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Published in 1951, The Illustrated Man is a collection of short stories by science fiction author Ray Bradbury. These otherwise-unrelated stories are tied together with an overarching narrative: the story of the living tattoos on the "illustrated...

Hoot is written by Carl Hiaasen and was published in 2002. This is a story that takes place in Coconut Grove, Florida, and is mostly about Roy Eberhardt, who has just moved to Florida after moving to many different places and is the new kid.

Roy...

"Ever" is the author's debut novella which could be variously interpreted and uses imaginative language along with an interesting syntactic structure. What's interesting are the bracketed paragraphs along with the poetic repetition and strong...

Bleachers, written by John Grisham, was first published during 2003 and was later published during 2004 by Arrow. This fictional story highlights the love and loss that protagonist Neely Crenshaw experiences as he takes a trip down memory lane.

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"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...

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is the third novel in the Millennium Trilogy written by Stieg Larsson. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest starts right after the events of The Girl Who Played with Fire. Lisbeth Salander lies in a Swedish...

The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second novel in the Millennium Trilogy written by Stieg Larsson. The Girl Who Played with Fire starts a year after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Lisbeth Salander returns to Sweden, she calls her...

Under The Dome is a science fiction novel by Stephen King. The story is set in and around a small town in Maine and is an intricate, complex story with multiple characters that tell how the town's inhabitants deal with being cut off from the...

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a Stephen King novel published in 1999. King novels can—generally speaking—be divided into two elemental types. Some feature large ensemble casts of characters that eschew any obviously singular perspective or...

This historical novel, heavily based on true experience, tells the life of a Jewish man facing extreme prejudice. Giorgio Bassani reveals his take on the world, on life, through the eyes of his twenty-seven year old self in this 1962 novel....

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was originally published by Haruki Murakami in three sections in the mid-'90s and was translated into English by Jay Rubin in '97. The three books were titled, The Book of the Thieving Magpie, The Book of the Prophesying...

John F. Kennedy was elected the 35th president of the United States and served that role until his assassination in November 1963. However, few know of his political background prior to his time in office. Before becoming president, Kennedy...

The Vicar of Wakefield, published between 1761 and 1762, is Oliver Goldsmith's most famous work and one of the most beloved and widely-read 18th century English novels. It is also considered a model example of the sentimental novel, one of the...

In 1935, T.S. Eliot, famed poet of modernist despair and convert to the Anglican Church, was commissioned to write a play for Kent's annual Canterbury Festival. There were few explicit restrictions on subject matter.

That Eliot chose to dramatize...

The Moon Tiger, written by Penelope Lively, was published in 1987. It is about Claudia Hampton, who is very ill from cancer, and is thinking about her life.

Claudia's first thought is about her father who died during WWI. Claudia has a competitive...

A Northern Light, also known as A Gathering Light in the U.K., is a young adult historical novel written by Jennifer Donnelly. Harcourt Children’s Books released the novel on April 1st, 2003.

The novel takes place in Herkimer Country and explores...

Midaq Alley (Zuqaq al-Midaq) was published in Egypt, in Arabic, in 1947. The novel takes place in the Gamaliya neighborhood of Cairo, which is where Naguib Mahfouz and his family lived for the early years of his life. It has remained one of...

Alive is a novel written by Piers Paul Read in 1974. The book documents the events of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash in the Andes which led to many deaths. The book, the story deals with factual occurrences and tells the story of the...

Iris Chang is an American novelist born on March 28, 1968 in Princeton, New Jersey. She attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study journalism and subsequently enrolled at Johns Hopkins University to earn her masters in...

Born into a middle class family in Pittsburgh in 1945, Dillard describes her childhood as primarily internal. She primarily related to the world as it concerned her, but in college she discovered an entirely new perspective on life. At Hollins...

Theological-Political Treatise is a work by the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza knew that his work would attract unwanted criticism and censorship, so he published it anonymously in 1670 and the publisher also used an alias. In addition,...

Barrio Boy, written by Ernesto Galarza, is an extraordinary novel that tells the story about his childhood. This book was originally published during 1971 and was later published during 1991 by the University of Notre Dame Press. It starts in...

In July, 1979 Nadine Godimer’s novel Burger’s Daughter was judged to be indecent and capable of endangering the state of the Republican of South Africa, on the grounds that its story depicted white characters as bad guys and black characters as...

Ysabel is a fiction novel published in 2007 by Penguin Group. The novel was written by the Canadian author Guy Gavrill Kay and it is his tenth novel. The novel is critically acclaimed and has won the award for the World Fantasy Award for Best...