Hardcover Fiction

by Kenneth Roberts · Doubleday

by John Steinbeck · Viking Press

by Russell Janney · Prentice Hall

by John P. Marquand · Little, Brown

by Paul I. Wellman · Lippincott

by Sholem Asch · Putnam

by Pearl S. Buck · John Day

by Norman Collins · Duell, Sloan & Pearce

by Nancy Wilson Ross · William Sloane Associates

War brings young couple to the realization of the safe but dull life they are living.

by Pat Frank · Lippincott

by Mildred Walker · Harcourt, Brace. & Company

"A warm, moving book, a touch old-fashioned, and very American."-New Yorker. "A satisfying piece of work, well constructed and well written. As a regional novel, it gives a convincing delineation of upstate Vermont in the period between the Civil War and World War One, and it also leaves the reader with the pleasing consciousness that maintaining a standard of conduct-such things as tolerance, integrity, and loyalty-can make good fiction material."-Christian Science Monitor. "Walker has done a fine bit of documentation on what might be called the deflowering of New England."-New York Times. In this family saga, generations mine the Vermont earth and come to rest in it. Lyman Converse is too young to fight in the Civil War, but he lives to see his own son enlist in World War I. Through all the years his closest friend is Easy, an escaped black slave who took refuge in his father's house. Everything Converse values most is gradually lost to time, including the family-owned soapstone quarry. The Quarry invites readers to escape into private lives worth caring about-and to feel the national history that they could not escape. Originally published in 1947 and considered one of Mildred Walker's richest novels, The Quarry is introduced by Ripley Hugo, Walker's daughter. Hugo edited, with James Welch, The Real West Marginal Way: A Poet's Autobiography by Richard Hugo.

by James Cain · Grosset and Dunlap

by Mary O'Hara · Lippincott

by Laura Z. Hobson · Simon & Schuster

by Thomas Heggen · Houghton Mifflin

The novel, Mister Roberts, was an instant hit after being published in 1946 and was quickly adapted for the stage and screen. The title character, a Lieutenant Junior Grade naval officer, defends his crew against the petty tyranny of the ship's commanding officer during World War II. Nearly all action takes place on a backwater cargo ship, the USS Reluctant, that sails, as written in the play, "from apathy to tedium with occasional side trips to monotony and ennui." This irreverent, often hilarious story about the crew of the Reluctant has enjoyed wide and enduring popularity. It was subsequently adapted as a play, a feature film, a television series, and a television movie. The film version with Henry Fonda, James Cagney and Jack Lemmon is one of the most well-known movies of WWII.

by Odell Shepard and Willard Shepard · Macmillan