Edith Wharton--The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers, The House of Mirth (must be read in strict order--you will understand why when you finish the last one) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Anthony Trollope--all the books in the Palliser series, beginning with Can You Forgive Her?