title stringlengths 1 220 | author stringlengths 4 59 ⌀ | pub_year int64 398 2.01k ⌀ | summary stringlengths 11 58k |
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Waiting for Godot | Samuel Beckett | 1,952 | Waiting for Godot follows a pair of men who divert themselves while waiting expectantly, vainly for someone named Godot to arrive. They claim he's an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognize him when they do see him. To occupy the time they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, pl... |
The Wanderer | Fritz Leiber | 1,964 | The novel is set in a future a few decades ahead of the 1960s, when it was written. The USA is still competing with the Soviet Union. Both have functioning bases on the Moon, and the Soviets have gained the lead in sending an expedition to Mars. From the point of view of most of the population of the Earth, a new plan... |
2010: Odyssey Two | Arthur C. Clarke | 1,982 | The story is set nine years after the failure of the Discovery One mission to Jupiter. A joint Soviet-American crew, including Heywood Floyd from 2001, on the Soviet spaceship Alexei Leonov (named after the famous cosmonaut) arrives to discover what went wrong with the earlier mission, to investigate the monolith in o... |
Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | null | The novel opens in London in 632 (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The vast majority of the population is unified under the World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and ever... |
Aeneid | Virgil | 1,943 | The Aeneid can be divided into two halves based on the disparate subject matter of Books 1–6 (Aeneas' journey to Latium in Italy) and Books 7–12 (the war in Latium). These two halves are commonly regarded as reflecting Virgil's ambition to rival Homer by treating both the Odyssey's wandering theme and the Iliads warfa... |
Paradise Lost | John Milton | 1,667 | The poem is separated into twelve "books" or sections, and the lengths of each book varies greatly (the longest being Book IX, with 1,189 lines, and the shortest Book VII, having 640). The Arguments at the head of each book were added in subsequent imprints of the first edition. Originally published in ten books, in 1... |
The Merchant of Venice | William Shakespeare | null | Bassanio, a young Venetian of noble rank, wishes to woo the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia of Belmont. Having squandered his estate, Bassanio approaches his friend Antonio, a wealthy merchant of Venice and a kind and generous person, who has previously and repeatedly bailed him out, for three thousand ducats nee... |
The Invisible Man | H. G. Wells | 1,897 | A mysterious stranger, Griffin, arrives at the local inn of the English village of Iping, West Sussex, during a snowstorm. The stranger wears a long-sleeved, thick coat and gloves, his face hidden entirely by bandages except for a fake pink nose, large goggles and a wide-brimmed hat. He is excessively reclusive, irasc... |
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea | Emanuel J Mickel | 1,869 | As the story begins in 1866, a mysterious sea monster, theorized by some to be a giant narwhal, is sighted by ships of several nations; an ocean liner is also damaged by the creature. The United States government finally assembles an expedition in New York City to track down and destroy the menace. Professor Pierre Ar... |
Keep the Aspidistra Flying | George Orwell | 1,936 | Gordon Comstock has 'declared war' on what he sees as an 'overarching dependence' on money by leaving a promising job as a copywriter for an advertising company called 'New Albion'—at which he shows great dexterity—and taking a low-paying job instead, ostensibly so he can write poetry. Coming from a respectable family... |
Manon Lescaut | Antoine François Prévost | null | Set in France and Louisiana in the early 18th century, the story follows the hero, the Chevalier des Grieux, and his lover, Manon Lescaut. Des Grieux comes from a noble and landed family, but forfeits his hereditary wealth and incurs the disappointment of his father by running away with Manon. In Paris, the young love... |
Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code | John Lions | 1,996 | Unix Operating System Source Code Level Six is the kernel source code, lightly edited by Lions to better separate the functionality — system initialization and process management, interrupts and system calls, basic I/O, file systems and pipes and character devices. All procedures and symbols are listed alphabeti... |
The Myth of Sisyphus | Albert Camus | 1,942 | The essay is dedicated to Pascal Pia and is organized in four chapters and one appendix. Camus undertakes to answer what he considers to be the only question of philosophy that matters: Does the realization of the meaninglessness and absurdity of life necessarily require suicide? He begins by describing the absurd con... |
Cymbeline | William Shakespeare | null | Imogen (or Innogen), daughter of the British king Cymbeline, is in love with Posthumus Leonatus, a man raised in her father's court who is described as possessing exceeding personal merit and martial skill. The two have secretly married, exchanging jewellery as tokens: a ring from Imogen, a bracelet from Posthumus. Cy... |
Vanity Fair | William Makepeace Thackeray | null | The story opens with Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies, where Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley have just completed their studies and are preparing to depart for Amelia's house in Russell Square. Becky is portrayed as a strong-willed and cunning young woman determined to make her way in society, and Amelia Sedley ... |
Northanger Abbey | Jane Austen | 1,817 | Seventeen-year-old, Catherine Morland is one of ten children of a country clergyman. Although a tomboy in her childhood, by the age of 17 she is "in training for a heroine," and is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels of which Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho is a favourite. Catherine is invited by her wealth... |
Amadeus | Peter Shaffer | null | Since the original run, Shaffer has extensively revised his play, including changes to plot details; the following is common to all revisions. At the opening of the tale, Salieri is an old man, having long outlived his fame, and is convinced he used poison to assassinate Mozart. Speaking directly to the audience, he p... |
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Samuel Taylor Coleridge | null | The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience and fear to fascination as the Mariner's story pro... |
The Eye of the World | Robert Jordan | 1,990 | The Eye of the World revolves around the lives of a group of young people from Emond's Field in The Two Rivers district: Rand al'Thor, Matrim (Mat) Cauthon, Perrin Aybara, Egwene al'Vere, and Nynaeve al'Meara. Emond's Field is unexpectedly attacked by Dark forces—bestial Trollocs and a Myrddraal who seem to specifical... |
The Great Hunt | Robert Jordan | 1,990 | Ba'alzamon presides over a clandestine meeting as Shadow forces plot their actions and Shaitan’s return. In addition to Forsaken and Darkfriends, the meeting includes two Aes Sedai, one of whom we come to know as Liandrin. The prologue shows how deep Ba'alzamon's influence has gone, even in places the protagonists bel... |
A Crown of Swords | Robert Jordan | 1,996 | A Crown of Swords has three primary plotlines: * Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, prepares to attack the Forsaken Sammael in Illian while enjoying life with his friend, Min Farshaw, and attempting to quell the rebellion by nobles in Cairhien, during which Padan Fain severely injures him with the Shadar Logoth dagger. ... |
Winter's Heart | Robert Jordan | 2,000 | Many of the events of Winter's Heart take place simultaneously with the events of the next book, Crossroads of Twilight. Perrin Aybara and his followers pursue the Shaido Aiel who kidnapped his wife, Faile Bashere. Elayne Trakand attempts to solidify her grip on the Lion Throne and put down rebellious nobles. Mat Caut... |
Around the World in Eighty Days | Jules Verne | null | The story starts in London on October 1, 1872. Phileas Fogg is a rich English gentleman and bachelor living in solitude at Number 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens. Despite his wealth, which is £40,000 (equal to £ today), Mr Fogg, whose countenance is described as "repose in action", lives a modest life with habits car... |
The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck | 1,939 | The narrative begins just after Tom Joad is paroled from McAlester prison for homicide. On his journey to his home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, he meets former preacher Jim Casy whom he remembers from his childhood, and the two travel together. When they arrive at his childhood farm home, they find it deserted. Disconcert... |
How Green Was My Valley | Richard Llewellyn | 1,939 | The novel is set in South Wales in the reign of Queen Victoria. It tells the story of the Morgans, a respectable mining family of the South Wales Valleys, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw Morgan. Huw's academic ability sets him apart from his elder brothers and enables him to consider a future away from this ... |
Lady Audley's Secret | Mary Elizabeth Braddon | null | The novel opens with the marriage of Lucy Graham, a beautiful, doll-like blonde who enchants almost all who meet her, to Sir Michael Audley, an old, rich, and kind widower, in June 1857. Lucy was a governess for the local doctor, Mr. Dawson. Until her marriage, Lucy was in service with Mrs. Vincent, and besides that v... |
A Streetcar Named Desire | Tennessee Williams | null | Blanche DuBois is a fading, but still-attractive, Southern belle whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others (but most of all, herself) from her reality, and an attempt to make herself still attractive to new male... |
The Queen of the Damned | Anne Rice | 1,988 | Part One follows several different people over the same period of several days. Several of the characters appear in the two previous books, including Armand, Daniel (the "boy reporter" of Interview with the Vampire), Marius, Louis, Gabrielle and Santino. Each of the six chapters in Part One tells a different story abo... |
Gulliver's Travels | Jonathan Swift | 1,726 | ;4 May 1699 — 13 April 1702 The book begins with a short preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver, in the style of books of the time, gives a brief outline of his life and history before his voyages. He enjoys travelling, although it is that love of travel that is his downfall. During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ash... |
The Color Purple | Alice Walker | 1,982 | Celie, the protagonist and narrator, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in the South. She starts writing letters to God because her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once. Celie gave birth to a girl, whom her father presumably killed in the woods. Cel... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream | William Shakespeare | 1,600 | The play features three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, which is set simultaneously in the woodland and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the moon. In the opening scene, Hermia refuses to follow her father's, Egeus, in... |
The English Patient | Michael Ondaatje | 1,992 | The historical backdrop for this novel is the Second World War in Northern Africa and Italy. Hana, a young Canadian Army nurse, lives in the abandoned Villa San Girolamo in Italy, which is filled with hidden, undetonated bombs. All she knows about her English patient is that he was burned beyond recognition in a plane... |
Captains Courageous | Rudyard Kipling | 1,897 | Harvey Cheyne is the son of a wealthy railroad magnate and his wife, who are over-indulgent parents in San Diego, California. Washed overboard from a transatlantic steamship and rescued by fishermen off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the young Harvey Cheyne cannot persuade them to take him quickly to port, nor convi... |
Ramayana | Valmiki | null | Dasharatha was the king of Ayodhya. He had three queens and they are Kausalya, Kaikeyi and Sumitra. He was childless for a long time and, anxious to produce an heir, he performs a fire sacrifice known as Putra-Kameshti Yagya. As a consequence, Rama is first born to Kausalya, Bharata is born to Kaikeyi, and Lakshmana a... |
The Forge of God | Greg Bear | 1,987 | The novel features scenes and events including the discovery of a near-dead alien in the desert, who clearly says in English, "I'm sorry, but there is bad news," and this alien's subsequent interrogation and autopsy; the discovery of an artificial geological formation and its subsequent nuclear destruction by a desper... |
Blood Music | Greg Bear | 1,985 | In the novel, renegade biotechnologist Vergil Ulam creates simple biological computers based on his own lymphocytes. Faced with orders from his nervous employer to destroy his work, he injects them into his own body, intending to smuggle the 'noocytes' (as he calls them) out of the company and work on them elsewhere. ... |
The World According to Garp | John Irving | 1,978 | The story deals with the life of T. S. Garp. His mother, Jenny Fields, is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband. She encounters a dying ball turret gunner known only as Technical Sergeant Garp who was severely brain damaged in combat. Jenny nurses Garp, observing his infantile state and almost perp... |
Mutiny on the Bounty | James Norman Hall | 1,932 | The novel tells the story through a fictional first-person narrator by the name of Roger Byam, based on actual crew member Peter Heywood. Byam, although not one of the mutineers, remains with the Bounty after the mutiny. He subsequently returns to Tahiti, and is eventually arrested and taken back to England to face a ... |
The Mothman Prophecies | John A. Keel | 1,975 | The book combines Keel's account of his investigation into alleged sightings of a large, winged creature called Mothman in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, during 1966 and 1967 with his own theories about UFOs and various supernatural phenomena, ultimately connecting them to the December 15, 1967, collap... |
The Memory of Earth | Orson Scott Card | null | Humanity has lived for 40 million years on a planet called Harmony, after leaving an Earth that has been destroyed by human conflict. In order not to repeat the mistakes that led to the destruction of civilization on Earth, a computer, known as the Oversoul, was left as guardian of this planet. Its main mission was to... |
Sixth Column | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,949 | A top secret research facility hidden in the Colorado mountains is the last remaining outpost of the United States Army after its defeat by the PanAsians. The conquerors had absorbed the Soviets after being attacked by them and had then gone on to absorb India as well. The invaders are depicted as ruthless and cruel—f... |
The Puppet Masters | Robert A. Heinlein | null | "Sam" is an agent in "Section", a United States government intelligence organization. It is so secret it reports only to the President, and is entirely unknown to anyone else. Sam is superbly trained, equipped with a built-in communicator he calls a "skull phone" as well as a number of ways to commit suicide if the ne... |
Henry V | William Shakespeare | null | Elizabethan stages did not use scenery. Acknowledging the difficulty of conveying great battles and shifts of location on a bare stage, the Chorus (a single actor) calls for a "Muse of fire" so that the actor playing King Henry can "[ā]ssume the port [bearing] of Mars". He asks, "Can this cockpit [i.e. the theatre] ho... |
The Wind in the Willows | Kenneth Grahame | 1,908 | At the start of the book, it is spring time: the weather is fine, and good-natured Mole loses patience with spring cleaning. He flees his underground home, heading up to take in the air. He ends up at the river, which he has never seen before. Here he meets Ratty (a water rat), who at this time of year spends all his ... |
The Hunting of the Snark | Lewis Carroll | 1,876 | After crossing the sea guided by the Bellman's map of the Ocean—a blank sheet of paper—the hunting party arrive in a strange land. The Baker recalls that his uncle once warned him that, though catching Snarks is all well and good, you must be careful; for, if your Snark is a Boojum, then you will softly and suddenly v... |
Jonathan Livingston Seagull | Richard Bach | 1,970 | The book tells the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a seagull who is bored with the daily squabbles over food. Seized by a passion for flight, he pushes himself, learning everything he can about flying, until finally his unwillingness to conform results in his expulsion from his flock. An outcast, he continues to... |
I Am Legend | Richard Matheson | 1,954 | The main character is Robert Neville, apparently the sole survivor of a pandemic whose symptoms resemble vampirism. It is implied that the pandemic was caused by a war, and that it was spread by dust storms in the cities and an explosion in the mosquito population. The narrative details Neville's daily life in Los Ang... |
The Stranger | Albert Camus | null | Part One begins with Meursault finding out of his mother's death. At her funeral, he expresses none of the expected emotions of grief. When asked if he wishes to view the body, he says no, and, instead, smokes and drinks coffee with milk in front of the coffin. Rather than expressing his feelings, he only comments to ... |
The Man in the High Castle | Philip K. Dick | 1,962 | Giuseppe Zangara's assassination of U.S. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, led to the weak governments of John Nance Garner (formerly FDR's VP-elect), and later of the Republican John W. Bricker in 1940. Both politicians failed to surmount the Great Depression and maintained the country's isolationist po... |
Rocket Ship Galileo | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,947 | After World War II, three teenage boy rocket experimenters are recruited by the uncle of one of them, Dr. Cargraves, a Nobel Prize-winning Physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project, to refit a conventionally-powered surplus "mail rocket". It is to be converted to run on a thorium nuclear pile which boils zinc ... |
Space Cadet | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,948 | In 2075, teenager Matt Dodson applies to join the prestigious Space Patrol. After a number of physical, mental, and ethical tests, he is accepted as a cadet. He makes friends with fellow recruits William 'Tex' Jarman, Venus-born Oscar Jensen, and Pierre Armand from Ganymede. His first roommate is Girard Burke, the arr... |
Between Planets | Robert A. Heinlein | null | A young man named Don Harvey leaves his dude ranch high school on Earth to go to his scientist parents on Mars. He visits an old family friend who asks him to deliver a ring to his father, but they are both later arrested by security forces. Harvey is released and given his ring back, after it has been examined; he is... |
Starman Jones | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,953 | Max Jones works the family farm in the Ozark Mountains. With his father dead and his stepmother remarrying a man he detests, Max runs away from home, taking his uncle's astrogation manuals. Most occupations are tightly controlled by guilds, most with hereditary memberships. One such is the Astrogators Guild. Since his... |
Podkayne of Mars | Robert A. Heinlein | null | The book is a first-person narrative in the form of Podkayne's diaries. Podkayne is 15 in Earth years (a bit over eight Martian years) while her genius younger brother Clark is 11 earth years (6 martian years). Due to the unscheduled "uncorking" (birth) of their three test-tube babies, Podkayne's parents cancel a much... |
Story of O | Pauline Réage | 1,954 | Published in French by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Story of O is a tale of female submission about a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, O, who is blindfolded, chained, whipped, branded, pierced, made to wear a mask, and taught to be constantly available for oral, vaginal, and anal intercourse. Despite her harsh treatm... |
The Star Beast | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,954 | An ancestor of John Thomas Stuart XI brought the alien, long-lived Lummox home from an interstellar voyage. The articulate, sentient pet he inherited has gradually grown from the size of a collie pup to a ridable behemoth—especially after consuming a used car. The childlike Lummox is perceived to be a neighborhood nui... |
Dr. No | Ian Fleming | 1,958 | After recovering from tetrodotoxin poisoning inflicted by SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb (see From Russia, with Love) MI6 agent James Bond is sent by his superior, M, on a "rest cure" to Jamaica. Whilst there his task is a simple assignment to investigate the disappearance of Commander John Strangways, the head of MI6 Statio... |
The Andromeda Strain | Michael Crichton | 1,969 | When a military satellite returns to Earth, a recovery team is dispatched to retrieve it; during a live radio communication with their base, the team members suddenly die. Aerial surveillance reveals that everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, the town closest to where the satellite landed, is apparently dead. The base comman... |
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | J. K. Rowling | 1,997 | Before the start of the novel, Voldemort, considered the most evil and powerful dark wizard in history, kills Harry's parents but mysteriously vanishes after trying to kill the infant Harry. While the wizarding world celebrates Voldemort's downfall, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Rubeus Hagrid place th... |
Down and Out in Paris and London | George Orwell | 1,933 | Two verbless sentences introduce the scene-setting opening chapters, which describe the atmosphere in the Paris quarter and introduce various characters who appear later in the book. From Chapter III to Chapter X, where the narrator obtains a job at "Hotel X," he describes his descent into poverty, often in tragi-comi... |
The Last Man | Mary Shelley | 1,826 | Mary Shelley states in the introduction that in 1818 she discovered, in the Sibyl's cave near Naples, a collection of prophetic writings painted on leaves by the Cumaean Sibyl. She has edited these writings into the current narrative, the first-person narrative of a man living at the end of the 21st century. Lionel's ... |
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer | Philip K. Dick | 1,982 | Set in the late 1960s and 1970s, the story describes the efforts of Episcopal Bishop Timothy Archer, who must cope with the theological and philosophical implications of the newly-discovered Gnostic Zadokite scroll fragments. The character of Bishop Archer is loosely based on the controversial, iconoclastic Episcopal ... |
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency | Douglas Adams | 1,987 | Four billion years in Earth's past, a group of Salaxalans attempts to populate the earth; however, a mistake caused by their engineer – who used an Electric Monk to irrationally believe the proposed fix would work – causes their landing craft to explode, killing the Salaxalans and generating the spark of energy needed... |
Dragonflight | Anne McCaffrey | 1,968 | Dragonflight chronicles the story of Lessa, the sole survivor of the noble ruling family of Ruatha Hold on the northern continent of Pern. When the rest of her family is killed by a cruel usurper, Fax, she survives by disguising herself as a drudge (a menial servant) partly through simply adopting a slovenly appearanc... |
The Diamond Age | Neal Stephenson | 1,995 | The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Territories, a lowland slum belt on the artificial, diamondoid island of New Chusan, located offshore from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai. At the age of four, Ne... |
The Hunchback of Notre Dame | Victor Hugo | 1,831 | The story begins on Epiphany (6 January), 1482, the day of the Feast of Fools in Paris, France. Quasimodo, a deformed hunchback who is the bell-ringer of Notre Dame, is introduced by his crowning as the Pope of Fools. Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy with a kind and generous heart, captures the hearts of many men, includi... |
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll | 1,865 | Chapter 1 – Down the Rabbit Hole: Alice is feeling bored while sitting on the riverbank with her sister, when she notices a talking, clothed White Rabbit with a pocket watch run past. She follows it down a rabbit hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many locked doors of all sizes. She finds a... |
Now Wait for Last Year | Philip K. Dick | 1,966 | Set during a war between the 'Starmen (inhabitants of the planet Lilistar) and the Reegs, Now Wait for Last Year is the story of Eric Sweetscent, an organ-transplant doctor who gets wrapped up in Earth-Lilistar politics. At the onset of the story, Sweetscent is the personal org-trans surgeon for Virgil Ackerman, the p... |
The Magician's Nephew | C. S. Lewis | 1,955 | The story begins in London during the summer of 1900. Two children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, meet while playing in the adjacent gardens of a row of terraced houses. They decide to explore the attic connecting the houses, but take the wrong door and surprise Digory's Uncle Andrew in his study. Uncle Andrew trick... |
The Patchwork Girl of Oz | L. Frank Baum | 1,913 | Ojo the Unlucky is a Munchkin boy who, devoted to life with his uncle Unc Nunkie in the wilderness but on the verge of starvation, goes to see a neighboring "magician" and old friend of Unc’s, Dr. Pipt. While there they see a demonstration of the Pipt-made Powder of Life, which animates any object it touches. Unc Nunk... |
To Sail Beyond the Sunset | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,987 | The book is a memoir of Maureen Johnson Smith Long, mother, lover, and eventual wife of Lazarus Long. Maureen is ostensibly recording the events of the book while being held in a future prison, awaiting her uncertain fate, along with Pixel, the eponymous character of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Maureen, born on J... |
Double Star | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,956 | The story, which is told in the first person, centers on down-and-out actor Lawrence Smith (stage name Lorenzo Smythe, a.k.a. "The Great Lorenzo"). A brilliant actor and mimic (or so we are told, by Smith himself), he is down to his last coin when a spaceman hires him to double for a public figure. It is only when he ... |
Time for the Stars | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,956 | The Long Range Foundation ("LRF") is a non-profit organization that funds expensive, long-term projects for the benefit of mankind that nobody else will touch. It has built a dozen exploratory starships (torchships) to search for habitable planets to colonize. The vessels can only gradually accelerate, and then merely... |
Citizen of the Galaxy | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,957 | Thorby is a young, defiant slave boy recently arrived on the planet Jubbul, where he is purchased by an old beggar, Baslim the Cripple, for a trivial sum and taken to the beggar's surprisingly well-furnished underground home. Thereafter Baslim treats the boy as a son, teaching him not only the trade of begging, but al... |
Stranger in a Strange Land | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,961 | The story focuses on a human raised on Mars and his adaptation to, and understanding of, humans and their culture, which is portrayed as an amplified version of the consumerist and media-driven 20th-century United States. Protagonist Valentine Michael Smith is the son of astronauts of the first expedition to the plane... |
Glory Road | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,963 | Evelyn Cyril "E.C." Gordon (also known as "Easy" and "Flash") has been recently discharged from an unnamed war in Southeast Asia. He is pondering what to do with his future and considers spending a year traveling in France. He is presented with a dilemma: follow up on a possible winning entry in the Irish Sweepstakes ... |
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,966 | In 2075, underground colonies are scattered across the Moon (Luna), of whom most inhabitants (called "Loonies") are criminals, political exiles, or descendants thereof. The total population is about three million, with men outnumbering women 2:1, so that polyandry is the norm. Although Earth's Protector of the Lunar C... |
I Will Fear No Evil | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,970 | The story takes place about 2015 AD, against a background of an overpopulated Earth, whose dysfunctional society is clearly an attempt to extrapolate into the future the rapid social changes taking place in the U.S. during the 1960s. Ancient billionaire Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is dying, and wants to have his brain... |
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,985 | A writer seated at the best restaurant of the space habitat "Golden Rule" is approached by a man who urges him that "Tolliver must die" and is himself shot before the writer's eyes. The writer–Colonel Colin Campbell, living under a number of aliases including his pen name "Richard Ames"–is joined by a beautiful and so... |
Methuselah's Children | Robert A. Heinlein | 1,958 | The Howard Families derive from Ira Howard, who became rich in the California Gold Rush, but died young and childless. Fearing death, he left his money for the prolongation of human life, and the trustees of his will carried out his wishes by financially encouraging those with long-lived grandparents to marry and have... |
Life: A User's Manual | Georges Perec | 1,978 | Between World War I and II, a tremendously wealthy Englishman, Bartlebooth (whose name combines two literary characters, Herman Melville's Bartleby and Valery Larbaud's Barnabooth), devises a plan that will both occupy the remainder of his life and spend his entire fortune. First, he spends 10 years learning to paint ... |
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz | L. Frank Baum | 1,900 | Dorothy is a young orphaned girl raised by her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in the bleak landscape of a Kansas farm. She has a little black dog Toto, who is her sole source of happiness on the dry, gray prairies. One day the farmhouse, with Dorothy and Toto inside, is caught up in a cyclone and deposited in a field in Munc... |
King Ottokar's Sceptre | Hergé | 1,939 | Tintin finds a lost briefcase and returns it to the owner, Professor Hector Alembick, who is a sigillographer, an expert on seals (as in the sort used to make state documents official). He shows Tintin his collection of seals, including one which belonged to the Syldavian King Ottokar IV. Tintin then discovers that he... |
Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë | 1,847 | In 1801, Mr. Lockwood, a rich man from the south of England, rents Thrushcross Grange in the north of England for peace and recuperation. Soon after his arrival, he visits his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff, who lives in the remote moorland farmhouse called "Wuthering Heights." He finds the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights ... |
Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë | 1,847 | The novel begins with a ten-year-old orphan named Jane Eyre, who is living with her maternal uncle's family, the Reeds, as her uncle's dying wish. Jane's parents died of typhus. Jane’s aunt Sarah Reed does not like her and treats her worse than a servant and discourages and at times forbids her children from associati... |
Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | 1,961 | The development of the novel can be split into segments. The first (chapters 1–11) broadly follows the story fragmented between characters, but in a single chronological time in 1943. The second (chapters 12–20) flashes back to focus primarily on the "Great Big Siege of Bologna" before once again jumping to the chrono... |
Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe | 1,719 | Crusoe (the family name corrupted from the German name "Kreutznaer") sets sail from the Queen's Dock in Hull on a sea voyage in August 1651, against his parents' wishes, who want him to pursue a career, possibly in law. After a tumultuous journey where his ship is wrecked in a storm, his lust for the sea remains so st... |
King Lear | William Shakespeare | null | King Lear, who is elderly and wants to retire from power, decides to divide his realm among his three daughters, and offers the largest share to the one who loves him best. Goneril and Regan both proclaim in fulsome terms that they love him more than anything in the world, which pleases him. For Cordelia, there is not... |
Clear and Present Danger | Tom Clancy | null | When U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Panache intercepts a yacht in the Caribbean Sea, the crew discovers two men cleaning up the vessel after murdering a man and his family. Through a mock execution, the Coast Guardsmen force the killers to confess to the crime. It is later learned that the murdered man was involved in a mone... |
Castle Rackrent | Maria Edgeworth | null | The novel is set prior to the Constitution of 1782 and tells the story of four generations of Rackrent heirs through their steward, Thady Quirk. The heirs are: the dissipated spendthrift Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin, the litigious Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the cruel husband and gambling absentee Sir Kit Stopgap, and the genero... |
Julius Caesar | William Shakespeare | null | Marcus Brutus is Caesar's close friend and a Roman praetor. Brutus allows himself to be cajoled into joining a group of conspiring senators because of a growing suspicion—implanted by Caius Cassius—that Caesar intends to turn republican Rome into a monarchy under his own rule. The early scenes deal mainly with Brutus'... |
Emma | Jane Austen | 1,815 | Emma Woodhouse, aged 20 at the start of the novel, is a young, beautiful, witty, and privileged woman in Regency England. She lives on the fictional estate of Hartfield in Surrey in the village of Highbury with her elderly widowed father, a hypochondriac who is excessively concerned for the health and safety of his lo... |
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | Roald Dahl | 1,964 | The story revolves around a poor young boy named Charlie Bucket born to a penniless, starving family. His two sets of grandparents reside in their children's dilapidated, tiny house and lead a bedridden existence, and Charlie is fascinated by the universally-celebrated candy factory located in his hometown owned by fa... |
Anne of Green Gables | Lucy Maud Montgomery | 1,908 | Anne, a young orphan from fictional community of Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia, (based upon the real community of New London) is sent to Prince Edward Island after a childhood spent in strangers' homes and orphanages. Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, siblings in their fifties and sixties, had decided to adopt a boy from the o... |
The Wasp Factory | Iain Banks | 1,984 | The 'Wasp Factory' of the title is a huge clock face encased in a glass box and salvaged from the local dump. Behind each of the 12 numerals is a trap which leads to a different ritual death (for example burning, crushing, or drowning in Frank's urine) for the wasp that Frank puts into the hole at the center within tu... |
Espedair Street | Iain Banks | 1,987 | "Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in... |
The Crow Road | Iain Banks | 1,992 | This Bildungsroman is set in the fictional Argyll town of Gallanach (by its description, reminiscent of Oban but on the north east shore of Loch Crinan), the real village of Lochgair, and in Glasgow where Prentice McHoan lives. Prentice's uncle Rory has disappeared eight years previous while writing a book called The ... |
Consider Phlebas | Iain Banks | 1,987 | The Culture and the Idiran Empire are at war in a galaxy-spanning conflict. Horza, a mercenary capable of altering his appearance at will (a Changer), is assigned the task of retrieving a dispossessed Culture Mind by his Idiran handlers. The Mind, while fleeing attacking Idirans who consider its existence an abominati... |
Inversions | Iain Banks | 1,998 | The book takes place on a fictional planet based on late-Middle Ages Europe. It alternates chapter-by-chapter between two concurrent storylines. The first storyline is presented as a written account from Oelph, publicly a doctor's assistant, but privately a spy for an individual identified only as "Master", to whom mu... |
An Inspector Calls | John Boynton Priestley | null | At dinner at the Birlings' home in 1912, Arthur Birling, a wealthy mill owner and local politician, and his family are celebrating the engagement of daughter Sheila to Gerald Croft, son of a competitor of Birling's. In attendance are Sybil Birling, Arthur's wife and Sheila and Eric's mother, and Eric Birling, Sheila's... |
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