Breathing Lessons

Everything Is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer

A young Jewish-American writer travels to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather during the Holocaust, accompanied by a translator whose English is spectacularly wrong.

White Teeth Zadie Smith

Two London families -- one Bangladeshi, one English -- span three generations, two world wars, and enough cultural collision to fill an encyclopedia. Zadie Smith's first novel, written at 21.

Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons

Newly orphaned and entirely practical, Flora Poste descends on her eccentric rural relatives to sort out their melodramatic lives -- whether they want her to or not.

High Fidelity Nick Hornby

Rob Fleming owns a record shop in London, makes top-five lists about everything, and has just been dumped again. He decides to track down his five most memorable exes to figure out what is wrong with him.

An Abundance of Katherines John Green

Former child prodigy Colin Singleton has been dumped by nineteen girls named Katherine and drives to rural Tennessee to find a mathematical theorem of love.