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College Bound Reading ListAchebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart.European missionaries and colonial officials disrupt the patterns and rituals of a traditional Nigerian Ibo society at the end of the nineteenth century.Agee, James. A Death In The Family.The enchanted childhood summer of 1915 suddenly becomes a baffling experience for Rufus Follet when his father dies.Ajak, Deng, & Deng. They Poured Fire On Us From The Sky.Benjamin, Alepho, and Benson were raised among the Dinka tribe of Sudan. Their world was an insulated, close-knit community of grass-roofed cottages, cattle herders, and tribal councils. The lions and pythons that prowled beyond the village fences were the greatest threat they knew. All that changed the night the government-armed Murahiliin began attacking their villages.Ali, Monica. Brick Lane.A story of one woman, Nazneen, born in a Bangladeshi village and transported to London at age eighteen to enter into an arranged marriage.Allende, Isabel. The House Of Spirits.The epic story of the passionate Trueba family begins at the turn of the century in South America.Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out Of Carolina.Bone confronts poverty, the troubled marriage of her mother and stepfather, and the stigma of being considered “white trash” as she comes of age in South Carolina.Alvarez, Julia. How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.The four Garcia girls face a strange new life in America when they are forced to flee the Dominican Republic.Alvarez, Julia. In The Time Of The Butterflies.Dede, the only survivor of the four Mirabel sisters, code named Mariposas or butterflies, reveals their role in the liberation of the Dominican Republic from the dictator Trujillo.Anaya, Rudolfo A. Bless Me, Ultima.Ultima, a wise old mystic, helps a young Hispanic boy resolve personal dilemmas caused by the differing backgrounds and aspirations of his parents and society.Angelou, Maya. Gather Together In My Name.A continuation of the author’s autobiography.Angelou, Maya. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.Autobiography covering the childhood of a woman who has been a professional dancer, actress, poet, journalist, and television producer.Atwood, Margaret Eleanor. Alias Grace.Fact-based story of Grace Marks, a sixteen-year-old girl who received a life sentence in 1843 for allegedly taking part in the murder of her employer and his lover.Atwood, Margaret Eleanor. Cat’s Eye.Painter Elaine Risley, pushing fifty, returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her celebrated work. While there she takes time to confront her past.Atwood, Margaret. Oryx And Crake: A Novel.Snowman, as he calls himself, searches for supplies in a wasteland where ordinary people once lived. Still mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and best friend Crake, he tries to care for Crakes three children who see him as a monster. All the while trying to figure out how everything went so wrong.Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale.In Gilead, a Christian fundamentalist dystopia, fertile lower-class women serve as birth mothers for the upper class.Austen, Jane. Pride & Prejudice.The romances of the Bennett girls and the ardent desire of their mother to have them all well married.Baldwin, James. Go Tell It On The Mountain.Fourteen-year-old John struggles against the sins of his forefathers and the sensuous evils of Harlem to attain a religious conversion that reflects a man’s battle for inner peace.Balwin, James. If Beale Street Could Talk.When Fonny is jailed on a frame-up, he and his girlfriend, Tish, are supported by a loyal family.Balzac, Honre de. Pere Goriot.Paris transforms Eugene de Rastignac from a na?ve provincial to a Parisian gentleman.Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward, 2000-1887.The author’s idea of what life will be like in the year 2000.Bellow, Saul. The Adventures Of Augie March.Born out of wedlock, brought up in poverty of Chicago, Augie takes life as it comes and wherever he can get it.Benioff, David. City Of Thieves.This story follows a character named Lev Beniov, the son of a revered Soviet Jewish poet who has “disappeared” in the Stalinist purges, as Lev and an accomplice carry out an impossible assignment during the Nazi blockade of Leningrad.Borland, Hal. When The Legends Die.Embittered by the white man’s deceits, Thomas Black Bull punishes the rodeo horses he rides until he has a crushing accident.Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451.Books are for burning in this future society in which thinking and reading are crimes.Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles.Earthling gain and lose Mars in these short tales about the colonization of another planet.Brin, David. The Postman.Gordon Krantz finds an old, worn postman’s uniform after a nuclear holocaust and becomes a symbol of hope to the communities of the American Northwest.Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.An unassuming English orphan becomes a governess and falls in love with her employer.Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights.A story of intense and frustrated love, of hate and revenge, that takes place in the wild moors of England.Brooks, Kevin. Lucas.On an isolated English island, fifteen-year-old Caitlin McCann makes the painful journey from adolescence to adulthood through her experiences with a mysterious boy, whose presence has an unsettling effect on the island's inhabitants.Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth.The trials that plague a Chinese peasant and his wife.Burns, Olive Ann. Cold Sassy Tree.The proprietor of the general store, E. Rucker Blakeslee, elopes with Miss Love Simpson. He is barely three weeks a widower, and she is only half his age and a Yankee to boot. As their marriage inspires a whirlwind of local gossip, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a family scandal.Butler, Samuel. The Way Of All Flesh.The son of a strict clergyman breaks parental ties, thereby freeing himself to make his own way of life.Camus, Albert. The Plague.A small group of people react to the catastrophe of bubonic plague at the Algerian fort of Oran.Camus, Albert. The Stranger.An ordinary little clerk lives quietly, unemotionally, until he becomes involved in another man’s passions, commits a murder, and is sentenced to death.Caputo, Philip. A Rumor Of War.In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home—physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game.In a world decimated by alien attacks, the government trains young geniuses like Ender Wiggin in military strategy with increasingly complex computer games.Cather, Willa. My Antonia.A bohemian immigrant girl faces hardships in pioneer Nebraska.Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote Of La Mancha.The adventures of a mad Spaniard who imagines he lives in the age of heroic knights.Chevalier, Tracy. Girl With A Pearl Earring.Tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius, even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.Cisneros, Sandra. The House On Mango Street.In short, poetic stories, Esperanza describes life in a low-income, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago.Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone.A celebrated jewel is stolen from an idol in a Buddhist temple. Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim.A man attempts to live with himself after an act of cowardice.Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge Of Courage.A boy moves from cowardice to courage in the Civil War.Davidson, Andrew. The Gargoyle.Burned horribly in a car accident, a man meets a patient from the psychiatric ward in the hospital where he is recovering. She spins tales of how the two were lovers in a former lives, although initially for entertainment, the man begins to believe the two may have indeed loved one another in a past lives. De Rosney, Tatiana. Sarah’s Key.Paris, July 1942. Sarah, a ten-year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family’s apartment, thinking she’ll be back in a few hours. Paris, May 2002. Journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article on the historic day 60 years past. She does not expect to stumble upon a trail of long hidden family secrets connecting her to Sarah.Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent.Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that tell of her father, Jacob, and his twelve sons. Told in Dinah's voice are the traditions and turmoil’s of ancient womanhood.Dickens, Charles. A Tale Of Two Cities.The lives of Alexander Manette and his daughter Lucie and those of Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton become entangled during the French Revolution.Dickens, Charles. Bleak House.A woman who is not what she seems, a lawyer who becomes a corpse, and a girl with no past are all part of Dickens’s engrossing literary riddle.Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield.An autobiographical novel reflecting the life of England in the early nineteenth century.Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations.The hero Pip, reared by humble relatives, is informed he is to be made a gentleman of “great expectations” by a mysterious unknown patron.Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist.The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who escapes from a workhouse and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin, naively unaware of their unlawful activities.Didion, Joan. The Year Of Magical Thinking.A year in the author’s life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her husband unexpectedly dead due to a heart attack.Doctorow, E.L. Ragtime.Real and fictional people form widely different economic and ethnic groups interact in nineteenth century America.Dorris, Michael. Yellow Raft On Blue Water.At times separated by hardships and angry secrets but always bonded by kinship, three generations of Native American women tell their stories in their search for self-identity.Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime And Punishment.A sensitive intellectual is driven by poverty to believe himself exempt from moral law.Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov.The story of intellectual Ivan, sensual Dmitri, and idealistic Alyosha Karamazov, who collide in the wake of their despicable father’s brutal murder.Dreiser, Theodore. An American Tragedy.Ambitious Clyde Griffiths has an affair with Roberta. But Roberta’s pregnancy does not fit into Clyde’s plan for success, so he drowns her in Lake Michigan.Dumas, Alexandre. The Count Of Monte Cristo.The adventure of a man’s unjust imprisonment, escape, and return to a new life.DuMaurier, Daphne. Rebecca.The timid new mistress of Manderley is haunted by the shadow of her predecessor, the vibrant Rebecca.Duncan, David James. The Brothers K.Told through the eyes of Kincaid, the youngest of four brothers in the family, this story relates the adventures of his family through many events.Edwards, Kim. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.Dr. David Henry delivers his perfectly healthy son, but upon realizing the second child has Down syndrome he decides to give the child away in hopes of saving his wife the grief.Eliot, George. The Mill On The Floss.Impulsive, loving Maggie and her plodding brother, Tom, find in death the solution to their emotional conflicts.Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man.A young African American seeking identity during his high school and college days, and later in New York’s Harlem, relates his terrifying experiences.Emecheta, Buchi. The Bride Price.Aku-nna, a very young Ibo girl, and Chike, her teacher, fall in love despite tribal custom forbidding their romance.Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative Of The Life Of Olaudah Equiano.The book discusses his time spent in slavery, serving primarily on galleys, documents his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in gaining his own freedom and in business thereafter.Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine.This tells the story of two families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. It is a multi-generational portrait of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable drama of anger, desire, and the healing power that is love medicine.Erdrich, Louise. Tracks.Set in North Dakota over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance--yet their pride and humor prohibit surrender.Esquivel, Laura. Like Water For Chocolate.As the youngest of three daughters in a turn-of-the-century Mexican family, Tita may not marry but must remain at home to care for her mother.Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex.Three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Within the family is Calliope, who has to figure out why she isn’t like other girls and what turned her from Calliope to Cal.Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying.The Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother.Faulkner, William. The Reivers.In 1905, eleven-year-old Lucius and two other “reivers,” of plunderers, steal his grandfather’s car and set off for Memphis and misadventure.Faulkner, William. The Sound And The Fury.The tragic life of the Compsons, a degenerate Southern family, is described by Benjy, a thirty-three-year-old idiot.Finney, Jack. Time And Again.Simon Morley travels back in time to New York of the 1880’s.Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.Lives of wealthy persons in the New York area during the Roaring Twenties are carefully portrayed.Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary.Emma Bovary seeks escape from a dull marriage in a novel showing the effect of narrow-mindedness and squalor on a woman’s life.Follett, Ken. The Pillars Of The Earth.In a time of civil war, famine and religious strife, there rises a magnificent Cathedral in Kingsbridge. Against this backdrop, lives entwine: Tom, the master builder, Aliena, the noblewoman, Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge, Jack, the artist in stone and Ellen, the woman from the forest who casts a curse.Forster, Edward Morgan. Passage To India.East and West clash in India when an Englishwoman accuses and Indian man of attacking her.Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain.Inman, a wounded Civil War soldier, endures the elements, The Guard, and his own weakness and infirmity to return to his sweetheart, Ada, who is fighting her own battle to survive while farming the mountainous North Carolina Terrain.Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces.A semi-fictional memoir, it tells the story of a 23-year-old alcoholic and drug abuser and how he copes with rehabilitation in a twelve steps-oriented treatment center.Fuller, Lola. Loon Feather.Oneta tells of the decline of her Native American world.Gaines, Ernest. A Gathering of Old Men.More than a dozen aging African American men claim to be the sole murderer of a southern white farmer and welcome the chance to confound the law after lifetimes of oppression.Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying.When Jefferson’s attorney states, “I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this,” disillusioned teacher Grant Wiggins is sent into the penitentiary to help this slow learner gain a sense of dignity and self-esteem before his execution.Gaines, Ernest. Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman.This fictional autobiography tells the story of a remarkable African America woman born in slavery on a Louisiana plantation who is freed after the Civil War and lives another one hundred years to see the second emancipation.Glasworthy, John. Forsyte Saga.The chronicle of three generations of an upper-middle-class English family.Gardner, John Champlin. Grendel.In a unique interpretation of the Beowulf legend, the monster Grendel relates his struggle to understand the ugliness in himself and mankind in the brutal world of fourteenth-century Denmark.Gibbins, Kaye. Ellen Foster.Casting an unflinching yet humorous eye on her situation, eleven-year-old Ellen survives her mother’s death, an abusive father, and uncaring relatives to find for herself a loving home and a new mama.Glasgow, Ellen. Vein Of Iron.A family ”vein of iron” runs in Ada, an indomitable daughter of a Virginia family.Golden, Arthur. Memoirs Of A Geisha.In 1929 an impoverished nine-year-old named Chiyo from a fishing village is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto's Gion district and subjected to cruel treatment from the owners and the head geisha Hatsumomo.Golding, William. Lord Of The Flies.Innocence ends and savagery begins when English schoolboys are marooned on an ocean island, and they attempt to set up a society of their own.Grass, Grunter. Tin Drum.Oskar, who stops growing when he is three, describes life in Germany during and after WWII.Greenberg, Joanne. I Never Promised You A Rose Garden.A sixteen-year-old girl struggles out of the seductive kingdom of her madness and reenters the real world.Gruen, Sara. Water For Elephants.This novel centers on Jacob Jankowski and his experiences in a traveling circus called The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.Guest, Judith. Ordinary People.Seventeen-year-old Conrad Jarrett returns home after an attempted suicide and finds his journey back to normal life slow and painful.Guterson, David. Snow Falling On Cedars.When a newspaper journalist covers the trial of a Japanese-American accused of murder, he must come to terms with his own past.Hamamura, John. Color Of The Sea.From the tragedies of the camps through to the bombing of Hiroshima, where Sam's mother and siblings live, Sam Hamada’s very identity both puts his life at risk and provides the only reserve from which he can pull to survive.Hardy, Thomas. Far From The Madding Crowd.Three men seek the love of Bathsheba Everdene in this novel of betrayal and murder in rural England.Hardy, Thomas. The Return Of The Native.The powerful influence of Egdon Heath turns to tragedy the love of Clym and Eustacia and brings ruin to others as well.Harris, Joanne. Chocolat.In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows.Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter.Hester Prynne and her lover feel the effects of sin in Puritan New England.Heller, Joseph. Catch-22.A broad comedy confronting the humbug and hypocrisy of war a mass society as Captain Yossarian frantically attempts to stay alive despite endless bombing missions.Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell To Arms.A love story of an English nurse, Catherine Barkley, and Lieutenant Henry, a wounded American ambulance officer, takes place during World War I.Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom The Bell Tolls.Robert Jordan, a young American professor fighting for the Loyalist cause in Spain, discovers love, destroys a bridge as assigned, and faces his final test alone.Hemingway, Ernest. The Nick Adams Stories.Showing a memorable character growing from child to adolescent to soldier, veteran, writer, and parent.Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man And The Sea.Santiago, an old Gulf fisherman, battles with a monster marlin.Herbert, Frank. Dune.A desert planet is the exotic scene of a richly detailed space fantasy in which the “freemen” of Dune battle the emperor of the known universe.Hersey, John. A Bell For Adano.In the Italian village of Adano, Major Joppolo tries to replace the town’s bell and gain the respect of the villagers.Hersey, John. A Single Pebble.An American engineer finds Oriental philosophy a greater obstacle than the wild Yangtze River.Hersey, John. The Wall.The doomed Jews of Warsaw Ghetto turn and face their oppressors.Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha.Emerging from a kaleidoscope of experiences and tasted pleasures, Siddhartha transcends to a state of peace and mystic holiness in this strangely simple story.Hesse, Herman. Steppenwolf.Considering himself half-man, half-wolf of the steppes, Harry Haller faces the conflict between nature and spirit.Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns.Recounts the experiences and emotions of two Afghani women, Mariam and Laila, whose lives become entangled with the history of recent wars in their country. Mostly bleak and heartrending, their story does offer the promise of hope and happiness in a land ravaged by warfare, gender conflicts, and poverty.Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner.The story of Amir, an Afghan boy who is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father's servant.Hudson, W.H. Green Mansions.A romantic fantasy is set in a South American Jungle.Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables.A powerful story of an unfortunate thief in the underworld of Paris.Huxley, Alduos. Brave New World.In this chilling vision of the future, babies are produced in bottles and exist in a mechanized world without soul.Irving, John. A Prayer For Owen Meany.A boy hits a foul ball that kills another boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying.Irving, John. The World According To Garp.The son of a famous radical feminist spends his life struggling with his diverse personal relationships and with his ambition to be a writer.James, Henry. The Ambassadors.The struggle between the old-fashioned New England conscience and the cultured maturity of Paris is told with subtle irony.James, Henry. The Turn Of The Screw.A governess tries to break the spell she believes evil spirits have cast over the two innocent children in her care.Joyce, James. A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man.A young Irish student struggles to become a writer.Kafka, Franz. Metamorphasis.Gregor Samsa becomes a cockroach.Kafka, Franz. The Trial.Joseph K., a bank official, is arrested, tried, and convicted of an unnamed crime of which he knows nothing.Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba The Greek.As manager of a mine in Crete, Zorba- philosopher and rogue- accomplishes fantastic feats of physical prowess, tells wild stories of his erotic adventures, misbehaves badly with the owner’s money, sings, dances, and talks of the world.Keneally, Thomas. Schindler’s List.Oskar Schinlder, a rich factory owner, risks his life and spends his personal fortune to save Jews listed as his workers during WWII. Kerouac, Jack. On The Road.On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience.Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.An irrepressible rebel leads fellow inmates of a mental hospital in a struggle with tyrannical Head Nurse Ratched.Keyes, Daniel. Flowers For Algernon.After an experiment on a mouse named Algernon triples its intelligence, the same operation is performed on Charlie, a thirty-two-year old man.Kingsolver, Barbera. Animal Dreams: A Novel.Codi returns to her hometown to confront her past a face her ailing father. What she finds is a town threatened by an environmental catastrophe and a man who could changer her life. Kingsolver, Barbera. The Poisonwood Bible.Nathan Price and his family move to the Belgian Congo in 1959, and the experiences they have while living in Africa affect each member of the family in different ways.Kipling, Rudyard. Kim.Kipling recounts the adventures of an orphan song of an Irish soldier during days of British rule in India.Knowles, John. A Separate Peace.Against the backdrop of World War II, the rivalry of two roommates at a boys’ school turns into a private war.Kosinski, Jerzy N.. The Painted Bird.An abandoned dark-haired child wanders alone through isolated villages of Eastern Europe in World War II.Lamb, Wally. I Know This Much Is True.Dominick Birdseys on being the sane brother to his schizophrenic identical twin.Lamb, Wally. She’s Come Undone.Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi that her anxious mother supplies. She finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds.Le Guin, Ursula K.. The Left Hand Of Darkness.First envoy to the technologically primitive world of Winter, Al must deal with a hostile climate; a suspicious, bickering government; and his own conventional sexual mores.Lee, Gus. China Boy.Kai Ting enters the boxing program at the YMCA and learns how to survive in the tough Tenderloin section of San Francisco.Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird.A young girl tells of life in a small Alabama town and her father’s defense in court of an African American accused of raping a white woman.Lehane, Dennis. Mystic River.Childhood friends Jimmy Markum, Sean Devine, and Dave Boyle reunite following the death of Jimmy’s oldest daughter, Katie. Sean’s a police detective on the case, gathering difficult and disturbing evidence; he’s also tasked with handling Jimmy’s rage and need for retribution.Lewis, Sinclair. Arrowsmith.A young doctor must decide between worldly success and money and his own desire to devote his life to scientific research.Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street.A young doctor’s wife tries to change the ugliness, dullness, and ignorance that prevail in the small town of Gopher Prairie.Llewellyn, Richard. How Green Was My Valley.A young Welsh miner watches his idyllic village become a scene of tragedy.Lord, Bette. Spring Moon.Spring Moon’s pampered, easy life changes as China chugs.Lowry, Lois. The Giver.Twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until his is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind this fragile community.Maguire, Gregory. Wicked.A biography of the Wicked Witch of the West.Malamud, Bernard. The Fixer.Victim of a vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy, Yakov Bov is in a Russian prison, with only his indomitable will to sustain him.Malraux, Andre. Man’s Fate.A small group of revolutionaries struggles to free the Chinese workers during the conspiracy, bombing, and bloodshed of the Shanghai Insurrection of 1927.Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain.A tuberculosis sanatorium visited by Hans Castorp becomes a symbol of the diseased prewar Europe that made World War I inevitable. Mann, Thomas. Death In Venice.A successful author, proud of his work and self-discipline, is forced to confront the mysterious and decadent potential in himself when he becomes infatuated with a frail boy. Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar In A Sieve.Natural disasters, an arranged marriage, and industrialization of her village are the challenges Rukmani must face as the bride of a peasant farmer in southern India.Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Love In The Time Of Cholera.Florentino Ariza has never forgotten his first love. After her husband dies Florentino has another chance to declare his eternal passion and win her back. Will a love that has lasted fifty-one years, nine months and four days remain unrequited?Martel, Yann. Life Of Pi.When his ship sinks, a teen emigrating with his family from India to North America finds himself alone in a lifeboat--his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger.Mason, Bobbie Ann. In Country.Sam Hughes, who father was killed in the Vietnam War, lives with an uncle she suspects suffers from the effects of Agent Orange. She comes to grips with the impact the war has on her life when she visits the Vietnam War Memorial.Maugham, W. Somerset. Of Human Bondage.A young man searches for a way of life.McCarthy, Cormac. The Road.This story follows an unnamed father and son journeying a post-apocalyptic landscape some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm that destroyed most civilization on Earth. Realizing they cannot stay where they are they forge south to warmer weather and in search of more “good guys” like them.McCullers, Carson. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.A deaf-mute John Singer becomes the talisman for the dreams and yearnings of four people in a small southern town.McCullers, Carson. The Member Of The Wedding.A young Southern girl is determined to be the third party on a honeymoon, despite all advice. The novel was published in 1946; the author dramatized it in 1950.McDermott, Alice. Charming Billy.A young woman, cousin to Bill Lynch who has just died of alcoholism, traces the story of his lost love.McEwan, Ian. Atonement.The story of Cecilia and Robbie, and how one note and a young girls misperception can change not just one evening, but the course of everyone’s lives.McKinley, Robin. Beauty.An intriguing retelling of a folk story where love is the only key to unlocking the curse and transforming the beast into a man.Melville, Herman. Moby Dick.A sea captain vows revenge on the white whale that caused him to lose his leg.Mishima, Yukio. The Sound Of Waves.This work delicately traces the lives of two young lovers on a small, traditional Japanese island untouched by modern civilization.Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With The Wind.Scheming, beautiful Scarlett O’Hara and unscrupulous Rhett Butler make this story of the Civil War adventurous and absorbing.Monsarrat, Nicholas. Cruel Sea.The story of the courageous crew aboard the Compass Rose in the North Atlantic during WWII.Mori, Kyoko. Shizuko’s Daughter.In the years following her mother’s suicide, Yuki develops the inner strength to cope with her distant father, her resentful stepmother, and her haunting, painful memory.Morrison, Toni. Beloved.Preferring death over slavery for her children, Sethe murders her infant daughter, Beloved, who later mysteriously returns as a young woman and almost destroys her mother’s and sister’s lives.Morrison, Toni. Paradise.The story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void "Out There ... where random and organized evil erupted when and where it chose."Morrison, Toni. Sula.Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah.Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye.Pecola yearns to have beautiful eyes like the little white girls she sees.Mowry, Jess. Way Past Cool.Thirteen-year-old Gordon is the leader of a gang of African American boys struggling to hold a few blocks of bleak turf in Oakland, California.Mujica, Barbara Louise. Frida.Narrated by Frida Kahlo's younger sister, Cristina, this haunting and powerful fictional account chronicles Kahlo's life, from a childhood shadowed by polio to the accident at eighteen that left her barren, from her marriage to larger-than-life muralist Diego Rivera through her tragic decline into alcoholism and drug abuse.Oates, Joyce Carol. We Were The Mulvaneys.The tale of a family struggling to cope with its fall from grace turned into a deeply moving and unforgettable account of the vigor of hope and the power of love to prevail over suffering.O’Brien, Tim. Going After Cacciato.Private Cacciato takes off from the Vietnam War to walk to Paris, and his company follows him in a real and surreal journey.O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried.An arc of fictional episodes, taking place in the childhoods of its characters, in the jungles of Vietnam and back home in America two decades later.Olsen, Tillie. Tell Me A Riddle.Four unpretentious stories feature the very young, the mature, they dying, and the poor.Orwell, George. Animal Farm.A satire on communism and the totalitarian state.Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four.In a society of the future, individual privacy is invaded as the “Thought Police” persuade the people that “War is Peace-Freedom is Slavery-Ignorance is Strength.” Page, Elizabeth. The Tree Of Liberty.Page provides a saga of an American family from the days of the colonies to the western plains.Paton, Alan. Cry, The Beloved Country.The personal tragedy of a humble Zulu parson seeking his son and sister in Johannesburg.Picoult, Jodi. My Sister’s Keeper.The story of a thirteen-year-old Anna, who litigates her parents for medical emancipation when she is expected to donate a kidney to her sister Kate, who is dying from leukemia.Potok, Chaim. The Chosen.A suspected deliberate bean-ball in a match between two Jewish boys’ schools, one Hasidic, the other Orthodox, leads at first to hostility but finally results in friendship and understanding.Power, Susan. The Grass Dancer.Ending in the 1980’s with the love story of Charlene thunder and grass dancer Harley Wind Soldier, the multigenerational tale of a Sioux family is told in the voices of the living and the dead.Proulx, E. Annie. The Shipping News.Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters return to the family ancestral home in Newfoundland to start new lives.Quindlen, Anna. One True Thing.The life choices of a mother and daughter are reassessed as the mother lies dying of cancer.Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet On The Western Front.Through the eyes and mind of a German private, the reader shares life on the battlefield during World War I.Renault, Mary. The King Must Die.The myth of Theseus and the minotaur of Crete come to life in the form of a novel.Richter, Conrad. The Sea Of Grass.Cattlemen and homesteaders fight for land and grazing rights.Roberts, Kenneth. Northwest Passage.Major Robert Roger’s tough expedition in 1759 searches for an overland passage to the Pacific.Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger Of Memory.The story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum.Rolvaag, O.E.. Giants In The Earth.The lives of Norwegian settlers in South Dakota.Rutherfurd, Edward. London.From the age of Julius Caesar to the twentieth century, generation after generation, half a dozen families embody the passion, struggle, wealth, and verve of the greatest city in the world.Salinger, J.D.. The Catcher In The Rye.A ribald tale of a sixteen-year-old’s wanderings in New York for three days after he is dropped from his school.Saroyan, William. The Human Comedy.Saroyan poignantly relates incidents in life of a family during World War I.Scott, Walter. Ivanhoe.The days of Robin Hood and of Saxon and Norman feuds come alive in this story of medieval England.Shaara, Michael. The Killer Angels.A great battle looms over Gettysburg as the Rebels face the Yanks.Shange, Ntozake. Betsey Brown.Betsey Brown, full of dreams to change the world, struggles with her loving but conflict-torn family in this enchanting lyrical portrait of three generations of African-American women.Shellabarger, Samuel. Prince Of Foxes.The story of Andrea Orsini, a peasant boy who, in Renaissance Italy, rises to perform delicate political, military, and romantic missions for Cesare Borgia, son of the Pope of Rome.Shields, Carol. The Stone Diaries.The story of an ordinary woman’s struggle to find a place for herself in her own life.Sienkiewicz, Henryk. Quo Vadis.The immorality of the first-century Romans in contrast to the purity of the Christians in ancient Rome.Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle.The gritty description of urban life at the turn of the century shows the moral and physical degradation of a “jungle” in which humans barely live better than animals.Singer, Isaac Bashevis. The Slave.Forbidden love and suffering teach Jacob wisdom and strength.Smiley, Jane. Ordinary Love; And, Good Will.Two modern families in turmoil come to terms with their problems.Smiley, Jane. A Thousand Acres.The story of an Iowa farmer who decides to retire in 1979 and turns over his valuable land to his three daughters.Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956.Relates the personal experiences of the author and 227 other political prisoners in the Soviet Union.Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich. One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich.An inmate lives one day at a time in a Siberian prison camp.Sparks, Nicholas. Three Weeks With My Brother.In January 2003, Nicholas Sparks and his brother, Micah, set off on a three-week trip around the globe. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at thirty-seven and thirty-eight respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family.Steinbeck, John. East Of Eden.The lives of two California families intertwine as good clashes against evil.Steinbeck, John. The Grapes Of Wrath.An American farmer and his family leave the dust bowl during the depression to go to California, the promised land.Steinbeck, John. Of Mice And Men.When he accidentally kills a woman, Lennie, a retarded migrant worker, is protected by his friend George.Stevenson, Robert Louis. Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.Dr. Jekyll discovers a drug that will create a separate personality that will absorb all of his evil characteristics. He calls him Mr. Hyde.Stevenson, Robert Louis. Kidnapped.Scotland after the rising of Prince Charlie is the background for this adventure story.Stoker, Bram. Dracula.Count Dracula’s nasty practice of drinking the blood of his victim is finally ended by a group of stalwart English.Stone, Irving. Lust For Life.This autobiographical novel reveals the tortured life of Vincent Van Gogh.Stone, Irving. Love Is Eternal.The misunderstandings, sorrows, and devotion are revealed in this novel about Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd.Stowe, Harriet Beacher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin.Tom, American literature’s first black hero, is a man who suffers for refusing to obey his white oppressors.Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.Adventures among the miniature inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, the immortal Struldbrugs, and the reasoning Houyhnhnms form a masterful satire on a man and human institutions.Tan, Amy. The Bonesetter’s Daughter.Ruth’s mother, Lu Ling, is slipping into her old years and into dementia. Several years earlier, Lu Ling had written out her life story in Chinese. Ruth arranges to have the document translated, and learns the truth about her mother's life in China.Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club.A young Chinese American woman realizes her mother’s early life in China is an important reason for the rift between them.Thackeray, William. Vanity Fair.Becky Sharp is an ambitious social climber in Victorian London.Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Fellowship Of The Rings.The first volume of the epic The Lord of the Rings- a three part adventure set in the fantasy world of the Third Age of Middle Earth.Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Return Of The King.The third volume of the epic The Lord of the Rings.Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Two Towers.The second volume of the epic The Lord of the Rings set in the imaginary world of the Third Age of Middle Earth.Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina.Anna forsakes her husband for dashing Count Vronsky and brief happiness.Tolstoy, Leo. War And Peace.When Napoleon invades Russia, characters both real and fictional find their lives changed.Trumbo, Dalton. Johnny Got His Gun.Joe Bonham, a young soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body.Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich. Fathers And Sons.A straightforward novel that dramatizes the conflict and differences between generations in Russia.Twain, Mark. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn.A Missouri boy tells of adventure on the Mississippi.Twain, Mark. The Tragedy Of Pudd’Nhead Wilson.Roxanna, a mulatto slave who suffers dire consequences after switching her infant son with her master's baby, and the clever Pudd'nhead Wilson, an ostracized small-town lawyer, Twain's darkly comic masterpiece is a provocative exploration of slavery and miscegenation.Tyler, Anne. The Accidental Tourist.Recently divorced Macon Leary, author of a series of guide books for businessmen who hate to travel, chronicles his journey from lonely self-absorption to an accidental new life with a dog trainer for the Meow Bow Animal Hospital.Tyler, Anne. A Patchwork Planet.Barnaby Gaitlin, a thirty-two-year-old who was frequently in trouble as a youth, has been working steadily for eleven years for Rent-a-Back, Inc., but it seems as though his family, his ex-wife, and even the woman who seems to be interested in him, just cannot get over his past reputation.Uchida, Yoshiko. Picture Bride.Taro journeys to America in the early 1900s to marry a man she has never met.Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast Of Champions.Aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth.Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle.Finding themselves on the imaginary island of San Lorenzo, a gallery of grotesque people learn about the “ice-nine” and espouse a new religion, Bokonism.Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children’s Crusade.Bill Pilgrim, an optometrist from Ilium, New York, shuttles between the cellars of Dresden, smoldering form Allied bombardment, and a luxurious zoo on the plant of Tralfamadore.Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.In a series of letters to God and her sister, Celie reveals her struggle to overcome the violence and brutality in her life.Wallace, Lew. Ben-Hur.The saga of a man framed for attempting to murder a Roman official, and condemned to death as a galley slave.Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle.Jeannette Walls relates her own childhood experience being raised by alcoholic, manipulative, and selfish parents who forced their children to take care of themselves by feeding, clothing, and protecting each other.Warren, Robert Penn. All The King’s Men.Stark begins his political career as an idealistic man of the people but soon becomes corrupted by success.Welch, James. Fools Crow.Fools Crow, and eighteen-year-old Blackfoot in nineteenth-century Montana, tries to help his people understand the significance of the white “seizers” who threaten the traditional Native American way of life.West, Jessamyn. The Massacre At Fall Creek.The first recorded instance of whites being formally charged with murder for killing Indians. Five whites were accused, tried by jury, convicted, and executed.Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome.A bitter, stark story of people trapped in a marriage from which they can’t escape, though love has long since gone.Wharton, William. Birdy.Under the strain of war, Birdy’s boyhood obsession with canaries evolves into madness and the conviction that he himself is a bird.White, T.H.. Once And Future King.King Arthur learns his lessons from Merlin the Magician, creates Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table, and loves and loses Guinevere.Wiesel, Elie. Night.Ignoring the warnings of impeding German invasion, Eliezer’s family and the other Jews in the small Transylvanian town of Sighet do not flee. The entire Jewish population is sent to concentration camps, and Eliezer and his father are separated from his mother and sister at a camp called Auschwitz. Here Eliezer battles not only starvation and abuse, but the destruction of his faith in God’s justice and the darker sides of himself.Wilde, Oscar. Picture Of Dorian Gray.A handsome young man’s portrait becomes a mirror, increasingly grotesque, of his true inner self.Wilder, Thornton. Bridge Of San Luis Rey.The story of five travelers who are victims of the collapse of a bridge built over a deep chasm in Peru.Willard, Nancy. Things Invisible To See.In Paradise, on the banks of the River of Time, the Lord of the Universe is playing ball with his archangels, and in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ben Harkissan is hitting a baseball that strikes Clare Bishop, paralyzing her- and act that entwines the characters in “things invisible.” Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward Angel.Hemmed in by the hatreds, jealousies, pretenses, and limited horizons of his family, Gene Gant realizes that he must leave home in order to survive as an individual.Wouk, Herman. The Caine Mutiny.Under the command of tyrannical Captain Queeg, Willie Keith develops from a carefree college boy to a captain distinguished for bravery.Wright, Richard. Native Son.For Bigger Thomas, an African American man accused of a crime in a white man’s world, there could be no extenuating circumstances, no explanations- only death.Wroblewski, David. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.A retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in rural Wisconsin, a mute boy who, after his father is killed, runs away from but then returns to his usurped home, hoping to prove his suspicions that his uncle murdered his father. ................
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