Looking for a high-quality work of fiction? Try one of this year's National Book Award finalists:
- The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak - Follows young Jozef Vinich as he struggles to survive the brutal conditions on the Southern Front of World War I. A debut novel.
- The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht - Struggling to understand why her beloved grandfather left his family to die alone in a field hospital far from home, a young doctor in a war-torn Balkan country takes over her grandfather's search for a mythical ageless vagabond while referring to a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book."
- The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka - Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.
- Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman - Presents a collection of short stories that focus on the trials and tribulations of a group of Northeasterners.
- Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward - Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.
