What are the most recommended books matching 'engaging and beautifully done'?

DAY ONE: THE NAME OF THE WIND

My name is Kvothe.

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the Unive... Read more about The Name of the Wind

Old Cob was filling his role as storyteller and advice dispensary. The men at the bar sipped their drinks and listened. In the back room a young innkeeper stood out of sight behind the door, smiling a...

READ THE EXCERPT

The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon iron gates reads:

Opens at Nightfall

Closes at Dawn

As dusk shifts to twili... Read more about The Night Circus

The man billed as Prospero the Enchanter receives a fair amount of correspondence via the theater office, but this is the first envelope addressed to him that contains a suicide note, and it is also t...

READ THE EXCERPT

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the... Read more about The Song of Achilles

MY FATHER WAS A KING AND THE SON OF KINGS. HE was a short man, as most of us were, and built like a bull, all shoulders. He married my mother when she was fourteen and sworn by the priestess to be fru...

READ THE EXCERPT

The opening novel of The Lord of the Rings-the greatest fantasy epic of all time-which continues in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

The dark, fearsome Ringwr... Read more about The Fellowship of the Ring

Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his trav...

READ THE EXCERPT

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when ... Read more about The Secret History

Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this:...

READ THE EXCERPT

A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America's most enduring authors

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set ... Read more about East of Eden

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and seasons smelled like—how people looked an...

READ THE EXCERPT

It's 1939 in Molching, Germany, and horror is everywhere. Nazi rule has divided the nation into those who are brutalized and those who are merely oppressed. Hunger, fear, and isolation reign. There are stories here, and who better to tell them than D... Read more about The Book Thief

When the coughing stopped, there was nothing but the nothingness of life moving on with a shuffle, or a near-silent twitch. A suddenness found its way onto his lips then, which were a corroded brown c...

READ THE EXCERPT

** Available for pre-order, THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, the dazzling new novel from Amor Towles **

Chosen for the Duchess of Cornwall's online book club The Reading Room

OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD: a BBC Radio 4 Book Club choice, soon to be a major TV serie... Read more about A Gentleman in Moscow

Within the hour, he would be in the warm spring air striding along Tverskaya Street, his moustaches at full sail. En route, he would purchase the Herald from the stand on Gazetny Lane, he would pass F...

READ THE EXCERPT

At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)

This is the way the world ends. . .f... Read more about The Fifth Season

For the past ten years you’ve lived as ordinary a life as possible. You came to Tirimo from elsewhere; the townsfolk don’t really care where or why. Since you were obviously well educated, you became ...

READ THE EXCERPT

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

The searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. I... Read more about The Road

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone be...

READ THE EXCERPT