Katharine Hoefer

A Victorian scientist travels far into the future, and finds that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. He meets the Eloi, a species descended from man, but realizes that these beautiful people are just remnants of a once-great culture; they are now weak and afraid of the dark. The Eloi have reason to be afraid. In deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity: the sinister Morlocks.

Vanity Fair features two heroines: the faithful, loyal Amelia Sedley, and the beautiful and scheming social climber Becky Sharp. It also engages a huge cast of wonderful supporting characters as the novel spins from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies to affairs of love and war on the Continent to liaisons in the dazzling ballrooms of London.

Mary Lamb is confined by the restrictions of domesticity, the only solace of her life being her brother Charles. But he feels equally constrained by the drudgery of his work at the East India Company, taking refuge in drink while spreading his wings as a writer. Sometimes, in the evenings, they study together. Mary reads what Charles reads. So it is no surprise that Mary should fall for the bookseller's son, 17-year-old antiquarian William Ireland, from whom Charles has purchased a book.

The author takes us inside George Webb's -a divorced ex-policeman turned private investigator- mind. For one day, we see what Webb sees and know only what his thoughts reveals. We learn about his childhood and the secret it forced him to carry; the last moments with his ex-wife; his fall as a cop; the ease with which he has turned his police skills to the demands of his new profession. And we learn how those demands have put him in a league with a client, a woman he has come to love.

T.C. Boyle is hailed as "America's most imaginative contemporary novelist" ( Newsweek). In 1970, a California commune pulls up stakes and moves to the harsh interior of Alaska. The members establish Drop City, a back-to-the-land town, on a foundation of peace and free love. But their idealism cannot prevent tension from rippling through the group. The results are anything but predictable in this honest, surprising evocation of a time period and its enduring beliefs.

Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, The Hours tells the story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, who one New York morning goes about planning a party in honor of a beloved friend; Laura Brown, who in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. By the end of the novel, the stories have intertwined, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.

In October of 1859, John Brown's raid of Harper's Ferry set the stage for the Civil War.This work of historical fiction tells Brown's story from the point of view of the fiery abolition's son. Banks talks about his philosophy of writing in an interview from the American Audio Prose Library.

With scars on his back and silver in his pocket, the huge figure of Jack Maggs strides across the rich landscape of 19th century London. As this enigmatic man moves through its streets and houses, his single-minded quest to find his son will engender love, deceit, and vengeance in the lives around him.

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new redbrick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons if he can survive the probationary year. Not the least of his problems is the necessity to keep in with his eccentric Professor Welch, who although detested and despised by Jim, has sufficient influence in the faculty to affect the continuation of his appointment.

George Harvey Bone has an obsession with the pretty small-time actress Netta. He also drinks heavily and suffers from "dark" moods, where he enters a trance-like state and can't remember what has happened. Throw Netta's often-cruel treatment of him into the mix, and drama beckons.