Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather (OUP, £5.99 in UK)

Cather's first novel is rather untypical of her in that it is set in "polite" society instead of the small-town and Mid-Western milieu she tended to favour. The hero, or anti-hero, is a successful and socially fashionable young architect who has designed a spectacular bridge which should be the apex of his career, but instead he dies calamitously in its collapse - which has certain symbolic undertones. Much of this short book hinges on a version of the Eternal Triangle, treated with great sensitivity; and though Cather really found her characteristic material in her next work, O Pioneers! she already shows herself to be a major novelist.