After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan, a 450-pound Bengal tiger and Pi, a 16-year-old Indian boy. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary pieces of literary fiction of recent years.

David Mitchell, author of Number9Dream, recounts the connected stories of people from the past and the distant future, from a 19th century notary and an investigative journalist in the 1970s to a young man who searches for meaning in a post-apocalyptic world.

In a thought-provoking, coming-of-age novel, teenager Charlie struggles to cope with the complex world of high school. He deals with the confusions of sex and love, the temptations of drugs and the pain of losing a close friend and favorite aunt.

Tony Webster is a retired divorced man in his mid-60s who, after receiving notice of an unexpected bequest, is pulled back into a "powerful recollection of strong emotions" from his past. This leads to a reassessment of the accuracy of his memories, a rueful realization of how much he'd gotten wrong, and a harsh re-evaluation of his passive approach to life.

Growing out of a piece of fan fiction that recast Twilight's Bella and Edward in sexier scenarios, Fifty Shades of Grey tells the steamy affair of a student journalist and an intriguing young entrepreneur.

Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways.

Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on the latter's efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price.

A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh must step out of her comfort zone when she is sent into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years — a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past.

Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Bankhead, while an old friend resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny.

A childless couple working on a farm in the brutal landscape of 1920 Alaska discover a little girl living in the wilderness with a red fox and begin to love the strange, almost supernatural child as their own.

A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multimillionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well and a single-minded widow.

Victoria, the orphaned heroine of Vanessa Diffenbaugh's debut novel, is privy to a secret language of flowers that dates to Victorian England.

After a brief breakup, Anastasia and Christian change their arrangement, and both wrestle with their inner demons as Anastasia tries to make an important decision.

Even though Christian and Anastasia are now a proper couple, they still have many obstacles to overcome, including Christian's past coming back to haunt Anastasia.

A baseball star at a small college near Lake Michigan launches a routine throw that goes disastrously off course and inadvertently changes the lives of five people, including the college president, a gay teammate and the president's daughter.