title stringlengths 1 220 | author stringlengths 4 59 ⌀ | pub_year int64 398 2.01k ⌀ | summary stringlengths 11 58k |
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Far from the Madding Crowd | Thomas Hardy | 1,874 | Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a sheep-farm. He falls in love with a newcomer eight years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, a proud beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst. She comes to like him well enough, and even saves his life o... |
Vineland | Thomas Pynchon | 1,990 | The story is set in California, United States, in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan's re-election. After a scene in which ex-hippie Zoyd Wheeler dives through a window, something he is required to do yearly in order to keep receiving mental disability checks, the action of the novel opens with the resurfacing of DEA age... |
Hallowe'en Party | Agatha Christie | null | The story starts out inside Rowena Drake's house, which is called "Apple Trees". There, Ariadne Oliver and others are preparing a Hallowe'en party for children. Those in charge of the party are Judith Butler, Mrs. Oliver's friend; Leopold, Joyce and Anne Reynolds, Desmond Holland, Nicholas Ransom, Cathie Johnson, Eliz... |
Empire of the Sun | J. G. Ballard | 1,984 | The novel recounts the story of a young British boy, Jaime Graham, who lives with his parents in Shanghai. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese occupy the Shanghai International Settlement, and in the following chaos Jim becomes separated from his parents. He spends some time in abandoned mansions, living on re... |
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them | Al Franken | 2,003 | Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them largely targets prominent Republicans and conservatives, highlighting what Franken asserts are documentable lies in their claims. A significant portion of the book is devoted to comparisons between President George W. Bush and former president Bill Clinton regarding their economi... |
Maurice | E. M. Forster | null | We first encounter Maurice Hall (pronounced "Morris") aged fourteen having a discussion about sex and women with his prep-school teacher, Ben Ducie, which takes place just before he progresses to his public school. This sets the tone for the rest of the novel, as Maurice feels removed from the depiction of marriage wi... |
The Ice Storm | Rick Moody | 1,994 | The novel takes place over Thanksgiving weekend 1973, during a dangerous ice storm and centers on two neighboring families, the Hoods and the Williamses, and the difficulties they have dealing with the tumultuous political and social climate of the day, in affluent suburban Connecticut, during the height of the sexual... |
Three Comrades | Erich Maria Remarque | 1,937 | The city, which is never referred to by name (however, it is likely Berlin), is crowded by a growing number of jobless and marked by increasing violence between left and right. The novel starts out in the seedy milieu of bars where prostitutes mingle with the hopeless flotsam that the war left behind. While Robert and... |
Pericles, Prince of Tyre | William Shakespeare | 1,609 | John Gower introduces each act with a prologue. The play opens in the court of Antiochus, king of Antioch, who has offered the hand of his beautiful daughter to any man who answers his riddle; but those who fail shall die. <poem> I am no viper, yet I feed On mother's flesh which did me breed. I sought a husband, in wh... |
The Forever War | Joe Haldeman | 1,974 | William Mandella is a physics student conscripted for an elite task force in the United Nations Exploratory Force being assembled for a war against the Taurans, an alien species discovered when they apparently suddenly attacked human colonists' ships. The UNEF ground troops are sent out for reconnaissance and revenge.... |
Bambi, A Life in the Woods | Felix Salten | 1,923 | Bambi is a roe deer fawn born in a thicket to a young doe in late spring one year. Over the course of the summer, his mother teaches him about the various inhabitants of the forest and the ways deer live. When she feels he is old enough, she takes him to the meadow which he learns is both a wonderful but also dangerou... |
Robots and Empire | Isaac Asimov | 1,985 | The Earthman Elijah Baley (the detective hero of the previous Robot books), has died nearly two centuries earlier. During these two centuries, the balance of forces in the galaxy has changed dramatically. Inspired partly by Baley's adventures in space (on the "Spacer" worlds of Solaria and Aurora), Earth-people have o... |
Foundation | Isaac Asimov | 1,951 | Foundation tells the story of a group of scientists who seek to preserve knowledge as the civilizations around them begin to regress. (0 F.E.) (First published as the book edition in 1951) Set in the year 0 F.E., The Psychohistorians opens on Trantor, the capital of the 12,000-year-old Galactic Empire. Though the empi... |
Second Foundation | Isaac Asimov | 1,953 | Part I: Search By the Mule is about The Mule's search for the elusive Second Foundation, with the intent of destroying it. The executive council of the Second Foundation is aware of the Mule's intent and, in the words of the First Speaker, allows him to find it -- "in a sense". In the end the agents of the Second Foun... |
The Abolition of Work | null | null | In the essay Black argues for the abolition of the producer- and consumer-based society, where, Black contends, all of life is devoted to the production and consumption of commodities. Attacking Marxist state socialism as much as Liberal capitalism, Black argues that the only way for humans to be free is to reclaim th... |
The Vicomte de Bragelonne | Alexandre Dumas | null | The principal heroes of the novel are the musketeers. The novel's length finds it frequently broken into smaller parts. The narrative is set between 1660 and 1667 against the background of the transformation of Louis XIV from child monarch to Sun King. After 35 years of loyal service, d'Artagnan resigns as Cardinal Ma... |
Twenty Years After | Alexandre Dumas | null | The action begins under Queen Anne of Austria regency and Cardinal Mazarin ruling. D'Artagnan, who seemed to have a promising career ahead of him at the end of The Three Musketeers, has for twenty years remained a lieutenant in the Musketeers, and seems unlikely to progress, despite his ambition and the debt the queen... |
Logan's Run | William F. Nolan | 1,967 | The introduction to the book states: :"The seeds of the Little War were planted in a restless summer during the mid-1960s, with sit-ins and student demonstrations as youth tested its strength. By the early 1970s over 75 percent of the people living on Earth were under 21 years of age. The population continued to climb... |
The Two Gentlemen of Verona | William Shakespeare | null | As the play begins, Valentine is preparing to leave Verona for Milan so as to broaden his horizons. He begs his best friend, Proteus, to come with him, but Proteus is in love with Julia, and refuses to leave. Disappointed, Valentine bids Proteus farewell and goes on alone. Meanwhile, Julia is discussing Proteus with h... |
Girlfriend in a Coma | Douglas Coupland | 1,998 | The first part of the book covers the 17 years in the lives of this group of friends after Karen’s lapse into a coma. Richard has to cope with losing Karen but gaining a daughter, Megan, as fatherhood is thrust upon him: the outcome of their mutual loss of virginity just hours before Karen fell into her coma. Wendy th... |
Schindler's Ark | Thomas Keneally | 1,982 | This novel tells the story of Oskar Schindler, self-made entrepreneur and bon viveur who almost by default found himself saving Polish Jews from the Nazi death machine. Based on numerous eyewitness accounts, Keneally's story is unbearably moving but never melodramatic, a testament to the almost unimaginable horrors of... |
The Sparrow | Mary Doria Russell | 1,996 | The novel begins in the year 2019, when the SETI program, at the Arecibo Observatory, picks up radio broadcasts of music from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. The first expedition to Rakhat, the world that is sending the music, is organized by the Jesuit order. Only one of the crew, Father Emilio Sandoz, a priest, surv... |
Red Rabbit | Tom Clancy | null | Jack Ryan, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the British Secret Intelligence Service help with transporting a Russian defector and his family to the United States. The defector tells of a KGB plan to kill Pope John Paul II. |
Family Matters | Rohinton Mistry | 2,002 | The first few pages tell of Nariman's subjection to increasing decay in physical health and stinging insults (revolving around his cost of medicine, lack of space and privacy, the daily routine of bedpans and urinals, sponge baths and bedsores) from his stepdaughter. Very soon, the focus shifts to Roxana's household. ... |
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions | Thomas Samuel Kuhn | 1,962 | Kuhn's approach to the history and philosophy of science has been described as focusing on conceptual issues: what sorts of ideas were thinkable at a particular time? What sorts of intellectual options and strategies were available to people during a given period? What types of lexicons and terminology were known and ... |
Sartoris | William Faulkner | 1,929 | The novel deals with the decay of an aristocratic southern family just after the end of World War I. The wealthy Sartoris family of Jefferson, Mississippi, lives under the shadow of its dead patriarch, Colonel John Sartoris. Colonel John was a Confederate cavalry officer during the Civil War, built the local railroad,... |
Babbitt | Sinclair Lewis | 1,922 | Lewis has been both criticized and congratulated for his unorthodox writing style in Babbitt. As one reviewer puts it: “There is no plot whatever… Babbitt simply grows two years older as the tale unfolds.” Lewis presents a chronological series of scenes in the life of his title character. After introducing George F. B... |
Amerika | Franz Kafka | 1,927 | :The first chapter of this novel is a short story titled "The Stoker". The story describes the bizarre wanderings of a sixteen-year-old European emigrant named Karl Roßmann in the United States, who was forced to go to New York to escape the scandal of his seduction by a housemaid. As the ship arrives in USA, he becom... |
The Farthest Shore | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1,972 | A strange, inexplicable malaise is spreading throughout Earthsea. Magic is losing its power; songs are being forgotten; people and animals are sickening or going mad. Accompanied by Arren, the young Prince of Enlad, the Archmage Ged leaves Roke Island to find the cause on his boat Lookfar. They head south to Hort, chi... |
The Quiet American | Graham Greene | 1,955 | Thomas Fowler is a British journalist in his fifties who has been covering the French war in Vietnam for over two years. He meets a young American idealist named Alden Pyle, who lives his life and forms his opinions based on the books written by York Harding, with no real experience in matters of Southeast Asia at all... |
Noli Me Tangere | José Rizal | 1,887 | Having completed his studies in Europe, young Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin comes back to the Philippines after a 7-year absence. In his honor, Don Santiago de los Santos "Captain Tiago," a family friend, threw a get-together party, which was attended by friars and other prominent figures. One of the guests, forme... |
Feet of Clay | Terry Pratchett | 1,996 | A cabal of Ankh-Morpork's guild leaders seeks to gradually depose the Patrician, replace him with Nobby Nobbs as the new king and rule the city through him. To implement this, the cabal orders the golems' newly-made king, Meshugah, to make poisoned candles and have them delivered to the palace. However, the golems use... |
The Cask of Amontillado | Edgar Allan Poe | 1,846 | Montresor tells the story of the day that he took his revenge on Fortunato, a fellow nobleman, to an unspecified person who knows him very well. Angry over some unspecified insult, he plots to murder his friend during Carnival when the man is drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley. He baits Fortunato by telling h... |
Thursbitch | Alan Garner | 2,003 | Set both in the 18th century and the present day and centred on the mystery of an inscription on a rock about a death from exposure, the novel seeks to explain time and history in terms of setting and interaction. It is a complex novel that can be read on many different levels. Structurally it can be regarded as a Möb... |
Ripley's Game | Patricia Highsmith | 1,974 | In the third Ripley novel, Tom Ripley is a wealthy man in his early thirties. He lives in Villeperce, France, with his wealthy French wife, Heloise. Ripley spends his days living comfortably in his house, Belle Ombre, until an associate, an American criminal named Reeves Minot, asks him if he can commit a murder for h... |
An American Tragedy | Theodore Dreiser | 1,925 | The ambitious but immature Clyde Griffiths, raised by poor and devoutly religious parents who force him to participate in their street missionary work, is anxious to achieve better things. His troubles begin when he takes a job as a bellboy at a local hotel. The boys he meets are much more sophisticated than he, and t... |
Timon of Athens | William Shakespeare | null | Timon is not initially a misanthrope. He is a wealthy and generous Athenian gentleman. He gives a large banquet, attended by nearly all the main characters. Timon gives away money wastefully, and everyone wants to please him to get more, except for Apemantus, a churlish philosopher whose cynicism Timon cannot yet appr... |
Troilus and Cressida | William Shakespeare | null | In the seventh year of the Trojan War, a Trojan prince named Troilus falls in love with Cressida, the daughter of a Trojan priest who has defected to the Greek side. Troilus is assisted in his pursuit of her by Pandarus, Cressida's uncle. Meanwhile, in the Greek camp, the Greek general, Agamemnon, wonders why his comm... |
General Theory of Employment Interest and Money | John Maynard Keynes | null | The central argument of The General Theory is that the level of employment is determined, not by the price of labour as in neoclassical economics, but by the spending of money (aggregate demand). He argues that it is wrong to assume that competitive markets will, in the long run, deliver full employment or that full e... |
Tintin in America | Hergé | 1,932 | It is the year 1931. Having encountered Al Capone's gangsters in his last adventure, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin is sent to Chicago, Illinois to clean up the city's criminals. He is captured by gangsters several times, soon meeting Capone himself after he is dropped through a trapdoor in the street and knocked out by ... |
Christine | Stephen King | 1,983 | In 1978, while riding home from work with his friend Dennis, nerdy teen Arnold "Arnie" Cunningham spots a dilapidated red and white Plymouth Fury parked in front of a house. Arnie makes Dennis stop so he can examine the car, despite Dennis's attempts to talk Arnie out of it. The car's owner, Roland D. LeBay, an elderl... |
Nova Express | William S. Burroughs | 1,964 | Nova Express is a social commentary on human and machine control of life. The Nova Mob—Sammy the Butcher, Izzy the Push, The Subliminal Kid, and others—are viruses, "defined as the three-dimensional coordinate point of a controller." "which invade the human body and in the process produce language." These ... |
Katar | Stanisław Lem | null | A former astronaut is hired by a detective agency to help in an investigation of a case of mysterious deaths. Several victims became mad and committed suicide during their vacation in various Naples spas, apparently without reason. Due to certain similarities in the circumstances of the deaths the case is assumed to b... |
Fiasco | Stanisław Lem | 1,986 | The book begins with a story of a base on Saturn's moon Titan, where a young spaceship pilot, Parvis, sets out in a strider (a mecha-like machine) to find several missing people, among them the famous Pirx of Lem's Tales of Pirx the Pilot. He ventures to the dangerous geyser region, where the others were lost, but unf... |
As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | 1,930 | The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. As is the case in much of Faulkner's work, the story is set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississip... |
The God of Small Things | Arundhati Roy | 1,997 | The story, told here in chronological order, although the novel shifts around in time, primarily takes place in a town named Ayemenem or Aymanam now part of Kottayam in Kerala state of India. The temporal setting shifts back and forth from 1969, when fraternal twins Rahel and Estha are seven years old, to 1993, when t... |
The Comedy of Errors | William Shakespeare | null | Due to a law forbidding the presence of Syracusian merchants in Ephesus, elderly Syracusian trader Egeon faces execution when he is discovered in the city. He can only escape by paying a fine of a thousand marks. He tells his sad story to the Duke. In his youth, he married and had twin sons. On the same day, a poor wo... |
Quicksilver | Neal Stephenson | 2,003 | The first book is a series of flashbacks from 1713 to the earlier life of Daniel Waterhouse. It begins as Enoch Root arrives in Boston in October 1713 to deliver a letter to Daniel Waterhouse containing a summons from Princess Caroline. She wants Daniel to return to England and attempt to repair the feud between Isaac... |
The Persians | Aeschylus | null | The Persians takes place in Susa, Iran, which at the time was one of the capitals of the Persian Empire, and opens with a chorus of old men of Susa, who are soon joined by the Queen Mother, Atossa, as they await news of her son King Xerxes' expedition against the Greeks. Expressing her anxiety and unease, Atossa narra... |
The Other Wind | Ursula K. Le Guin | 2,001 | It is about fifteen years since the events described in Tehanu, and eight after those in Dragonfly. King Lebannen has his share of problems. The dragons want the return of the lands men have stolen from them in the distant past, the Kargs want to marry him to their princess and thus cement a diplomatic relation betwee... |
The Colour of Magic | Terry Pratchett | null | The main character is an incompetent and cynical wizard named Rincewind. He involuntarily becomes a guide to the rich but naive tourist from the Agatean Empire, Twoflower. Forced to flee the city of Ankh-Morpork to escape a terrible fire that was caused by a bartender who misunderstood the concept of insurance, which ... |
The Light Fantastic | Terry Pratchett | null | After the wizard Rincewind has fallen from the edge of the Discworld, the Octavo magic book saves his life and he lands back onto the world. Meanwhile, the wizards of Ankh-Morpork discover from Death via a rite that the Discworld will soon be destroyed by a huge red star unless the eight spells of the Octavo are read:... |
Children of the Atom | Wilmar H. Shiras | null | In the novel, much of which was originally published in serial form in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, hidden throughout a future America of 1972 are a group of incredibly gifted children — all approximately the same age, all preternaturally intelligent, and all hiding their incredible abilities from a worl... |
True Names | Vernor Vinge | 1,981 | The story follows the progress of a group of disaffected computer wizards (called "warlocks" in the story) who are early adopters of a new full-immersion virtual reality technology, called the "Other Plane". Forming a cabal, they must keep their true identities – their True Names – secret even to each other and to avo... |
The Postman Always Rings Twice | James M. Cain | 1,934 | The story is narrated in the first person by Frank Chambers, a young drifter who stops at a rural California diner for a meal, and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a young, beautiful woman, Cora, and her much older husband, Nick Papadakis, sometimes called "the Greek". There is an immediate attraction b... |
Siddhartha | Hermann Hesse | 1,922 | The story takes place in ancient India around the time of Gotama Buddha (likely between the fourth and seventh centuries BCE). Siddhartha, the son of a Brahmin, decides to leave behind his home in the hopes of gaining spiritual illumination by becoming an ascetic wandering beggar of the Samanas. Joined by his best fri... |
The Bicentennial Man | Isaac Asimov | 1,976 | A character named Andrew Martin requests an unknown operation from a robotic surgeon. However, the robot refuses, as the operation is harmful and violates the First Law of Robotics, which says a robot may never harm a human being. Andrew, however, changes its mind, telling it that he is not a human being. The story ju... |
Foundation and Empire | Isaac Asimov | 1,952 | The first half of the book, titled "The General," tells how the Galactic Empire, now well into its collapse but led by skilled General Bel Riose, launches an attack against the Foundation. The Empire still retains far more resources and personnel than the Foundation and Riose is willing to use that advantage to its fu... |
Equal Rites | Terry Pratchett | 1,987 | The wizard Drum Billet knows that he will soon die and travels to a place where an eighth son of an eighth son is about to be born. This signifies that the child is destined to become a wizard; on the Discworld, the number eight has many of the magical properties that are sometimes ascribed to seven in other mythologi... |
Guards! Guards! | Terry Pratchett | 1,989 | The story follows a plot by a secret brotherhood, the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night, to overthrow the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork and install a puppet king, under the control of the Supreme Grand Master. Using a stolen magic book, they summon a dragon to strike fear into the peopl... |
Pyramids | Terry Pratchett | 1,989 | The main character of Pyramids is Teppic, prince of the tiny kingdom of Djelibeybi. Djelibeybi is the Discworld counterpart to Ancient Egypt. Young Teppic has been in training at the Assassins Guild in Ankh-Morpork for several years. The day after passing his final exam he somehow senses that his father has died and t... |
The Monkey's Paw | W. W. Jacobs | 1,903 | The story involves Mr. and Mrs. White and their adult son Herbert. Sergeant-Major Morris, a friend of the Whites who has been part of the British Armed Forces in India, leaves them with the monkey's paw, telling of its mysterious powers to grant three wishes, and of its journey from an old fakir to his comrade, who us... |
The Sea Hawk | Rafael Sabatini | 1,915 | Sir Oliver Tressilian lives at the house of Penarrow together with his brother Lionel and his servant Nicholas. Sir Oliver is betrothed to Rosamund Godolphin, but her brother Peter, a young hothead, detests the Tressilians, as there had been a feud between their fathers, and therefore tries to drive a wedge between hi... |
The Master and Margarita | Mikhail Bulgakov | null | The novel alternates between two settings. The first is 1930s Moscow, which is visited by Satan in the guise of "Professor" Woland or Voland (Воланд), a mysterious gentleman "magician" of uncertain origin, who arrives with a retinue that includes the grotesquely dressed "ex-choirmaster" valet Koroviev (Fagotto) (Фагот... |
The Gold-Bug | Edgar Allan Poe | 1,843 | William Legrand becomes obsessed with searching for treasure after being bitten by a scarab-like bug thought to be made of pure gold. He notifies his closest friend, the narrator, telling him to immediately come visit him at his home on Sullivan's Island in South Carolina. Upon the narrator's arrival, Legrand informs ... |
The Visit | Friedrich Dürrenmatt | null | The story opens with the town of Güllen (which literally means "to manure") preparing for the arrival of famed billionairess Claire Zachanassian. The town is in a state of disrepair, and the residents are suffering considerable hardship and poverty. They hope that Claire, a native of the small town, will provide them ... |
Disgrace | John Maxwell Coetzee | 1,999 | David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching one... |
The Lords of Discipline | Pat Conroy | 1,980 | The novel's narrator, Will McLean, attends the Carolina Military Institute (a fictional military college based on The Citadel) in Charleston, from 1963 to 1967. The novel takes place in four parts. The first describes the beginning of his senior year and the admission of new freshmen into the plebe system. The second ... |
Engines of Creation | K. Eric Drexler | 1,986 | The book features nanotechnology, which Richard Feynman had discussed in his 1959 speech There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom. Drexler imagines a world where the entire Library of Congress can fit on a chip the size of a sugar cube and where universal assemblers, tiny machines that can build objects atom by atom, will... |
Out of the Silent Planet | C. S. Lewis | 1,938 | The story begins with Dr. Elwin Ransom, a professor of philology at a college of the University of Cambridge, on a hiking trip in the English Midlands. Being refused lodging in the village of Nadderby he must travel into the Day the six miles to Sterk. He comes to a small, isolated cottage, the home of a woman and her... |
The Variable Man | Philip K. Dick | null | The Terran system is growing and expanding all the time. But an old and corrupt Centaurian Empire is holding Terra down, as it encircles the Terran system and will not let the humans grow out of their current empire. For this reason Terra is at war with Proxima Centauri and is trying to find a way of breaking free fro... |
Eric | Terry Pratchett | 1,990 | The story is a parody of the tale of Faust, and follows the events of Sourcery in which the Wizard Rincewind was trapped in the Dungeon Dimensions. Rincewind wakes in a strange place, having been summoned by the 13-year-old demonologist, Eric Thursley, who wants the mastery of all kingdoms, to meet the most beautiful ... |
The Sirens of Titan | Kurt Vonnegut | 1,959 | The protagonist is Malachi Constant, the richest man in 22nd-century America. He possesses extraordinary luck that he attributes to divine favor which he has used to build upon his father's fortune. He becomes the centerpoint of a journey that takes him from Earth to Mars in preparation for an interplanetary war, to M... |
Mila 18 | Leon Uris | null | As in many other books by Uris, the story is largely told from the standpoint of a newspaperman; in this case, an American-Italian journalist, Christopher de Monti, who is assigned to Warsaw after covering the Spanish civil war. Although meant to be a dispassionate and neutral observer, he meets and becomes intimate w... |
QB VII | Leon Uris | null | Parts one and two concern the plaintiff and the defendant in this trial and take us through their lives before meeting in 1967. The plaintiff is Adam Kelno, a doctor pressed into the service of the Nazis after Poland was overrun in World War II. As head physician in a concentration camp, he has the opportunity to save... |
Freaky Friday | Mary Rodgers | null | A willful, disorganized teenage girl, Annabelle Andrews, awakens one Friday morning to find herself in the body of her mother, with whom she argued the previous night. Suddenly in charge of taking care of the New York family's affairs and her younger brother Ben (whom Annabelle has not-so-affectionately nicknamed "Ape... |
How Few Remain | Harry Turtledove | 1,997 | The point of divergence is September 10, 1862, during the American Civil War. In our timeline, a Confederate messenger lost General Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191, which detailed Lee's plans for the Invasion of the North. The orders were soon found by Union soldiers, and using them, George McClellan was able to hal... |
Perelandra | C. S. Lewis | 1,943 | The story starts with the philologist Elwin Ransom, some years after his return from Mars at the end of Out of the Silent Planet, receiving a new mission from Oyarsa, the angelic ruler of Mars. After summoning Lewis, the first person narrator, to his country home, Ransom explains to Lewis that he (Ransom) is to travel... |
Teranesia | Greg Egan | 1,999 | The novel explores an unusual connection between molecular genetics and quantum computing, with criticism of some of what it considers the excesses of postmodernism and feminism. However, most of the novel focuses on future south-east Asian politics (Egan criticizes Indonesian imperialism and Australian treatment of r... |
On the Road | Jack Kerouac | 1,957 | The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Salvatore “Sal” Paradise, and his new friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his carefree attitude and sense for adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to explore all kicks and an inspiration and catalyst for Sal’s travels. The novel contains five parts, three o... |
Vernon God Little | D. B. C. Pierre | 2,003 | The title character is a fifteen-year-old boy who lives in a small town in the U.S. state of Texas. When his friend Jesus Navarro commits suicide after killing sixteen bullying schoolmates, suspicion falls on Vernon, who becomes something of a scapegoat in his small hometown of Martirio. Fearing the death penalty, he ... |
The Last Hero | Terry Pratchett | 2,001 | A message, carried by pointless albatross, arrives for Lord Vetinari from the Agatean Empire. The message explains that the Silver Horde (a group of aged barbarians introduced in Interesting Times, wherein they conquered the Empire, and led by Cohen the Barbarian, now the Emperor) have set out on a quest. The first he... |
Vile Bodies | Evelyn Waugh | 1,930 | Adam Fenwick-Symes is the novel's antihero; his quest to marry Nina parodies the conventions of romantic comedy, as the traditional foils and allies prove distracted and ineffectual. War looms, Adam's circle of friends disintegrates, and Adam and Nina's engagement flounders. At the book's end, we find Adam alone on an... |
Gilgamesh the King | Robert Silverberg | 1,984 | The novel is told from the point of view of Gilgamesh, and is primarily ambivalent about the supernatural elements of the epic. Most of the events are portrayed in a fairly realistic manner, and the reader is left undecided as to whether certain events are coincidence, or divine intervention. Silverberg afterwards wro... |
Roma Eterna | Robert Silverberg | null | The novel is presented as a series of vignettes over a period of about 1500 years, from 1282 ab urbe condita (AD 529) to 2723 AUC (AD 1970). Most of the story-chapters involve Roman politics, either the competition between the Western and Eastern Empires to dominate the other or the violent creation of the Second Roma... |
The Emerald City of Oz | L. Frank Baum | 1,910 | At the beginning of this story, it is made quite clear that Dorothy, the primary protagonist of many of the previous Oz books, is in the habit of freely speaking of her adventures to her only living relatives, her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Neither of them believes a word of her stories, but consider her a dreamer. She ... |
A Door Into Ocean | Joan Slonczewski | 1,986 | The novel is set in the future, on the fictional planet of Shora, a moon covered by water. The inhabitants of this planet, known as Sharers, are all female. Sharers use genetic engineering to control the ecology of their planet. They are peaceful beings who "share" — that is, they have a spiritual and linguistic union... |
The Robber Bride | Margaret Atwood | 1,993 | During their most recent outing, three friends see Zenia, a long-dead university classmate who had stolen, one by one, their respective beaux. The novel alternates between the present and flashbacks featuring the points of view of Tony, Charis, and Roz, respectively. Zenia has given each woman a different version of h... |
Lazarillo de Tormes | null | 1,554 | Lázaro is a boy of humble origins from Salamanca. After his stepfather is accused of thievery, his mother asks a wily blind beggar to take Lazarillo (little Lázaro) on as his apprentice. Lázaro develops his cunning while serving the blind beggar and several other masters. Table of contents: *Prologue *Chapter (or trea... |
The Day of the Locust | Nathanael West | 1,939 | The book follows a young man named Tod Hackett who thinks of himself as a painter and artist, but who works in Hollywood as a costume designer and background painter. He falls in love with Faye Greener, an aspiring starlet who lives nearby. Between his work in the studio and his introduction to Faye's friends, he is s... |
On Her Majesty's Secret Service | Ian Fleming | 1,963 | For more than a year, James Bond, British Secret Service operative 007, has been involved in "Operation Bedlam": trailing the private criminal organisation SPECTRE and its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The organisation had hijacked two nuclear devices and subsequently blackmailed the western world, as described in Thu... |
The Mote in God's Eye | Jerry Pournelle | 1,974 | The book is split up into four parts. In the year AD 3017, humanity is recovering slowly from an interstellar civil war that tore apart the first Empire of Man. A new Empire has risen and is occupied in establishing control over the remnants of its predecessor, by force if needed. Commander Lord Roderick Blaine, havin... |
The Dot and the Line | null | null | The story details a straight line who is hopelessly in love with a dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. The line, unable to fall out of love and willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, manages to bend himself an... |
The Egg and I | Betty MacDonald | 1,945 | MacDonald begins her book with a summary description of her childhood and family. Her father was an engineer, and moved frequently with his family throughout the West. Her mother's theory that a wife must support her husband in his career comes into play when the author marries a friend of her brother ("Bob") who soon... |
Persuasion | Jane Austen | 1,818 | Anne Elliot is the overlooked middle daughter of the vain Sir Walter, a spendthrift baronet who is all too conscious of his good looks and rank. Anne's mother, a loving, intelligent woman whom her second daughter resembles in appearance and temperament, is long dead. Anne's older sister, Elizabeth, takes after her fat... |
Stand on Zanzibar | John Brunner | 1,968 | The story is set in 2010, mostly in the United States. A number of plots and many vignettes are played out in this future world, based on Brunner's extrapolation of social, economic, and technological trends. The key main trends are based on the enormous population and its impact: social stresses, eugenic legislation,... |
Rubyfruit Jungle | Rita Mae Brown | 1,973 | The novel focuses on Molly Bolt, the adopted daughter of a poor family, who possesses remarkable beauty and who is aware of her lesbianism from early childhood. Her relationship with her mother is rocky, and at a young age her mother, referred to as "Carrie," informs Molly that she is not her own biological child but ... |
Fallen Dragon | Peter F. Hamilton | null | Fallen Dragon takes place during the 25th century. In the preceding centuries, a means of Faster-than-light (FTL) space travel was discovered, allowing a speed of one-half of a light-year per day. This led to a series of colonization efforts in a globe about 70 light years around Earth, but these ended as their costs ... |
Maus | Art Spiegelman | null | The book opens with a scene from Spiegelman's Rego Park childhood in 1958. He runs to his father after being left behind by his friends, but his father responds in broken English, "Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!" As an adult, ... |
The Sea-Wolf | Jack London | 1,904 | Like The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf tells the story of a soft, domesticated protagonist, in this novel's case an intellectual man named Humphrey van Weyden, forced to become tough and self-reliant by exposure to cruelty and brutality. The story starts with him aboard a San Francisco ferry, called Martinez, which c... |
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