Today in Bookish and Literary History, October 5

2005 Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles by Jeanette Winterson (UK)

Atlas knows how it feels to carry the weight of the world, but why, he asks himself, does it have to be carried at all? And when you have eternity to ponder this question, the brief reprieve offered by Heracles - the only man strong enough to borrow the burden - can force you to demand an answer from the Gods.

2005 Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

It is the first book in the Twilight series, and introduces seventeen-year-old Isabella "Bella" Swan, who moves from Phoenix, Arizona, to Forks, Washington.

2021 My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America.

• Winner of the Weatherford Award in Fiction
• A winner of 2022 Lillian Smith Book Awards

2021 April in Spain by John Banville (UK)

On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, it's hard at first to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him.

2021 Burntcoat by Sarah Hall (UK)

In an unnamed British city, the virus is spreading, and like everyone else, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness retreats inside. She isolates herself in her immense studio, Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows. As life outside changes irreparably, inside Burntcoat, Edith and Halit find themselves changed as well.

• A National Book Critics Circle Nominee

2022 The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane

In September 1883, a small town in the South Australian outback huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the entire community is caught up in the search for him.

• Short-Listed for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction