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No one could imagine that frequent visits to the Detroit zoo might be so inspiring and mesmerizing that some time later that frequent visitor would start working on the series of books about the secret world hidden in the zoo. However, it is true...

The Indian in the Cupboard is a children’s fantasy novel published in 1980 by British writer Lynne Reid Bank. The book contains illustrations in the British version by Robin Jacques with Brock Cole taking over the visual imagery for the U.S....

One of Zola’s first full-length novels, Thérèse Raquin remains one of his best-known. When he sat down to write the story of Thérèse, her acquaintances, and her descent into murder and suicide, Zola was only twenty-seven years old. In 1866, he had...

Cloudstreet is Australian writer Tim Winton’s fifth novel, published in 1991. Winton wrote the novel in longhand, much of it inside a cafe in Paris. One day he was traveling by bus with his wife and small child and the handwritten manuscript,...

The kernel for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came from a hypothetical question that Michel Gondry's friend, artist Pierre Bismuth, proposed over dinner: What if you received a card in the mail that stated you had been erased from someone's...

Breaking News (A Stunning and Memorable Account of Reporting from Some of the Most Dangerous Places in the World) was written by author Martin Fletcher. It was published during 2008 by Thomas Dunne Books. Fletcher shares his phenomenal story of...

The Attack is a novel that explores the prospects yet the usual occurrence of the suicide bomber that we see frequently in nowadays's headlines. Its protagonist is Dr. Amin Jaafari, a man of Arab outset who is an incorporated Israeli citizen and...

The Swallows of Kabul is a novel written by Yasmina Khadra. It was published in 2002 and is set in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, when the Taliban was in charge there. There are two main couples in the novel. The first couple is Mohsen, a...

The Beast in the Jungle’ was written by Henry James in 1903. It was originally published in a volume of short stories, named The Better Sort. James wrote many psychological tales, such as ‘The Turn of the Screw’, however this novella was...

The poems of Muriel Rukeyser link the revolutionary communist poetry of the 1930s to the countercultural feminist poetry of the 1960s. Her last published collection of original was The Gates, four years before her death in 1980. That she managed...

The Stone Gods was written by Jeanette Winterson and published in 2007. It combines components of a romance novel with a post apocalypse work while still touching on the topics of how governments are controlled by large corporations, the damaging...

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is an essay anthology by American comedian David Sedaris. The essays in the collection are by and large anecdotal and autobiographical in nature. In the anthology, Sedaris chronicles his life experiences and...

A Rumor of War is Philip Caputo’s 1977 memoir focused on his experiences during the Vietnam War. Caputo serves as a Marine Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and was a member of the “first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam.” His unit reached...

Darren Aronofsky is an American filmmaker born on February 12, 1969 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Edward R. Murrow High School, a school with an arts-focused curriculum, he attended Harvard University to study anthropology and...

Sir Ridley Scott began plannng a prequel to his 1979 blockbuster hit, Alieneven as early as 2000, and discussed the project extensively with James Cameron. Ultimately, though, Alien vs. Predatorbecame the project they worked on, leaving Scott to...

Though not one of Hardy's best-known novels, The Return of the Native remains firmly of his canon, and is a dense summation of the preoccupations that run through all of his work.

The Return of the Native was first printed as serial fiction in ...

There is a legend Gabriel Garcia Marquez likes to tell about the writing of his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He claims that he wrote the book barricaded in his study in Mexico, after receiving a vision. One day, while he and...

Cloud Atlas was written by British novelist David Mitchell and published in the United Kingdom by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder and Stoughton in 2004. The novel was released the same year in the United States by Random House.

Cloud Atlas consists...

The Russian Debutante's Handbook is a novel written by Gary Shteyngart and was published by Riverhead publishing company in 2002. Shteyngart himself is a Russian-American and integrated aspects from his initial life in Leningrad into this novel.

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Published in 2010, Super Sad True Love Story is a novel written by Gary Shteyngart. The novel takes place in New York City, where everyone is completely consumed by the media and consumer goods. Interestingly, this book takes place in the near...

Island of the Blue Dolphins was published in 1960. At the time, author Scott O'Dell had only written books for adults, but this novel became his most famous and enduring. It has won the Newbery Medal, has been adapted into film, has inspired a...

"Have A Little Faith" is the second non-fiction book written by Mitch Albom, whose first memoir, "Tuesdays With Morrie", was among the the best-selling memoirs of all time. "Have A Little Faith" is the story of an eight year journey undertaken by...

Italian author Italo Calvino's "Marcovaldo" is a collection of short stories that takes us on a tour of Italy from bust to boom; the first, set in the mid 1950s portrays a poor Italy, and the last, a 1960s Italy that is experiencing the joys of...

Luis Alberto Urrea’s 2009 novel Into the Beautiful North is set in Mexico and United States. The novel follows Nayeli, a nineteen year old girl living in a small Mexican village Tres Camarones. Confronted by the possibility of bandidos taking over...