title stringlengths 1 220 | author stringlengths 4 59 ⌀ | pub_year int64 398 2.01k ⌀ | summary stringlengths 11 58k |
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Small Gods | Terry Pratchett | 1,992 | The Great God Om tries to manifest himself once more in the world, as the time of his eighth prophet is nigh. He is surprised, however, when he finds himself in the body of a tortoise, stripped of his divine powers. In the gardens of Omnia's capital he addresses the novice Brutha, the only one able to hear his voice. ... |
The Sum of Us | David Stevens | null | The plot revolves around the comfortable relationship between widower Harry and his gay son Jeff and their individual searches for the right mate. Harry unconditionally loves his Rugby-playing son, and even takes an active part in Jeff's search for Mr. Right. Harry reveals that his mother (Jeff's grandmother) was a le... |
Jingo | Terry Pratchett | null | With the opening of the novel, the island of Leshp, which had been submerged under the Circle Sea for centuries, rises to the surface. Its position, exactly halfway between Ankh-Morpork and Al Khali (the capital of Klatch), makes the island a powerful strategical point for whoever lays claim to it, which both cities d... |
The Pursuit of Love | Nancy Mitford | 1,945 | The narrator is Fanny, whose mother (called "The Bolter" for her habit of serial monogamy) and father have left her to be brought up by her Aunt Emily and the valetudinarian Davey, whom Emily marries early in the novel. Fanny also spends holidays with her Uncle Matthew Radlett, Aunt Sadie, and numerous cousins at Alco... |
Moonraker | Ian Fleming | 1,955 | British Secret Service agent James Bond is asked by his superior, M, to join him for the evening at M's club, Blades, where one of the members, the multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax, is winning a lot of money playing bridge, seemingly against the odds. M suspects Drax of cheating, but although claiming indif... |
Sophie's Choice | William Styron | 1,979 | Sophie's Choice is narrated by Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first novel. As the story begins, in the early summer of 1947, Stingo (like Styron, a writer and Duke graduate) has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill and has moved into a cheap boarding... |
Season of the Jew | Maurice Shadbolt | 1,987 | In this story of New Zealand and Te Kooti's War during the year beginning November 10, 1868, the narrative coalesces around the development of its protagonist, George Fairweather, who in Shadbolt’s historical epilogue is described as “A composite character ... yet still far from fictional.” Fairweather is a competent ... |
The White Plague | Frank Herbert | 1,982 | When an IRA bomb goes off, the wife and children of molecular biologist John Roe O'Neill are killed on May 20, 1996. Driven halfway insane by loss, his mind fragments into several personalities that carry out his plan for him. He plans a genocidal revenge and creates a plague that kills women. O'Neill then releases it... |
The Pilgrim's Progress | John Bunyan | 1,678 | Christian, an everyman character, is the protagonist of the allegory, which centres itself in his journey from his hometown, the "City of Destruction" ("this world"), to the "Celestial City" ("that which is to come": Heaven) atop Mt. Zion. Christian is weighed down by a great burden, the knowledge of his sin, which he... |
The Santaroga Barrier | Frank Herbert | 1,968 | A psychologist, Gilbert Dasein, is hired by corporate interests to investigate a town in a valley where marketing seems totally ineffective: Outside businesses are allowed in, but wither quickly for lack of business. Santarogans aren't hostile, they just won't shop there; neither are they xenophobic, instead appearing... |
Orlando Furioso | Ludovico Ariosto | 1,516 | The action of Orlando Furioso takes place against the background of the war between the Christian emperor Charlemagne and the Saracen King of Africa, Agramante, who has invaded Europe to avenge the death of his father Traiano. Agramante and his allies – who include Marsilio, the King of Spain, and the boastful warrior... |
The Anatomy of Melancholy | Robert Burton | 1,621 | Burton defined his subject as follows: In attacking his stated subject, Burton drew from nearly every science of his day, including psychology and physiology, but also astronomy, meteorology, and theology, and even astrology and demonology. Much of the book consists of quotations from various ancient and mediæval medi... |
Piers Plowman | William Langland | null | The poem—part theological allegory, part social satire—concerns the narrator's intense quest for the true Christian life, from the perspective of mediæval Catholicism. This quest entails a series of dream-visions and an examination into the lives of three allegorical characters, Dowel ("Do-Well"), Dobet ("Do-Better"),... |
Red Storm Rising | Tom Clancy | 1,986 | Islamic terrorists from Azerbaijan destroy a Soviet oil-production facility at Nizhnevartovsk, Russia, crippling the USSR's oil production and threatening to wreck the nation's economy. Contemplating concessions to the West to survive the crisis, the Politburo instead decides to seize the oil fields in the Persian Gul... |
The Joy of Work | null | null | The first part of the book explains 'how to find happiness at the expense of your co-workers', including how to deal with superiors, meetings and co-workers and how to avoid work whilst having fun, an entire chapter is devoted to office pranks. The second part is an analysis of humour and how to write funny material. ... |
Lady Chatterley's Lover | D. H. Lawrence | null | The story concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley, has been paralyzed due to a war injury. In addition to Clifford's physical limitations, his emotional neglect of Constance forces distance between the couple. Her sexual frustration leads her into an ... |
A Staircase in Surrey | J. I. M. Stewart | null | The narrator and central character is playwright Duncan Patullo. In The Gaudy he returns to his old college, after a long absence, and encounters a number of old friends, including Albert Talbert, his former tutor, Lord Marchpayne, a once-close friend with whom he has lost touch, and fellow Scot Ranald McKechnie, now ... |
The Sorrows of Young Werther | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | null | The majority of 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist of highly sensitive and passionate temperament, and sent to his friend Wilhelm. In these letters, Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictional village of Wahlheim (based on th... |
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling | Henry Fielding | 1,749 | The novel's events occupy eighteen books. Squire Allworthy and his sister Bridget are introduced in their wealthy estate in Somerset. Allworthy returns from London after an extended business trip and finds a baby sleeping in his bed. He summons his housekeeper, Mrs Deborah Wilkins, to take care of the child. After sea... |
Richard III | William Shakespeare | null | The play begins with Richard describing the accession to the throne of his brother, King Edward IV of England, eldest son of the late Richard, Duke of York. : Now is the winter of our discontent : Made glorious summer by this sun of York; : And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house : In the deep bosom of the ... |
The Fall | Albert Camus | 1,956 | The novel opens with Clamence sitting in the bar, Mexico City, casually talking to a stranger — the reader, some would say — about the proper way to order a drink; for here, despite the cosmopolitan nature of Amsterdam, the bartender refuses to respond to anything other than Dutch. Thus, Clamence serves as interpreter... |
The Golden Hour | Maiya Williams | 2,004 | The Golden Hour tells the story of Rowan and Nina's adventures the summer after their mother's death. Thirteen-year-old Rowan's life is at an all-time low: his father has turned to drinking, the family business is becoming a financial disaster, they have had to move from their house to a small apartment, and his music... |
The Man Who Fell to Earth | Walter Tevis | null | Thomas Jerome Newton is a humanoid alien who comes to Earth seeking to construct a spaceship to ferry others from his home planet, Anthea, to Earth. Anthea is experiencing a terrible drought after many nuclear wars, and the population has dwindled to less than 300. They have hundreds of superior starships, but for not... |
The Quiet Earth | Craig Harrison | 1,981 | John Hobson, a geneticist involved in a project concerned with manipulating DNA, awakes in his hotel room in Thames, New Zealand after a nightmare of falling from a great height. His wristwatch has stopped at 6:12. Upon getting up he finds the electricity off. It is quiet outside, with nobody in sight. Hobson checks t... |
The Phantom Tollbooth | Norton Juster | 1,961 | Milo is a boy bored by the world around him; every activity seems a waste of time. He arrives home from school one day to find in his bedroom a mysterious package that contains a miniature tollbooth and a map of "the Lands Beyond". Attached is a note, "FOR MILO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME". He assembles the tollbooth, tak... |
The Hundred and One Dalmatians | Dodie Smith | 1,956 | Pongo and Missis Pongo (or simply Missis) are a pair of Dalmatians who live with the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Dearly and their two nannies, Nanny Cook and Nanny Butler. Mr. Dearly is a "financial wizard" who has been granted lifelong tax exemption and lent a house on the Outer Circle in Regent's Park in return for w... |
A Philosophical Investigation | Philip Kerr | 1,992 | In a near-future, a British neuroscientist named Professor Burgess Phelan has discovered a portion of the brain, the VMN, that is typically twice the size in men as it is in women. In certain men, however (approximately 1 in 100,000), it is the same size as a woman's, and that abnormality is an exceptionally accurate ... |
The Tortilla Curtain | T. Coraghessan Boyle | 1,995 | Cándido Rincón (33) and América (his pregnant common law wife, 17) are two Mexicans who enter the United States illegally, dreaming of the good life in their own little house somewhere in California. Meanwhile, they are homeless and camping at the bottom of the Topanga Canyon area of Los Angeles, in the hills above Ma... |
Love in a Cold Climate | Nancy Mitford | null | Love in a Cold Climate is a companion volume to The Pursuit of Love. The time frame of Love in a Cold Climate is the same as The Pursuit of Love, but the focus is on a different set of characters. Fanny remains the fictional narrator. In The Pursuit of Love, Fanny narrates the story of her cousin Linda Radlett. In Lov... |
The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand | 1,943 | In the spring of 1922, architecture student Howard Roark is expelled from the fictional Stanton Institute of Technology for refusing to adhere to the school's conventionalism in architecture. Despite an effort by some professors to defend Roark and a subsequent offer to continue at Stanton from the dean, Roark chooses... |
The Last Continent | Terry Pratchett | 1,998 | The story opens weeks after the events of Interesting Times, in which Rincewind is magically transported to the continent of Xxxx due to a miscalculation made by the Unseen University wizards. He meets the magical kangaroo Scrappy, who was sent by the creator of Fourecks. Scrappy explains to Rincewind that he is fated... |
Laura Blundy | Julie Myerson | null | After her mother has died in childbirth, Laura Blundy is brought up by her loving and caring father, a merchant and shopowner who also pays for her schooling. One day, on her way to her ailing aunt, she is given a lift by a young man in a carriage who rapes her and then throws her out of the carriage again. She become... |
Contact | Carl Sagan | 1,985 | Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway is the director of "Project Argus," in which scores of radio telescopes in New Mexico have been dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The project discovers the first confirmed communication from extraterrestrial beings. The communication is a repeating series of the ... |
American Gods | Neil Gaiman | 2,001 | The central premise of the novel is that gods and mythological creatures exist because people believe in them. Immigrants to the United States brought with them dwarves, elves, leprechauns, and other spirits and gods. However, the power of these mythological beings has diminished as people's beliefs wane. New gods hav... |
Stardust | Neil Gaiman | 1,999 | The Faerie Market is held every nine years on the other side of the wall dividing Faerie from our world and for which the nearby town of Wall is named. As the book begins, the market has just begun and the town filled with visitors and vendors. Dunstan Thorn rents out his cottage to a stranger in exchange for his "Hea... |
World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability | Amy Chua | 2,002 | In the Philippines, Chua explains, the Chinese Filipino is 1% of the population but controls 60% of the economy, with the result being envy and bitterness on the part of the majority against the Chinese minority—in other words, an ethnic conflict. Similarly, in Indonesia the Chinese Indonesians are 3% of the populatio... |
The Sword in the Stone | T. H. White | 1,939 | The premise is that Arthur's youth, not dealt with in Malory, was a time when he was tutored by Merlyn to prepare him for the use of power and royal life. Merlyn magically turns Wart into various animals at times. He also has more human adventures, at one point meeting the outlaw Robin Hood, (who is referred to in the... |
Children of the Mind | Orson Scott Card | 1,996 | At the start of Children of the Mind, Jane, the evolved computer intelligence, is using her newly discovered abilities to take the races of buggers, humans and pequeninos outside the universe and back in instantaneously. She uses these powers to move them to distant habitable planets for colonization. She is losing he... |
Wonders of the Invisible World | Cotton Mather | null | Cotton Mather, narrator and preacher of the Second Church of Boston, begins with an explanation of the people of God and how they are living in the devil's territories. He discusses the devil's plan to overturn the plantation and churches with the help of his recruits, which Mather believes are witches. "...An army of... |
Henry VI, part 1 | William Shakespeare | null | The play begins with the funeral of Henry V, who has died unexpectedly in his prime. As his brothers, the Dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, and his uncle, the Duke of Exeter, lament his passing and express doubt as to whether his son (the as yet uncrowned heir apparent Henry VI) is capable of running the country in suc... |
Henry VI, part 3 | William Shakespeare | null | The play begins immediately where 2 Henry VI left off; with the victorious Yorkists (York, Edward, Richard, Warwick, Montague [i.e. Salisbury] and Norfolk) pursuing Henry and Margaret from the battlefield in the wake of the First Battle of St Albans. Upon reaching the parliamentary chambers in London, York seats himse... |
The Silver Chalice | Thomas B. Costain | 1,952 | The Silver Chalice takes place in Israel and other parts of the Roman Empire shortly after the death of Jesus. A young man, Basil, is adopted by a rich man, but loses his fortune when his father dies and his uncle defrauds him claiming he was purchased as a slave and sells him. As a slave he survives by working as an ... |
Thus Spoke Zarathustra | Friedrich Nietzsche | null | The book chronicles the fictitious travels and pedagogy of Zarathustra. The name of this character is taken from the ancient prophet usually known in English as Zoroaster (), the Persian founder of Zoroastrianism. Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on... |
Slaughterhouse-Five | Kurt Vonnegut | 1,969 | Chaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim is a disoriented, fatalistic, and ill-trained American soldier. He does not like wars and is captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans put Billy and his fellow prisoners in a disused slaughterhouse (although there are animal carcasses hanging in the undergro... |
The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger | 1,951 | The majority of the novel takes place over two days in December 1949. Seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, the book's narrator and protagonist, addresses the reader directly from a hospital in Southern California, recounting the events leading up to his breakdown the previous December. Holden begins his story at Pence... |
Our American Cousin | Tom Taylor | null | In the drawing room at Trenchard Manor, the servants remark on their employer's poor financial circumstances. Florence Trenchard, an aristocratic young beauty, loves Lieutenant Harry Vernon of the Royal Navy, but she is unable to marry him until he progresses to a higher rank. She receives a letter from her brother Ne... |
The Name of the Rose | Umberto Eco | 1,980 | Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his novice Adso of Melk travel to a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological disputation. As they arrive, the monastery is disturbed by a suicide. As the story unfolds, several other monks die under mysterious circumstances. William is tasked by the Ab... |
The Member of the Wedding | Carson McCullers | 1,946 | The novel takes place over a few days in late August. It tells the story of 12-year-old tomboy Frankie Addams, who feels disconnected from the world; in her words, an "unjoined person." Frankie's mother died when she was born, and her father is a distant, uncomprehending figure. Her closest companions are the family's... |
Rashomon | Ryunosuke Akutagawa | null | The story recounts the encounter between a servant and an old woman in the dilapidated Rashōmon, the southern gate of the then ruined city of Kyoto, where unclaimed corpses were sometimes dumped. The man, a lowly servant recently fired, is contemplating whether to starve to death or to become a thief to survive in the... |
Magnificent Obsession | Lloyd C. Douglas | 1,929 | Robert Merrick is resuscitated by a rescue crew after a boating accident. The crew is unable to save the life of Dr. Phillips, a doctor renowned for his ability to help people, who was having a heart attack at the same time on the other side of the lake. Merrick then decides to devote his life to making up for the doc... |
V. | Thomas Pynchon | 1,963 | The novel alternates between episodes featuring Benny, Stencil and other members of the Whole Sick Crew (including Profane's sidekick Pig Bodine) in 1956 (with a few minor flashbacks), and a generation-spanning plot which comprises Stencil's attempts to unravel the clues he believes will lead him to "V." (or to the va... |
Shogun: A Novel of Japan | James Clavell | 1,975 | Japan in 1600 is a feudal country in a precarious peace. The heir to the Taiko is underage, too young to rule, and power rests in a council of five regents formed of the most powerful overlords of the land. Japanese society is insular and xenophobic. Portugal, with its vast sea power, and the Catholic Church, principa... |
Goodnight Moon | Margaret Wise Brown | 1,947 | Goodnight Moon is classic children's literature in North America. The text is a rhyming poem, describing a bunny's bedtime ritual of saying "goodnight" to various objects in the bunny's bedroom: the red balloon, the bunny's dollhouse, the kittens, etc. One aspect of this book is the wealth of detail in the illustratio... |
Eugene Onegin | Aleksandr Pushkin | null | In the 1820s, Eugene Onegin is a bored St. Petersburg dandy, whose life consists of balls, concerts, parties and nothing more. One day he inherits a landed estate from his uncle. When he moves to the country, he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor, a starry-eyed young poet named Vladimir Lensky. One day, Lensky ... |
Elbow Room | Daniel Dennett | 1,984 | A major task taken on by Dennett in Elbow Room is to clearly describe just what people are as biological entities and why they find the issue of free will to be of significance. In discussing what people are and why free will matters to us, Dennett makes use of an evolutionary perspective. Dennett describes the mechan... |
The Adventures of Captain Underpants | Dav Pilkey | 1,997 | The story begins with the school troublemakers, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, making a comic featuring a superhero they made-up, The Amazing Captain Underpants. A little later in the book, George and Harold played a series of practical jokes on a football game automatically without being exposed (sprinkling pepper... |
The Rowan | Anne McCaffrey | 1,990 | The Rowan tells the life story of a young orphan, of Prime Talent, from the moment the child's community is wiped out in a mudslide to the time when she becomes a Prime and after a life of loneliness falls in love with a previously undiscovered Prime in a far away star system being attacked by aliens. The central sect... |
Lysistrata | Aristophanes | null | LYSISTRATA: There are a lot of things about us women That sadden me, considering how men See us as rascals. CALONICE: As indeed we are! These lines, spoken by Lysistrata and her friend Calonice at the beginning of the play, set the scene for the action that follows. Women, as represented by Calonice, are sly hedonists... |
Niourk | null | null | It presents an Earth where the oceans have gone dry and humans are hunter-gatherer bands. Haiti is the mountain range "Hait", and New York City becomes the ruins of "Niourk". The "black child" goes to Niourk where he wanders through the ruins and the still functioning automatic devices. He finds a pair of shipwrecked ... |
Andromeda | Ivan Yefremov | null | This is a classic communist utopia set in a distant future. Throughout the novel, the author's attention is focused on the social and cultural aspects of the society; there are several principal heroes (a historian, an archeologist, a starship captain) involved in several plot lines. Though the world shown in the nove... |
Ecotopia | Ernest Callenbach | null | The book is set in 1999 (25 years in the future, as seen from 1974) and consists of the diary entries and reports of William Weston, a mainstream media reporter who is the first proper American to investigate Ecotopia, a newly formed country that broke from the USA in 1980. Prior to Weston's investigative reporting, m... |
The Bad Seed | William March | 1,954 | Eight-year-old Rhoda is the only child of Kenneth and Christine Penmark. Kenneth Penmark goes away on business, leaving Christine and Rhoda at home. Christine begins to notice that Rhoda is acting strangely after one of her classmates mysteriously drowns, and eventually makes a horrible discovery: Rhoda killed the boy... |
The Turner Diaries | William Luther Pierce | 1,978 | The narrative starts with a foreword set in 2099, one hundred years after the events depicted in the book. The bulk of the book then quotes a recently discovered diary of a man named Earl Turner, an active member of the white Aryan revolutionary movement that caused these events. The book details a violent overthrow o... |
Life, the Universe and Everything | Douglas Adams | null | After being stranded on pre-historic Earth after the events in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur Dent is met by his old friend Ford Prefect, who drags him into a space-time eddy, represented by an anachronistic sofa. The two end up at Lord's Cricket Ground two days before the Earth's destruction by the... |
Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson | G. I. Gurdjieff | 1,950 | Gurdjieff said that he had answered every question that could possibly arise in a person's mind In his introduction to the book Gurdjieff states the following: ::Friendly Advice ::[Written impromptu by the author on delivering this book, already prepared for publication, to the printer.] ::ACCORDING TO the numerous de... |
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain | 1,876 | In the 1840s an imaginative and mischievous boy named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment all of the nex... |
The Emperor's New Clothes | Hans Christian Andersen | null | A vain Emperor who cares for nothing hires two swindlers who promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the clothing himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position; his minis... |
The Library of Babel | Jorge Luis Borges | 1,941 | Borges's narrator describes how his universe consists of an enormous expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms, each of which contains the bare necessities for human survival—and four walls of bookshelves. Though the order and content of the books is random and apparently completely meaningless, the inhabitants be... |
Pebble in the Sky | Isaac Asimov | 1,950 | While walking down the street in Chicago, Joseph Schwartz, a retired tailor, is the unwitting victim of a nearby nuclear laboratory accident, by means of which he is instantaneously transported tens of thousands of years into the future (50,000 years, by one character's estimate, a figure later retconned by future Asi... |
Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp | Harriet Beecher Stowe | 1,856 | Dred is the story of Nina Gordon, an impetuous young heiress to a large southern plantation, whose land is rapidly becoming worthless. It is run competently by one of Nina's slaves, Harry, who endures a murderous rivalry with Nina's brother Tom Gordon, a drunken, cruel slaveowner. Nina is a flighty young girl, and mai... |
Raintree County | Ross Lockridge, Jr. | null | The novel, set in fictional Raintree County, Indiana, is essentially in two parts; before the Civil War and after. It spans the 19th century history of the United States, from the pre-Civil War westward expansion, to the debate over slavery, to the Civil War, to the Industrial Revolution and the Labor Movement which f... |
Suddenly, Last Summer | Tennessee Williams | null | Catharine Holly, a poor relation of a prominent New Orleans family, seems to be insane after her cousin Sebastian dies under mysterious circumstances on a trip to Europe. Sebastian's mother, Violet Venable, trying to cloud the truth about her son's homosexuality and death, threatens to lobotomize Catharine for her inc... |
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Anne Brontë | null | The novel is divided into three volumes. Part One (Chapters 1 to 15): Gilbert Markham narrates how a mysterious widow, Mrs. Helen Graham arrives at Wildfell Hall, a nearby old mansion. A source of curiosity for the small community, the reticent Mrs Graham and her young son Arthur are slowly drawn into the social circl... |
A Canticle for Leibowitz | Walter M. Miller, Jr. | 1,960 | A Canticle for Leibowitz opens 600 years after 20th century civilization has been destroyed by a global nuclear war, known as the "Flame Deluge". The text reveals that as a result of the war there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led to the development of nu... |
The Browning Version | Terence Rattigan | null | The play is about the last few days in the career of Andrew Crocker-Harris, an aging classics teacher at a British public school. The man's academic life is fading away following illness and he feels that he has become obsolete. It starts when Taplow, a pupil who needs Crocker-Harris to pass him so he can go up to the... |
Ender's Shadow | Orson Scott Card | 1,999 | Bean, the main character, is a homeless child living in the hellish streets of Rotterdam in roughly 2170 after escaping as an infant from an illegal genetic engineering laboratory. Being hyper-intelligent and extremely young, Bean's experiences revolve primarily around his need for food. He joins a huge gang of childr... |
Cards on the Table | Agatha Christie | null | At an exhibition of snuff boxes, Hercule Poirot meets Mr. Shaitana, a mysterious foreign man who is consistently described as devil-like in appearance and manner. Shaitana jokes about Poirot's visit to the snuff box exhibition, and claims that he has a better "collection" that Poirot would enjoy: individuals who have ... |
The Gambler | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 1,867 | The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor working for a Russian family living in a suite at a German hotel. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman De Grieux and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay only a small amount of his debt. Upon... |
The Crucible | Arthur Miller | null | Rev. Parris is praying over his daughter, Betty Parris, who lies as if unconscious in her bed. Conversations between Rev. Parris, his niece Abigail Williams and several other girls reveal that the girls, including Abigail and Betty, were engaged in heretical activities in a nearby forest, apparently led by Tituba, Par... |
The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath | 1,963 | Esther Greenwood, a young woman from the suburbs of Boston, gains a summer internship at a prominent magazine in New York City under editor Jay Cee. At the time of the Rosenbergs' execution, Esther is neither stimulated nor excited by the big city and glamorous culture and lifestyle that girls her age are expected to ... |
Jude the Obscure | Thomas Hardy | 1,895 | The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, a village stonemason in the southern English region of Wessex who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modeled on Oxford. In his spare time, while working in his aunt's bakery, he teaches himself Greek and Latin. Before he can try to enter the university, the naïv... |
Democracy in America | Alexis de Tocqueville | 1,935 | The primary focus of Democracy in America is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States while failing in so many other places. Tocqueville seeks to apply the functional aspects of democracy in America to what he sees as the failings of democracy in his native France. Tocq... |
The Giver | Lois Lowry | 1,993 | The book focuses on a twelve-year-old boy named Jonas residing in an immaculately-organized, tightly-run, but strict utopian society known as the community of Sameness , where eccentricities in behavior, appearance, or personality are strongly outlawed and opposed. Nearing an age where he will be selected for the posi... |
A Solitary Grief | Bernice Rubens | 1,991 | The novel opens with psychiatrist Dr Alistair Crown's wife Virginia giving birth to the couple's first child. Crown, who is not present during birth, is informed immediately afterwards that their daughter Doris has Down's syndrome, a fact he is unable to accept. For the next five years, he avoids Doris's face: He neve... |
Xenocide | Orson Scott Card | 1,991 | The plot alternates between characters on two planets: Path and Lusitania. Lusitania is an alien planet home to a curious species known as the piggies. Following the events of Speaker for the Dead, we find a story of another set of characters living as a member of a Brazilian Catholic human colony on Lusitania, a uniq... |
Sourcery | Terry Pratchett | null | Ipslore the Red is a wizard who is about to die. Death comes to usher Ipslore's soul into the next world as the story begins. Ipslore tells Death about his banishment from the Unseen University because he fell in love. Throughout the scene he is holding his infant son, whom Ipslore names Coin. Coin is Ipslore's eighth... |
It Can't Happen Here | Sinclair Lewis | null | Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician, is elected President of the United States on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen $5,000 a year (approximately $, adjusted for inflation). Portraying himself as a champi... |
My Brilliant Career | Miles Franklin | null | The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is an imaginative, headstrong girl growing up in rural Australia in the 1890s. Drought and a series of poor business decisions reduce her family to subsistence level, her father begins to drink excessively, and Sybylla struggles to deal with the monotony of her life. To her relief, she is ... |
The Merry Wives of Windsor | William Shakespeare | null | The play is nominally set circa 1400, during the same period as the Henry IV plays featuring Falstaff, but there is only one brief reference to this period, a line in which the character Fenton is said to have been one of Prince Hal's rowdy friends (he "kept company with the wild prince and Poins"). In all other respe... |
Fanny Hill | John Cleland | null | The book is written as a series of letters from Frances "Fanny" Hill to an unknown woman, with Fanny justifying her life-choices to this individual. At the beginning of her tale, Fanny Hill is a young girl with a rudimentary education living in a small village near Liverpool. Shortly after she turns 15, both her paren... |
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe | Douglas Adams | 1,980 | The Restaurant at the End of the Universe begins just as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ended. Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Zaphod Beeblebrox have just left the planet Magrathea when they are attacked by a Vogon ship. They find they are unable to use the Improbability Drive to escape, as Arthur has a... |
In the Penal Colony | Franz Kafka | 1,919 | The story focuses on the Explorer, who is encountering the brutal machine for the first time. Everything about the machine and its purpose is told to him by the Officer, while the Soldier and the Condemned (who is unaware that he has been sentenced to die) placidly watch nearby. The Officer tells of the religious epip... |
The Rebel Angels | Robertson Davies | 1,981 | The Rebel Angels follows several faculty and staff of the fictional College of St. John and Holy Ghost. It did not quite attain the popularity of the Deptford Trilogy, but it is generally considered to be among his best books. The story, like many of Davies', is notable for very strongly drawn and memorable characters... |
Macrolife | George Zebrowski | 1,979 | The novel is split into three main sections. (I) Sunspace: 2021 ... The Bulero family/corporation, inventors and marketers of Bulerite which is used to build the huge cities which house the Earth's (and colonies) teeming millions, are at the pinnacle of their influence and wealth. Unfortunately, it is discovered - too... |
Till We Have Faces | C. S. Lewis | 1,956 | Part One: The story tells the Ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of Orual, Psyche's older sister. It begins as the complaint of an old woman who is bitter at the injustice of the gods. Although disfigured herself, and covering her facial deformity with a mask throughout the book, Orual loves ... |
Heidi | Johanna Spyri | 1,880 | Adelheid (familiarly known as Heidi) is a girl who has been raised by her aunt Dete in Maienfeld, Switzerland after the early deaths of her parents, Tobias and Adelheid. Dete brings 5-year-old Heidi to her grandfather, who has been at odds with the villagers for years and lives in seclusion on the alm. This has earned... |
That Hideous Strength | C. S. Lewis | 1,945 | Young academic Mark Studdock has just risen to the position of Senior Fellow in sociology at Bracton College in the University of Edgestow, just when it is engaged in selling off a portion of its land, Bragdon Wood, to a new scientific Institute the NICE (National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments) whose personne... |
The Heart of the Matter | Graham Greene | 1,948 | Major Henry Scobie, a long-serving policeman in a British colony on the West Coast of Africa during World War II, is responsible for local and wartime security. His wife Louise, an unhappy, solitary woman who loves literature and poetry, cannot make friends. Scobie feels responsible for her misery, but does not love h... |
The Legacy of Heorot | Steven Barnes | 1,987 | Two hundred colonists arrive on Avalon to found a new community, having made the 100-year journey from Earth in suspended animation on the starship Geographic (the expedition is funded by the National Geographic Society). The colonists, all selected for their outstanding physical and mental attributes, make a terrible... |
VALIS | Philip K. Dick | 1,981 | Horselover Fat believes his visions expose hidden facts about the reality of life on Earth, and a group of others join him in researching these matters. One of their theories is that there is some kind of alien space probe in orbit around Earth, and that it is aiding them in their quest. It also aided the United State... |
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