Adult Challenged Books


Showing 1 - 20 of 71  There are a total of 137 valid entries on the list.

1. 1984

Book cover for "1984"
Star rating for 1984
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
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 "All quiet on the western front"
Star rating for All quiet on the western front
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:

This autobiographical novel of WWI that inspired multiple film adaptions evokes “the horrors of modern warfare has lost none of its force” (The Times, London).

In 1914, as the world descends into war, twenty-year-old Paul Baümer and his classmates enlist in the German army. Full of youthful excitement and visions of adventure, they quickly find themselves caught in a whirlwind of death and brutality. Though

...
Book cover for "All the king's men"
Star rating for All the king's men
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Willie Stark's obsession with political power leads to the ultimate corruption of his gubernatorial administration.
Book cover for "An American tragedy"
Star rating for An American tragedy
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
The author's classic vision of the dark side of American life looks at the failings of the American dream, in the story of the rise and fall of Clyde Griffiths, who sacrifices everything in his desperate quest for success.
Book cover for "Angela's ashes"
Star rating for Angela's ashes
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
The author recounts his childhood in Depression-era Brooklyn as the child of Irish immigrants who decide to return to worse poverty in Ireland when his infant sister dies
Book cover for "Angels & demons"
Star rating for Angels & demons
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Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
The murder of a world-famous physicist raises fears that the Illuminati are operating again after centuries of silence, and religion professor Robert Langdon is called in to assist with the case.
Book cover for "Animal dreams"
Star rating for Animal dreams
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"Animals dream about the things they do in the daytime just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd's advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona, to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds...

8. Anthem

Book cover for "Anthem"
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Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:

Anthem takes place in a dark, dystopian future. Collectivism and socialist economics have driven mankind to a technological standstill. The individual is not acknowledged in this society, the word "I" having been eliminated from speech altogether. Rand explores the tension between collectivism and individualism and equates the errors or triumphs of these with socialism and capitalism.

Book cover for "The art of racing in the rain"
Star rating for The art of racing in the rain
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Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
Nearing the end of his life, Enzo, a dog with a philosopher's soul, tries to bring together the family, pulled apart by a three year custody battle between daughter Zoe's maternal grandparents and her father Denny, a race car driver.
Book cover for "As I lay dying"
Star rating for As I lay dying
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member--including Addie--and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life. As I Lay Dying is the harrowing, darkly comic tale of the Bundren family's trek across Mississippi to bury Addie, their wife and mother, as told by each of the family members--including Addie herself.
Book cover for "The autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman"
Star rating for The autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
An old woman recalls her struggle against bigotry from her childhood during the Civil War to her participation in the twentieth-century civil rights demonstrations
Book cover for "The awakening"
Star rating for The awakening
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
Condemned as "sordid" and "immoral" on its publication in 1899, this story of a woman trapped in her marriage effectively ended Chopin's career but was revived as a proto-feminist classic in the 1970s. What Newsweek calls Chopin's "prophetic psychology" ensures its timeliness today.
Book cover for "The bean trees"
Star rating for The bean trees
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
Young, bright Taylor Greer leaves her poverty-stricken life in Kentucky and heads west, picking up an abandoned Native American baby girl whom she names Turtle and finds a new home in Tucson with Mattie, an old woman who takes in Central American refugees.

14. Beloved

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 "Between the world and me"
Star rating for Between the world and me
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary...
Book cover for "Black like me"
Star rating for Black like me
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
A white writer recounts his experiences in the American South following treatments that darkened his skin and shares his thoughts on the problems of prejudice and racial injustice.
Book cover for "Bless me, Ultima"
Star rating for Bless me, Ultima
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Ultima, a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic, comes to Antonio Marez's New Mexico family when he is six years old, and she helps him discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past.
Book cover for "The bluest eye"
Star rating for The bluest eye
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove -- a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others -- who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
Book cover for "The bonesetter's daughter"
Star rating for The bonesetter's daughter
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Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
Struggling to regain her voice and express her true feelings to her husband, ghostwriter Ruth Young discovers that her inability to speak closely parallels the story of her mother LuLing's early life in China.
Book cover for "The Canterbury tales"
Star rating for The Canterbury tales
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Chaucer's work begins at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, England, where a group of pilgrims have assembled on their way to Canterbury. Harry Bailly, the innkeeper, suggests a contest: whoever tells the best tale will win a supper when they reach Canterbury.