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Jacques Tourneur is one of the greatest film directors all of time whose name most people don’t know. He directed three classic horror/thriller films in a row for legendary producer Val Lewton: Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard...

Although occasionally referenced among those movies described as “film noir” the reality is that the only people who consider Laura to belong to that particular genre are those who think that any movie filmed in black and white after the bombing...

Casablanca is one of the most recognized films in Hollywood history. The American Film Institute named it the third-best American film of all time, with Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane coming in first and second, respectively. In 1983, The...

Sook Nyul Choi’s Year of Impossible Goodbyes is the first book in Year of Impossible Goodbyes series. The other books in the series are Echoes of the White Giraffe (1993) and Gathering of Pearls (1994). Published in 1991, it is set in 1945 Korea...

Alicia: My Story is the autobiographical account of Alicia Appleman-Jurman, a Polish-born Israeli–American writer who wrote about her experiences in enduring the Holocaust. The autobiography was published in Toronto and New York by Bantam in 1988....

A Prayer for Owen Meany is a novel written by John Winslow Irving and published in 1989. Irving’s seventh novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany recounts the life of John Wheelwright, whose best friend is named Owen Meany.

This novel was well received and...

William Dean Howells is an American writer and critic who lived between 1837 and 1920. He is also known for his influence and contribution to the printing business, something he did since an early age. The first piece of writing written by Howell...

Cao Xueqin(Tsao Hsueh-Chin)'s Dream of the Red Chamber, also translated as The Story of the Stone, is widely considered the greatest and most studied of Chinese classical literature. Initially written in the mid 1700s, the work has since been...

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice was the sixth play written by Jim Cartwright. It. was staged at the Royal National Theatre in London and debuted in June of 1992. It was later staged on Broadway in 1994 and was adapted into a film in 1998, before...

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was co-written in 2008 by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece, Annie Barrows, after Shaffer became ill with cancer and couldn't finish writing the book herself. Guernsey was Shaffer's first novel and...

The Hero and the Crown is a 1984 fantasy novel by Robin McKinley and a prequel to her 1982 novel, The Blue Sword, in which the protagonist of the former novel was first featured as a legendary character. The Hero and the Crown won the1985 Newbery...

Small Island is a book written by Andrea Levy in 2004. The novel revolves around World War II and the status of immigrants in Britain after the War. The story tells of a British couple who had been separated when the husband went to fight in the...

Gates of Fire is a historical fiction novel written by Steven Pressfield in 1998. The book revolves mainly around the war between the Greek forces against the imposing Persian army. The Persian forces are being led by the King called Xerxes and he...

Chrétien de Troyes’s romance, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (Le Chevalier de la Charrette in French), was written in the late 12th century, sometime after Louis VII’s daughter Marie became the Countess Marie de Champagne through her 1164...

Persepolis was originally published in France where it won several awards and wide acclaim. In 2003, the novel was published by Random House in the United States. Persepolis is a graphic novel which tells the story of its author and her childhood...

For the uninitiated, Frederick Ogden Nash—or just plain ol’ Ogden Nash as most of his many fans refer to him—could in some ways be considered the psychic twin brother of the other mother that gave birth to Dr. Seuss. The poetry of Nash relies far...

The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen are distinct from those compiled by the Brothers Grimm. Not due to their content so much as their provenance. A little known fact among those who are familiar with the stories of little mermaids and ugly...

The Ebb-Tide was written by noted author Robert Louis Stevenson in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne, his stepson. The novel would be published the very same year that Stevenson died, 1894. Had Stevenson lived, it is questionable whether his...

Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote Weep Not, Child while studying at at Leeds University in England in 1962. Weep Not, Child was the second novel Ngugi wrote, although it was published before his first, The River Between. It follows the tragic story of...

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a children’s novel written by the American writer and illustrator Grace Lin. The novel was published in 2008 and was received extremely well by the public. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is the first book...

A Wind in the Door is a fantasy novel in the Time Quintet series by Madeleine L'Engle. It was published on January 1st, 1973, by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. It is a companion book to L'Engle's 1963 novel, A Wrinkle in Time. It is followed by its...

One of the first indications that William Cullen Bryant would become an American poet to be reckoned with occurred when Bryant was barely into his teenage years. “The Embargo” was not just a work of verse that revealed the early promise of a young...

Closer is the second play by Patrick Marber. It first premiered in 1997 in London at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre. The play is centrally about truth, and Marber blends modern and post-modern styles in order to keep the audience...

Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road" is a portrait of a failing marriage in the confines of 1950's surburbia. Dealing with themes of love, hate, conformity and madness, it is a realisitc and harrowing novel that drives home issues of identity and...