Justin Cartwright: 7 books

A powerful elegy to the intimacies and idiocies of family, The Promise of Happiness tells the story of an apparently ordinary family on the cusp of an extraordinary moment: the return of the family's prodigal daughter, Juliet. Her release from an upstate New York prison throws the Judds, formerly...

In a world still uneasy after the financial turmoil of 2008, Justin Cartwright puts a human face on the dishonesties and misdeeds of the bankers who imperiled us. Tubal and Co. is a small, privately owned bank in England. As the company's longtime leader, Sir Harry Tubal, slips into senility, his...

Richard Cathar recalls his recently deceased father, Alfric, as a delusional hippie, one who fancied himself an intellectual and historian. One of many far-fetched claims was that he had discovered-and then lost-documentation of a meeting between his hero, Richard the Lionheart, the scrappy Robin...

Oxford is a world-renowned stronghold of knowledge, a lush medieval city dotted with beautiful gardens. But it also has a symbolic meaning well beyond these things. It stands for something deep in our minds - excellence, a kind of privilege, a charmed life, deep-veined liberalism, a respect for tradition....

On July 20, 1944, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. He found the main conspirators, and quickly had them strung up on meat hooks. Axel, Count von Gottberg, was one of those hanged by Hitler. Sixty years later, Conrad Senior, a former student of one of Axel's most trusted friends,...

In this thoughtful novel, a circle of friends and loved ones are attempting to face down their personal troubles: a deceased wife, a callous lover, an affair with a young colleague. As they stumble through the events of their own lives, they turn to one another for advice and compassion, and, occasionally,...

Frank McAllister has long since dropped "Retief" as his middle name, but the legacy of his family's history proves harder to shake. His ancestor Piet Retief, leader of the South African Great Trek, was killed by Zulu king Dingane in the 1838 massacre, along with a hundred men, women, and...