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The idea for Irish author Sally Rooney's fourth novel, Intermezzo (Faber & Faber, 2024), came during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Rooney observed her husband playing online chess, and she herself became fascinated with the "mathematical elegance"...

Eugene O’Neill is one of the most famous American dramatists, and while his 1928 play Strange Interlude is not as well known today, it is still one of the most important, albeit quite controversial, works in his oeuvre.

The play opened January 30,...

After hearing about his straight best friend Dale's upcoming summer adventure at a Marine Corps boot camp, Greg's ears perk up, only hearing "summer camp" in his friend's description of what he will be doing during the summer. Against his better...

Written by American author Susan Choi, Flashlight (published in 2025) reflects the mood of the novel's story, which follows a father, named Serk, and his ten-year-old daughter called Louisa. At the start of the novel, the duo walk at dusk. The...

Ben Markcoitz's The Rest of Our Lives, which was published first published in March 2025, tells the story of a man named Tom Layward, whose wife cheated on him years prior to the events of the novel. After her affair, Tom vowed to divorce his wife...

Published in 2024 by Sceptre, Andrew Miller's The Land in Winter is a decidedly English novel. Set over the course of three months -- from December 1962 to February 1963 -- the novel follows Eric Parry, who lives with his wife in the idyllic...

David Szalay's Flesh, published in 2025, tells a story as old as time: István, a fifteen-year-old boy who grew up living in a housing project in Hungary, finds success and eventually works his way into Hungary's top one-percent of income earners...

Consisting of 15,693 lines of verse, the Iliad has been hailed as the greatest epic of Western civilization. Although we know little about the time period when it was composed and still less about the epic's composer, the Iliad's influence on...

"The Fall of the House of Usher" was one of Edgar Allan Poe's first contributions to Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, of which he was an associate editor. The story was printed in 1839, a little over a year after "Ligeia," which Poe always...

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was the last of Twain's novels written during the apex of his career. As a work it shows his more mature writing, hinting at some of the cynical and dark themes that he would obsess over in his final...

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt is a nonfiction self-help book first published in March 2024. Haidt—a social psychologist currently teaching at New York University's Stern School of Business—blends social commentary, cultural criticism,...

Max Porter's novella Shy was published in 2023, and tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy named Shy, who is sent to a boarding school for the most troubled boys. The novella is set in 1995, and follows the aforementioned Shy over the course of...

In the pantheon of works by the illustrious British author and playwright Agatha Christie, The Seven Dials Mystery (1929) isn't especially well-known. This novel brings together the characters of one of Christie's previous novels, including Lady...

Originally published in German, Three Bags Full (2005) has since been translated into more than thirty languages, including English. The novel is told from the perspective of a flock of sheep who decide to investigate the murder of their shepherd,...

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" was adapted for film in 1992 by Jeri Cain Rossi, starring Joe Coleman. The film, titled "Black Hearts Bleed Red," was not well-received by critics. The story was also adapted as a modern chamber opera by David Volk at...

Harry G. Allard Jr's book Miss Nelson Is Missing was first published in 1977 and met with virtually universal critical acclaim for painting the picture of a venomous substitute teacher named Viola Swamp. The book, which was widely read by school...

The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk is a nonfiction psychology and self-help book first published in September 2014. As the subtitle Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma suggests, the book is a holistic exploration of...

"The Monkey's Paw" is a chilling and suspenseful short story by W.W Jacobs, first included in Harper’s Magazine and then published in England in 1902 in his collection "The Lady of the Barge." The story has been included in dozens of collections,...

Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America was published in 2023. It was a New York Times bestseller and was reviewed favorably.

The origins of the book lie in Richardson’s desire to answer questions that people...

An irreverent science-fiction adventure novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy constitutes the first installment of a five-book “trilogy” by Douglas Adams. The story is derived largely from a radio show, the scripts of which Adams compiled to...

Several critics have compared Ki-young Kim's 1960 film The Housemaid to Bong Joon Ho's Academy Award-winning 2019 film Parasite. Like Parasite, The Housemaid tells a story about an upper middle class family wrestling with issues of class and...

There have only been a handful of directors whose first films have captured the cultural zeitgeist like Robert Eggers' The Witch (2015). The film, which stars Anya Taylor-Joy in her breakthrough role as Thomasin, is set in the early 1600s in New...