Jennifer Egan

"The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is 'one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis.' Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or 'externalizing' memory. It's 2010. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, 'Own...

It all begins in modest Rockford, Illinois, where Charlotte starts to plot her escape practically from birth. Spiky and elusive, she becomes a big-time fashion model, then nearly dies in a car crash on a spontaneous trip back to her hometown. Her famous face is so thoroughly smashed that 80 titanium screws are used to reconstruct it; the result is a visage no one recognizes and a life in shambles. Charlotte's groping for a new sense of self is paired...

"The long-awaited, daring, and magnificent novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn...