Book recommendation please. I really enjoy books that span lives- Like Ahab's Wife, Angela's Ashes, and?

and The Glass Castle, or generations, like Pillars of the Earth. I like light-hearted books, like The Help. I need at least one sympathetic character and I like happy endings. I like literary fiction, not popular fiction. I'm not a fan of Nicholas Sparks or... oh, I can't remember the name of the series everyone keeps recommending to me with the female cop or detective or something... Thanks for the recommendations. :)Book recommendation please. I really enjoy books that span lives- Like Ahab's Wife, Angela's Ashes, and?
*Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden

*Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

*Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

*The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

*The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

*Sister by Rosamund Lupton

*Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

*Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier

*Atonement by Ian McEwan

*White Teeth by Zadie SmithBook recommendation please. I really enjoy books that span lives- Like Ahab's Wife, Angela's Ashes, and?
Dangerous Days: The Autobiography of a Photojournalist, and its sequel, Blades: The Autobiography of a Rescue-Helicopter Pilot, both by J. William Turner. Very realistic fiction about Australian teens facing several tense, dramatic, life and death situations set in many parts of Australia, plus England and California. The plot of each novel is written in the first person as a collection of four related shorter books (about 100 pages per book) inside a single cover dealing with teenage, adult and social themes. More info in Google and turneramazon.com