East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, is the story of Cain and Abel set to men we can actually visualize. It tells the story of two families: the Trask family and the Hamiltons. The Trasks play out the story of Cain and Abel in every generation. The Hamiltons are based on the real life author's maternal family. Over the course of the years, the Hamiltons guide the Trasks into asking themselves if their family could ever triumph over sin.

This book is about English aristocrats living through World War II on another planet: the family castle, Brideshead. The family scion's best friend illuminates the weird world of the extremely wealthy and their bizarre disconnections from normal life. Captivating story angles restore aristocrats to the beauty of the human condition.

This book captures the angst of the main character's loss of innocence during WWI and his subsequent quest to find spiritual enlightenment through explorations in non-western religions and philosophies. It captures the time period in a way that I find much more captivating than novels like The Great Gatsby, which fall into the same time period. This is one of my all-time favorite works of fiction and never fails to evoke the same sense of yearning for inner peace that it describes in the main character.

This non-fiction reads like a novel. Beryl Markham was an early aviator, but her story focuses on her childhood in Africa as well as her flying career servicing the remote hunters and doctors in the bush. She steers clear of her relationships with men, but speaks lovingly of Africa and flight.