it leaves both of them wounded and wary. Forced to spend their summer at the beleaguered and rundown wilderness resort that Kevin has inherited from a relative, the twosome spruce the place up and get it to turn a profit. In the process they discover the healing power of love, but not before learning some hard truths about themselves, their pasts, and their feelings for each other.

Allison Pearson-I Don't Know How She Does It

Chic lit

A victim of time famine, 35 year-old Kate counts seconds like other women count calories. A comedy about failure, a tragedy about success, this novel is the untold story of the professional working mum at the start of the 21st century.