Showing 1 - 20 of 35  There are a total of 84 valid entries on the list.

1. 1984

Book cover for "1984"
Star rating for 1984
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities. Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."...
Book cover for "The alchemist"
Star rating for The alchemist
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"A special 25th anniversary edition of Paulo Coehlo's extraordinary international bestselling phenomenon--the inspiring spiritual tale of self-discovery that has touched millions of lives around the world. Combing magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations. Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical...
Book cover for "The aviator's wife"
Star rating for The aviator's wife
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
Despite her own major achievements--she becomes the first licensed female glider pilot in the United States--Anne Morrow Lindbergh is viewed merely as Charles Lindbergh's wife. The fairy-tale life she once longed for will bring heartbreak and hardships, ultimately pushing her to reconcile her need for love and her desire for independence, and to embrace, at last, life's infinite possibilities for change and happiness.
Book cover for "Bel canto"
Star rating for Bel canto
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked,...
Book cover for "The bell jar"
Star rating for The bell jar
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Esther Greenwood, a talented and successful writer, finds herself spiralling into depression and eventually a suicide attempt, as she grapples with difficult relationships and a society which refuses to take womens aspirations seriously. This extraordinary work--echoing Plath's own experiences as a rising writer/editor in the early 1950s--chronicles the nervous breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful,...
Book cover for "Beloved"
Star rating for Beloved
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved." Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things begin to happen. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the...
Book cover for "Catch-22"
Star rating for Catch-22
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Presents the contemporary classic depicting the struggles of a United States airman attempting to survive the lunacy and depravity of a World War II airbase. Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest--and most celebrated--books of all time. In recent years it has been named to "best novels" lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Set in Italy...
Book cover for "The catcher in the rye"
Star rating for The catcher in the rye
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school.
Book cover for "Cat's cradle"
Star rating for Cat's cradle
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
A young writer decides to interview the children of a scientist primarily responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb
Book cover for "The chaperone"
Star rating for The chaperone
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A novel about the friendship between an adolescent, pre-movie-star Louise Brooks, and the 36-year-old woman who chaperones her to New York City for a summer, in 1922, and how it changes both their lives"--
Book cover for "A clockwork orange"
Star rating for A clockwork orange
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:

A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes

...
Book cover for "The color purple"
Star rating for The color purple
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a Southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years. "Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence"--Back cover.
Book cover for "Defending Jacob"
Star rating for Defending Jacob
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. When a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: his fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. As the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own--between loyalty and justice, between the truth and allegation, between...

14. Emma

Book cover for "Emma"
Star rating for Emma
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Content with her life and not interested in marriage, Emma Woodhouse, a rich and beautiful heiress, causes complications with her matchmaking schemes.
Book cover for "Fahrenheit 451"
Star rating for Fahrenheit 451
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and...
Book cover for "The great Gatsby"
Star rating for The great Gatsby
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
A young man newly rich tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married. This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this...
Book cover for "Heart of darkness"
Star rating for Heart of darkness
Average Rating:
2.7 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
"Joseph Conrad's enduring portrait of the ugliness of colonialism in a deluxe edition with a gripping cover by 'Hellboy' artist Mike Mignola. 'Heart of Darkness' is the thrilling tale of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer recounting his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz. Traveling upriver into the heart of the African continent, he gradually becomes obsessed by this enigmatic, wraith-like figure. Marlow's discovery...
Book cover for "Invisible man"
Star rating for Invisible man
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Notes:
Classic
Description:
Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. "Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity--powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto". "Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list...
Book cover for "The kitchen house"
Star rating for The kitchen house
Series:
Kitchen house volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"In 1790, Lavinia, a seven-year-old Irish orphan with no memory of her past, arrives on a tobacco plantation where she is put to work as an indentured servant with the kitchen house slaves. Though she becomes deeply bonded to her new family, Lavinia is also slowly accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. As time passes she finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds...
Book cover for "The kite runner"
Star rating for The kite runner
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present day. The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy Afghan youth and the...