Epistolary Novels

"Welcome to Lockwood, proud home of The Fairway Players, who, under the creative control of Martin Hayward, the owner of the local country club, are putting on a production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons." The star, as always: Martin's wife, Helen, the only person in the troupe with any real acting talent. But this is not a production like any other: just as rehearsals get under way, tragedy strikes: Poppy Reswick, Martin and Helen's beloved granddaughter,...

Toole's lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, whom Walker Percy dubs "slob extraordinaire, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one." Set in New Orleans, A Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift, one of whose essays gives the book its title. As its characters burst into life, they leave the region and literature forever changed by their...

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would...

Still moping months after being dumped by her Arizona boyfriend Leo, fifteen-year-old Stargirl, a home-schooled free spirit, writes "the world's longest letter" to Leo, describing her new life in Pennsylvania.

In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen has lost his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm, Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn't remember choosing. Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject of Seamus Heaney's famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another. From their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined, and an unexpected friendship...

"Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero -- everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins...

The U.S. has finally entered World War I. Constance Kopp is chasing down suspected German saboteurs and spies for the Bureau of Investigation while Fleurette is traveling across the country entertaining troops with song and dance. Meanwhile, at an undisclosed location in France, Norma is overseeing her thwarted pigeon project for the Army Signal Corps when Aggie, a nurse at the American field hospital, is accused of stealing essential medical supplies....

Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.

When an anonymous benefactor offers to put Samantha Moore through school, with the stipulation that she write frequent letters to him on her progress, Sam finds safety in the letters as her program and her peers force her to confront her past.

Sam and Hadley West are both trying in their own ways to survive after the unthinkable loss of their only son in Alaska. Sam goes to the arctic wilderness to find the place where Paul died. Hadley rents a cottage off the Maine coast where she begins to paint again. At opposite ends of the country, waiting for their divorce to be finalized, they begin to exchange letters, missives filled with longing and truths they've never before voiced, as they...