Northshire Bookstore Manchester Center Vermont

It accomplishes its goals by choosing three noted writers of fiction each year to select the winner and four runners-up of the PEN/Faulkner Awards for Fiction; by presenting a series of readings by noted writers of fiction at the Folger Shakespeare Library and other venues; and by sponsoring the Writers in Schools program in which the authors in the reading series teach classes in Washington public high schools.

2008
The Great Man by Kate Christensen
Less about the great man of its title than the women Oscar Feldman, fictional 20th-century New York figurative painter leaned on and left behind: Abigail, his wife ; Teddy, his mistress; and Maxine, his sister.

2007
Everyman by Philip Roth
Philip Roth's new novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The bestselling author now turns his attention from "one family's harrowing encounter with history" (New York Times) to one man's lifelong skirmish with mortality.

2006
The March by E.L. Doctorow
Almost hypnotic in its narrative drive, The March stunningly renders the countless lives swept up in the violence of a country at war with itself.

2005
War Trash by Ha Jin
Ha Jin's masterful new novel casts a searchlight into a forgotten corner of modern history, the experience of Chinese soldiers held in U.S. POW camps during the Korean War.

2004
The Early Stories by John Updike
A harvest and not a winnowing, The Early Stories preserves almost all of the short fiction John Updike published between 1954 and 1975.

2003
The Caprices by Sabina Murray
A caprice in wartime may be a sinister thing or a necessary distraction, and in this shrewd, striking debut collection of nine short stories by novelist (Slow Burn) and screenwriter Murray it is frequently both.

2002
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

2001
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman.

2000
Waiting by Ha Jin
In Waiting, Ha Jin portrays the life of Lin Kong, a dedicated doctor torn by his love for two women: one who belongs to the New China of the Cultural Revolution, the other to the ancient traditions of his family's village.

1999
The Hours by Micheal Cunningham
Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, this is Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date.

1998
The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor
A frustrated saxophonist crashes a New York City nightclub gig, beginning a reputation as a much-talked-about, mysterious figure in the jazz world.

1997
Women in Their Beds by Gina Berriault
Whether focusing on yuppies or drifters, social workers or Indian restaurateurs, heroin addicts or teenage baby-sitters, Berriault writes with great psychological acuity and a compassion that comes always from observation, never from sentimentality.