1975 winner:   Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow.
A story set in 1906 New York that incorporates luminaries of the period, including Theodore Roosevelt, Sigmund Freud, and Emma Goldman. A ragtime musician from Harlem falls victim to racist vandalism and seeks redress through violence. Strong language, violence, and descriptions of sex. RC 44378, BR 2822.

1976 winner:   October Light by John Gardner.
Philosophical novel about an aging brother and sister who live together in conflict in his house in Vermont. Strong language. RC 10669.

1977 winner:   Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.
This novel surveys nearly a century of American history as it impinges upon four generations of a single black family. Macon Dead III, known as Milkman, is the first black baby allowed to be born in Mercy Hospital in the 1930s. Milkman undertakes an epic journey into an understanding of his family’s heritage and, hence, himself. Strong language and descriptions of sex. RC 38330, BR 9632.

1978 winner:   The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever.
Sixty-one short stories centering on such varied subjects as marriage, suburbia, Manhattan, the middle class, theological society, Italy, decency, and families. Cheever describes them as "stories of a long lost world, when you heard Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store and almost everyone wore a hat.” RC 12496.

1979 winner:   The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan.
A band of determined Irishmen rise up in County Mayo against their English rulers in 1798, toward the end of the great age of Revolution. Three shiploads of Frenchmen come to the aid of the rebellious Irish, led by a poet, and together they set forth into battle. RC 14024.

1980 winner:   The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard.
Tale of two beautiful Australian sisters newly arrived in England and what happens to them and the men who love them. The story takes surprising turns as it charts the ways lives intersect, records feelings, and mirrors inner realities. RC 15961.

1981 winner:   Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike.
In 1979 Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom finds himself fat, forty-six, and, at long last, affluent. He lives with his wife and mother-in-law in Brewer, Pennsylvania, and runs the Toyota dealership that the two women have inherited. For the first time in his life he feels almost happy--until a girl shows up at his shop. Rabbit series, book 3. Strong language and explicit descriptions of sex. RC 17315, BR 5051.

1982 winner:   George Mills by Stanley Elkin.
Inventive, comic tale of one George Mills, who is descended from a long line of men of the same name "representing a thousand years of blue collar blood." Various Georges from the first to the present George try to make good, to move up in the world in order to lead rather than serve. Strong language and explicit descriptions of sex. RC 20404.

1983 winner:   Ironweed by William Kennedy.
Compassionate, tough-minded novel concerns aging Francis Phelan, a former mechanic, major-league third baseman, lush, and murderer, who is now back in Albany after twenty-two years on the lam. Set during the Depression, the supporting cast includes crooks, bums, cons, gamblers, and working stiffs. Phelan Family series, book 3. Strong language and explicit descriptions of sex. RC 20612.

1984 winner:   Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.
A native American poet and short-story writer poetically fashions this novel out of the mystery, violence, and exaltation of the lives of two Chippewa families in North Dakota, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. Chippewa Indians series. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. RC 22061.

1985 winner:   The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler.
Macon Leary leads a quiet, routine life until his young son is killed in a fast-food shop holdup and his wife of twenty years suddenly decides to leave him. Macon returns to his family’s home and settles into a dull, soothing life with his brothers and sister--until he meets a dog trainer named Muriel Pritchett, who is as different from his wife as anyone could be. Some strong language. RC 22961, BR 6250.

1986 winner:   Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price.
In middle-age, plucky Kate Vaiden looks back at her life. Shattered at the age of eleven by the suicide-murder of her parents, she was raised by her loving aunt and uncle. When she has a son out of wedlock, she lacks the maternal urge and abandons him to the same relatives who raised her. Thirty-five years later she tries to discover his fate. Strong language and some explicit descriptions of sex. RC 24600.

1987 winner:   The Counterlife by Philip Roth.
Henry Zuckerman, a successful, forty-year-old New Jersey dentist with an agreeable wife, attractive children, and a complacent dental-hygienist mistress, flees to Israel to become an authentic Jew. This mid-life crisis results from his bypass surgery and the medication that causes his impotence. Zuckerman series, book 5. Some strong language and some explicit descriptions of sex. RC 25956, BR 6909.

1988 winner:   The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee.
These stories focus on contemporary immigrant experiences in America. Included are such diverse characters as a middle-class Italian-American suburbanite, a Sephardic mercenary from Smyrna by way of Flushing, Queens, a Trinidadian mother’s helper, and an investment banker from Atlanta. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. RC 29576.

1989 winner:   Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow.
Young Billy Bathgate, a fatherless teenager from the East Bronx, witnesses brutal gang violence in his climb to the top of the mob scene in New York City. His activities take him through the heart of the city and into the rural underworld in Depression-era America with Dutch Schultz, the Prohibition beer baron. Strong language and explicit descriptions of sex. RC 29022.

1990 winner:   Rabbit at Rest by John Updike.
Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom’s life is winding down. Fifty-five and retired, Rabbit sees his life fading, and as it does his wife Janice’s life takes on new strength and purpose. An appetite for junk food has padded Rabbit’s body to huge proportions, and angina claws at his heart. And the Angstrom’s son Nelson is bankrupting the family business to pay for his cocaine habit. Rabbit series, book 4. Strong language. RC 31964, BR 8271.

1991 winner:   A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.
Larry Cook owns a thousand acres of Iowa farmland that is unmortgaged and some of the richest soil around. At a party given in celebration of the return of Jess Clark, a local man, after an absence of thirteen years, Cook announces that he is retiring and dividing the land among his three daughters. But the gift soon begins to tear the family apart, and secrets, long hidden, begin to surface. Some strong language. RC 33926.

1992 winner:   All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.
Texas 1949. John Grady Cole, sixteen, is on the threshold of adulthood when his world turns upside down. His grandfather has died, and his mother has no desire to keep the 18,000-acre ranch, which is the only home and way of life John knows. With a friend he sets out for Mexico and finds work on another ranch. But John falls for the owner’s daughter and finds himself in jail. Border series, book 1. Strong language and violence. RC 34043.

1993 winner:   A Lesson before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.
Bayonne, Louisiana, 1948. A young, naive black man has been sentenced to death for the murder of a white man--a murder that he did not commit. His attorney argues that he is too stupid to plan a crime. "Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair..." Galled by this defense, Jefferson’s godmother, Miss Emma, turns to Grant, the plantation schoolteacher, to teach Jefferson to die like a man. Some strong language and some descriptions of sex. RC 36694.

1994 winner:   Stone Diaries by Carol Shields.
A fictional biography about the life of Daisy Stone Goodwill--a life that begins on the Canadian prairies, moves south to the American Midwest, and ends in Florida. Daisy’s tale is the story of an ordinary woman, resigned to her lot, but aware that her internal views don’t quite match what those around her assume. Her diary records the facts, but her heart feels real joy and sadness. Some strong language. RC 39129.

1995 winner:   Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin.
Mrs. Ted Bliss is an elderly Jewish widow who lives in a Miami condo. Until now her entire life has been centered on her husband and children. Gradually, she comes to terms with the death of her husband and son and with her own identity--as Dorothy Bliss. When Hurricane Andrew bears down on Miami, she braces for the storm. RC 43626.

1996 winner:   Women in Their Beds: New and Selected Stories by Gina Berriault.
Short stories that depict the human condition through a variety of characters in real-life situations. In one story, a librarian becomes suspicious of a homeless man who wants him to interpret a poem. The librarian later realizes that the man was simply seeking guidance for his life. RC 43699.

1997 winner:   The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald.
Based on the life of the Romantic poet Novalis. In late-eighteenth-century Germany, young Friedrich von Hardenberg falls in love with twelve-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. Although ignorant and unsophisticated, Sophie soon captures the hearts of the entire family. RC 45885.

1998 winner:   The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro.
Eight short stories centered around families. In the title piece, three boys delay revealing their discovery of the drowned town optometrist. Most think it’s a suicide until a nurse uncovers the truth. In "My Mother’s Dream" a war widow has trouble accepting her newborn daughter while living with her quirky in-laws. Some strong language. RC 47716.

1999 winner:   Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem.
Lionel Essrog, a small-time Brooklyn thug with Tourette’s syndrome, seeks revenge for the murder of his boss, Frank Minna. Years ago Minna took the orphaned Essrog under his wing. Essrog now investigates a Zen temple and two aging Mafia chieftains as possible links to Minna’s death. Violence and strong language. RC 49231.

2000 winner:   Being Dead by Jim Crace.
A married couple, both doctors of zoology, are found spread-eagled, murdered, and robbed on a beach--Joseph’s hand clasping Celice’s ankle, a loving gesture even in death. Descriptions of their bodies’ return to the elements are interspersed with the couple’s love story beginning on that same sand thirty years before. Some descriptions of sex. RC 52563, BR 13340.

2001 winner:   Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald.
A discussion of architectural history in 1967 in the Antwerp, Belgium, train station initiates a tenuous friendship between the unnamed speaker and the title character. During encounters over the next thirty years, Austerlitz gradually reveals his complex identity as a child of Holocaust victims who was raised by Welsh Protestants. RC 53308.

2002 winner:   Atonement by Ian McEwan.
England, 1935. Cambridge graduates Cecilia and Robbie fall in love, defying class distinctions. But a greater crime is perpetrated by Cecilia’s melodramatic thirteen-year-old sister, Briony. Her willful misconstruction of events she witnesses leads to the disintegration of her upper-class family and a lifetime of recriminations. Some explicit descriptions of sex and some strong language. RC 54023, BR 14059.

2003 winner:   The Known World by Edward P. Jones.
Manchester County, Virginia; 1855. At his death Henry Townsend, a thirty-one-year-old former slave who maintains a relationship with his owner William Robbins, owns more than thirty slaves himself and fifty acres of land. But now his plantation begins to fall apart as slaves betray one another. RC 56918.

2004 winner:   Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
1950s. Dying seventy-six-year-old Gilead, Iowa, minister John Ames writes a parting letter to his young son. John reflects on the tensions between his pacifist father and militant abolitionist grandfather (both preachers), the death of his first wife and child, the gospel, a friend’s transgressions, and life’s eternal mystery. RC 59561.