Aeschylus
Agamemnon
Anonymous
Song of Roland Fiction
Epic poem about France's medieval
national hero
Aristophanes
Any Play
Drama
Ancient Greek comic plays
Austen, Jane
Emma
Fiction
Fiction of manners, this novel of
Regency England centers upon a selfassured young lady who is determined
to arrange her life and the lives of those
around her into a pattern dictated by her
romantic fancy.
Austen, Jane
Pride and
Prejudice
Fiction
In early 19th century England, a spirited
young woman copes with the courtship
of a snobbish gentleman as well as the
romantic entanglements of her four
sisters
Bellow, Saul
Adventures of
Augie March
Fiction
Describes the life of Augie March, a
poor Chicago boy growing up during the
Depression, and his search for a career
Bolt, Robert
A Man for All
Seasons
Drama
Historical play about Sir Thomas More,
who was executed for refusing to
acknowledge Henry VIII as head of the
English Church
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian
Chronicles
Science
Fiction
The first Earth people to attempt the
colonization of Mars try to build their
new world in the image of the civilization
they left behind
Buck, Pearl S.
The Good Earth Fiction
Describes the cycle of birth, marriage,
and death of a Chinese peasant family
in the early 1900's.
Cain, James M.
The Postman
Always Rings
Twice
Fiction
This novel is about a drifter who
embarks on a course of destruction
when he falls for the wife of Nick, the
genial owner of a roadside cafe
Caldwell, Erskine
Tobacco Road
Fiction
The story of Georgia sharecropper,
Jeeter Lester, and his family who are
trapped by the bleak economic
conditions of the Depression as well as
by their own limited intelligence and
destructive behavior
Camus, Albert
The Stranger
Fiction
The story of a man who commits a
pointless murder
Drama
A modern translation of the first in an
ancient Greek trilogy which traces the
chain of murder and revenge within the
royal family of Argos
Carroll, Lewis
Alice in
Wonderland
Fiction
Fanciful tale of Alice, who falls down the
rabbit hole into a land of adventure
Cather, Willa
My Antonia
Fiction
A New York lawyer remembers his
boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship
with a simple Bohemian girl
Cervantes, Miguel
Don Quixote
Fiction
Tales of the misadventures of a mixedup knight
Conrad, Joseph
Heart of
Darkness
Fiction
Set in Africa in 1890, this novel tells the
story of a steamship captain on the
Congo River who meets and observes
Kurz, a powerful European and fabled
chief of the Inner Station, who reverts to
awful savagery in an isolated native
trading post
Conrad, Joseph
Lord Jim
Fiction
a man who has been branded a coward
earns the respect of the Malay people
Cooper, James F.
Pathfinder
Fiction
Natty Bumppo helps defend a small
outpost on Lake Ontario from the
Iroquois
Defoe, Daniel
Robinson
Crusoe
Fiction
During one of his several adventurous
voyages in the 1600's, an Englishman
becomes the sole survivor of a
shipwreck and lives for nearly thirty
years on a deserted island
Dickey, James
Deliverance
Fiction
Four men set out for a remote river on a
white-water canoeing adventure that
turns into a nightmare when they are
forced to struggle against man and
nature for survival
Dostoevsky, Feodor
Crime and
Punishment
Fiction
A law student attempts to get away with
the perfect murder
Dreiser, Theodore
An American
Tragedy
Fiction
The corruption of a young man becomes
a portrait of the society that shaped his
ambitions and destroyed him
Eliot, George
Adam Bede
Fiction
Set in the early 19th century English
countryside, an English squire yields to
the temptations of an innocent country
girl. Crime, remorse, and suffering are
the consequences.
Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying
Fiction
In the story, told from multiple points of
view and inner psychological voices, the
members of the Bundren family must
take the body of Addie, matriarch of the
family, to the town where she wanted to
be buried. Along the way we listen to
each of the members of the macabre
pilgrimage while Faulkner heaps upon
them various flavors of disaster
Flaubert, Gustave
Madame
Bovary
Fiction
19th Century novel about Emma
Bovary, the wife of a provincial doctor
who seeks to escape her boredom by
indulging in romantic fantasies and
adulterous affairs
Forster, E. M.
A Room With a
View
Fiction
A charming, young English woman is
soon at war with the snobbery of her
class and her own desires when she
finds herself attracted to someone
socially unsuitable
Goethe
Faust
Drama
An examination of what happens when
a man sells his soul to the devil
Graves, Robert
I Claudius
Fiction
The first of a two-part account of the life
of Roman Emperor Tiberius Claudius.
Written in the form of Claudius'
autobiography, it covers the years from
his early childhood through his election
as Emperor in 41 A.D.
Hammett, Dashiell
The Maltese
Falcon
Detective
Fiction
In San Francisco in 1928, Sam Spade
searches for a priceless statuette. He
finds himself torn between loyalty to his
murdered partner and an opportunity for
personal gain. Considered one the best
detective stories of all time
Hardy, Thomas
The Mayor of
Casterbridge
Fiction
Michael Henchard, an unemployed
farmhand, gets drunk and sells his wife
and baby daughter. Years later, when
he is the sober Mayor of Castebridge,
his past is brought back to haunt him,
and he reverts to drinking
Hawthorne,
Nathaniel
The House of
Seven Gables
Fiction
This novel follows the Pyncheon family
living for years in a home under a man's
curse until his death restores the peace
of their house
Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to
Arms
Fiction
An anti-war love story in which an
American ambulance officer serving on
the Austro-Italian front deserts to join an
English nurse after the retreat of
Caporetto
Hemingway, Ernest
For Whom the
Bell Tolls
Fiction
The story of an American, Robert
Jordan, who fought, during the Spanish
Civil War, with the antifascist guerrillas
in the mountains of Spain
Hersey, John
Hiroshima
Fiction
Compassionate account of the
catastrophic event that heralded the
coming of the nuclear age
Hesse, Herman
Demian
Fiction
A young man rebels against convention,
gets involved in the world of petty crime,
and discovers his new powers for good
and evil
Hugo, Victor
The Hunchback Fiction
of Notre Dame
The tale of Quasimodo, the
hunchbacked bell ringer of Notre Dame
Cathedral, and his struggles to save the
beautiful gypsy dancer, Esmeralda, from
being unjustly executed in medieval
Paris
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New
World
Science
Fiction
Story about a world in which mediocri ty
and conformity are prized
Ibsen, Henrik
A Doll's House
Drama
A searing view of a male-dominated and
authoritarian society in which a woman
struggles and sacrifices to save her
ungrateful husband
James, Henry
Turn of the
Screw
Fiction
Psychological mystery story involving a
governess in a strange mansion full of
secrets
Kafka, Franz
The Trial
Fiction
Joseph K. is suddenly arrested and
must spend the rest of his life fighting a
charge against him about which he can
get no information
Kazantzakis, Nikos
Zorba the
Greek
Fiction
The story of Zorba, a philosophizing,
larger-than-life mine owner who
confronts life with exuberance and wit
Kerouac, Jack
On the Road
Fiction
The novel that defined the beat
generation of the 1950's, in which Sal
Paradise tells about his travels
throughout the North American
continent in search of belief and
meaning
Kipling, Rudyard
Kim
Fiction
Kim, the orphaned son of an Irish
soldier, grows up in British India and
becomes involved in the British Secret
Service
Lewis, Sinclair
Babbit
Fiction
This tale of a conniving, prosperous real
estate man who becomes one of the
ugliest and most convincing characters
in American fiction, is a satire of middle
class life
London, Jack
Call of the Wild Fiction
The adventures of an unusual dog, part
St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, that
is forcibly taken to the Klondike
goldfields where he eventually becomes
the leader of a wolf pack
Mailer, Norman
The Naked
and the Dead
Fiction
A 1948 novel about a platoon of thirteen
American foot soldiers attempting to
take the Japanese-held Pacific island of
Anopopei
McCullers, Carson
The Heart is a
Lonely Hunter
Fiction
A deaf-mute who has lost his only friend
to a hospital for the insane becomes the
recipient of the confidences of several
other town residents
Orczy, Baroness
The Scarlet
Pimpernal
Fiction
Adventure story of the French revolution
in which a young English noble rescues
distressed aristocrats
Paton, Alan
Cry the Beloved Fiction
Country
In this classic tale of apartheid in South
Africa, a young black South African, who
is accused of murdering a white man,
turns to his minister father and a white
attorney for help, but the racial problems
of the country prevent justice from being
served.
Rostand, Edmund
Cyrano de
Bergerac
Drama
17th century French work about the
swashbuckling and eloquent Cyrano de
Bergerac who secretly loves his cousin
Roxane, but thinks he is too ugly to ever
win her affections
Scott, Sir Walter
Ivanhoe
Fiction
Relates the adventures of Saxon knight,
Ivanhoe, in 1194, the year of Richard
the Lion-Hearted's return from the Third
Crusade
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Fiction
Obsessed university student, Victor
Frankenstein, creates a being by
reanimating the dead. However, when it
does open its eyes he flees, leaving
behind a being that craves affection and
acceptance, but is reviled instead. The
creature vowing revenge, pursues Victor
tot he ends of the earth
Steinbeck, John
Grapes of
Wrath
Fiction
The saga of a family in 1939 that
struggles through the Great Depression
by Laboring as Dust Bowl migrants
Sroker, Bram
Dracula
Fiction
A classic of the gothic novel genre. The
mysterious Tansylvanian Count Dracula
wreaks havoc on young businessman
Jonathan Harker, his fiancée, Mina, and
several others. When he is revealed to
be a vampire, he must be destroyed at
all costs
Styron, William
Sophie's
Choice
Fiction
Three friends, Stingo, a 22 year-old
write; Sophie, a survivor of the Nazi
camps; and Nathan, her mercurial lover,
share magical, heart-warming times until
doom overtakes them as Sophie's and
Nathan's darkest secrets are revealed
Swift, Jonathan
Gullliver's
Travels
Fiction
A satirical commentary about society,
class, and thought in 18th century
Britain presented as Gulliver takes an
allegorical journey through fantastic
lands
Turgenev, Ivan
Fathers and
Sons
Fiction
Novel portraying a new type of hero, a
"nihilist," who would represent the
values of the younger generation,
revealing the full breadth of 19th century
Russia
Virgil
Aeneid
Fiction
The epic poem describing the fall of
Troy and the legendary founding of
Rome
Voltaire
Candide
Fiction
A philosophical novel satirizing the
optimistic creed "all is for the best in this
best of all possible worlds." through the
misadventures of Candide
Drama
Set at a Mexican hotel in the early
1940's, the drama presents several
character portraits of searing intensity.
They include the minister, Shannon,
who is tortured with self-loathing, and
Hannah Jelkes, a person living free from
societal mores, who is entirely without
shame
Williams, Tennessee Night of the
Iguana
Wilson, August
Fences
Drama
Troy Maxson, a strong, hard man who
has learned how to be Black and proud
in the 1950's, finds the changing spirit of
the 1960's hard to deal with. The story
tells f his alienation and its effect on his
family
Wilson, August
The Piano
Lesson
Drama
Dramatizes the struggles of an AfricanAmerican family as they consider selling
a prized possession, an ornate upright
piano, in order to buy the tract of land
upon which they were once enslaved
Wright, Richard
Native Son
Fiction
This is the story of a young AfricanAmerican man, tapped in the povertystricken ghetto of Chicago's South Side,
who finds release only in acts of
violence
Below are some more titles – for which I don’t yet have plot synopses.
Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Tennessee Williams
The Glass Menagerie
A Streetcar Named Desire
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities
Victor Hugo
Les Miserables
Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
George Orwell
1984
Animal Farm
Khaled Hossaini The Kite Runner
Truman Capote In Cold Blood
James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man