Fiction 
8. East of Eden
9. Emma
This now classic book revealed Flannery O'Connor as one of the most original and provocative writers to emerge from the South. Her apocalyptic vision of life is expressed through grotesque, often comic situations in which the principal character faces a problem of salvation: the grandmother, in the title story, confronting the murderous Misfit; a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river;
...The House of Mirth is an uncompromising depiction of 19th-century New York society. Lily Bart is a society lady who is unwilling to marry for love, but equally unwilling to marry as society dictates. She sabotages every advantageous opportunity she receives, until her society friends begin to hasten her downfall for their own ends.
17. The Iliad
18. The jungle
19. Lord Jim
Marlow narrates the story of Lord Jim, a promising young man who falls from grace, then attempts to redeem himself in Patusan, a fictional Indonesian island. His story is told entirely through the perspectives of Marlow and others who join their voices to his, and so the enigma at the centre of Jim's character and actions is never entirely resolved. Marlow also narrates Conrad's novels Heart of Darkness and Youth and Chance.
20. Moby Dick
One of the great works of American literature, Moby-Dick is the epic tale of one man's fight against a force of nature. The outcast youth Ishmael, succumbing to wanderlust during a dreary New England autumn, signs up for passage aboard a whaling ship. The Pequod sails under the command of the one-legged Captain Ahab, who has set himself on a monomaniacal quest to capture the cunning white whale that robbed him of his leg: Moby-Dick. Capturing life
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