ENG 4U ISP BOOKLIST
Achebe, Chinua
Things Fall Apart
vol. 2
Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong
man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict
between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal
world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and
the destruction of Okonkwo's world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries.
These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of
encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions
of the soul.
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy
vol.7
Join Douglas Adams's hapless hero Arthur Dent as he travels the
galaxy with his intrepid pal Ford Prefect, getting into horrible messes
and generally wreaking hilarious havoc. Dent is grabbed from Earth
moments before a cosmic construction team obliterates the planet to
build a freeway. You'll never read funnier science fiction; Adams is a
master of intelligent satire, barbed wit, and comedic dialogue. The
Hitchhiker's Guide is rich in comedic detail and thought-provoking
situations and stands up to multiple reads. Required reading for
science fiction fans, this book (and its follow-ups) is also sure to please
fans of Monty Python, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and British
sitcoms.
Allende, Isabel
Alvarez, Julia
House of the Spirits
How the Garcia Girls Lost
their Accents
vol.. 6
vol. 5
not in LCHS library
In this debut novel, the García sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía—and their
family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an
attempt to overthrow a tyrannical dictator is discovered. They arrive in New York City in
1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wild and
wondrous and not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old
ways, but the girls try find new lives: by forgetting their Spanish, by straightening their
hair and wearing fringed bell bottoms. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating
to be caught between the old world and the new.
Alvarez, Julia
In the Time of Butterflies
vol. 9
It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked
Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The
official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a
fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents
of Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of
Las Mariposas—“The Butterflies.”
In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters—Minerva, Patria, María Teresa,
and the survivor, Dedé—speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from hair
ribbons and secret crushes to gunrunning and prison torture, and to describe the everyday
horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s
imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the
human cost of political oppression.
Angelou, Maya
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
vol. 2
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small
Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the
prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in
St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the
consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for
herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I
met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of
imprisoned.
Austen, Jane
Pride and Prejudice
vol. 1
In a remote Hertfordshire village, far off the good coach roads of George III's England, a
country squire of no great means must marry off his five vivacious daughters. At the
heart of this all-consuming enterprise are his headstrong second daughter Elizabeth
Bennet and her aristocratic suitor Fitzwilliam Darcy — two lovers whose pride must be
humbled and prejudices dissolved before the novel can come to its splendid conclusion.
Ballard, J. G.
Empire of the Sun
vol. 8
Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength
greater than all the events that surround him.
Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of
chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a
Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the
bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.
Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches,
and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly
out of joint.
Banks, Russel
The Sweet Hereafter
vol. 13
In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus
accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that
addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: when the worst thing happens, who do
you blame?
Bellow, Saul
Seize the Day
vol. 4
Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his
forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos:
He is separated from his wife and children, at odds with his vain, successful father, failed
in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once cast him as the “type that loses the girl”),
and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day he reviews his past mistakes
and spiritual malaise, until a mysterious philosophizing con man grants him a glorious,
illuminating moment of truth and understanding, and offers him one last hope….
Callaghan, Morley
More Joy in Heaven
xxxx
Based on a real-life character, More Joy in Heaven is a gripping account of the tragic
plight of young Kip Caley, a notorious bank-robber released early from prison and feted
by society as a returning prodigal son.
Earnest, optimistic, and fired by reformist zeal, Kip eventually comes to realize that the
welcome of his supporters is superficial and that their charity is driven by self-interest.
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
vol. 5
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government
agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew
"Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the
person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were
candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the
Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where
children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community
of young soldiers, Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure
from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological
battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers,
and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic
experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the
quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older
siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of
them lie the abilities to remake a world. If the world survives, that is.
Cather, Willa
My Antonia
vol. 2
My Ántonia evokes the Nebraska prairie life of Willa Cather's childhood, and
commemorates the spirit and courage of immigrant pioneers in America. One of Cather's
earliest novels, written in 1918, it is the story of Ántonia Shimerda, who arrives on the
Nebraska frontier as part of a family of Bohemian emigrants. Her story is told through the
eyes of Jim Burden, a neighbor who will befriend Ántonia, teach her English, and follow
the remarkable story of her life.
Working in the fields of waving grass and tall corn that dot the Great Plains, Ántonia
forges the durable spirit that will carry her through the challenges she faces when she
moves to the city. But only when she returns to the prairie does she recover her strength
and regain a sense of purpose in life. In the quiet, probing depth of Willa Cather's art,
Ántonia's story becomes a mobbing elegy to those whose persistence and strength helped
build the American frontier.
Chopin, Kate
The Awakening
vol. 3
When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment
of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian
romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a
stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the straitened
confines of her domestic situation.
Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness
vol. 2
The tale concerns the journey of the narrator (Marlow) up the Congo River on behalf of a
Belgian trading company. Far upriver, he encounters the mysterious Kurtz, an ivory
trader who exercises an almost godlike sway over the inhabitants of the region. Both
repelled and fascinated by the man, Marlow is brought face to face with the corruption
and despair that Conrad saw at the heart of human existence.
Cooper, James Fenimore
Last of the Mohicans
vol. 9
not in LCHS library
Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty
Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in
the bloody battles of the French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful Munro
sisters by hostile savages, the treachery of the renegade brave Magua, the ambush of
innocent settlers, and the thrilling events that lead to the final tragic confrontation
between rival war parties create an unforgettable, spine-tingling picture of life on the
frontier. And as the idyllic wilderness gives way to the forces of civilization, the novel
presents a moving portrayal of a vanishing race and the end of its way of life in the great
American forests.
Crane, Stephen
The Red Badge of Courage
vol. 4
Henry Fleming, a private in the Union Army, runs away from the field of war.
Afterwards, the shame he feels at this act of cowardice ignites his desire to receive an
injury in combat—a “red badge of courage” that will redeem him. Stephen Crane’s novel
about a young soldier’s experiences during the American Civil War is well known for its
understated naturalism and its realistic depiction of battle.
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
xxxx
The first novel in Davies's celebrated Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who
returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross who is destined to be caught
in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide.
Defoe, Daniel
Robinson Crusoe
vol. 9
all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great
River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men
perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by
Pyrates. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional
autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer)—a
castaway who spends years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering
cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.
Dickens, Charles
Great Expectations
vol. 4
In this unflaggingly suspenseful story of aspirations and moral redemption, humble,
orphaned Pip, a ward of his short-tempered older sister and her husband, Joe, is
apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman.
And, indeed, it seems as though that dream is destined to come to pass — because one
day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of "great
expectations." In telling Pip's story, Dickens traces a boy's path from a hardscrabble rural
life to the teeming streets of 19th-century London, unfolding a gripping tale of crime and
guilt, revenge and reward, and love and loss. Its compelling characters include Magwitch,
the fearful and fearsome convict; Estella, whose beauty is excelled only by her
haughtiness; and the embittered Miss Havisham, an eccentric jilted bride.
Dickey, James
Deliverance
vol. 9
not in LCHS library
The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the states most remote white-water river
awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its echoing stone canyons, four men on a
canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment
of horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human
hunter who is offered his own harrowing deliverance.
Dinesen, Isak
Out of Africa
vol. 9
In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her
plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the
natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from
the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive
festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors--lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras,
buffaloes--and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike
and beautiful.
Dostoyevski, F.
Crime and Punishment
vol. 3
Drawing upon experiences from his own prison days, the author recounts in feverish,
compelling tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his
own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil. Believing that he is above the law,
and convinced that humanitarian ends justify vile means, he brutally murders an old
woman — a pawnbroker whom he regards as "stupid, ailing, greedy…good for nothing."
Overwhelmed afterwards by feelings of guilt and terror, Raskolnikov confesses to the
crime and goes to prison. There he realizes that happiness and redemption can only be
achieved through suffering. Infused with forceful religious, social, and philosophical
elements, the novel was an immediate success.
Dreiser, Theodore
Sister Carrie
vol. 8
An 18-year-old girl without money or connections ventures forth from her small town in
search of a better life in Theodore Dreiser's revolutionary first novel. The chronicle of
Carrie Meeber's rise from obscurity to fame — and the effects of her progress on the men
who use her and are used in turn — aroused a storm of controversy and debate upon its
debut in 1900. The author's nonjudgmental portrait of a heroine who violates the
contemporary moral code outraged some critics and elated others. A century later,
Dreiser's compelling plot and realistic characters continue to fascinate readers.
Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man
vol. 2
The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the
South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and
becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating
amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines
himself to be.
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
vol. 5
Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in tum-of-the-century
Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance
and bittersweet wit.
Faulkner, William
The Sound and the Fury
vol. 4
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the
most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy;
haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their
lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions
mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of
the twentieth century.
Findlay, Timothy
The Wars
xxxx
Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian officer, went to war—The War to
End All Wars. He found himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare, of mud and
smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Robert Ross
performed a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death.
Flagg, Fannie
Fried Green Tomatoes at
the Whistle Stop Café
vol.7
Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop
Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s; of gray-headed Mrs.
Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The
tale she tells is also of two women--of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her
friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a
Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of
love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present--for
Evelyn and for us--will never be quite the same again...
Forster, E.M.
A Passage to India
vol. 3
Among the greatest novels of the twentieth century and the basis for director David
Lean’s Academy Award-winning film, A Passage to India tells of the clash of cultures in
British India after the turn of the century. In exquisite prose, Forster reveals the menace
that lurks just beneath the surface of ordinary life, as a common misunderstanding erupts
into a devastating affair.
Gaines, Earnest J,
A Lesson Before Dying
vol. 7
A Lesson Before Dying, is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a
young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men
are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant
Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school
to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his
aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his
learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond
as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting—and defying—the
expected.
Gordimer, Nadine
July's People
vol. 4
For years, it had been what is called a “deteriorating situation.” Now all over South
Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family—liberal whites—
are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village.
What happens to the Smaleses and to July—the shifts in character and relationships—
gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and
misunderstandings between blacks and whites.
Hardy, Thomas
The Mayor of Casterbridge
vol. 15
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five
guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish
himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but
behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality
prone to self-destructive pride and temper.
Hardy, Thomas
The Return of the Native
vol. 11
Against the lowering background of Egdon Heath, fiery Eustacia Vye passes her days,
wishing only for passionate love. She believes that her escape from Egdon lies in
marriage to Clym Yeobright, home from Paris and discontented with his work there. But
Clym wishes to return to the Egdon community; a desire which sets him in opposition to
his wife and brings them both to despair.
Hardy, Thomas
Tess of the D'Ubervilles
vol. 3
The ne'er-do-well sire of a starving brood suddenly discovers a family connection to the
aristocracy, and his selfish scheme to capitalize on their wealth sets a fateful plot in
motion. Jack Durbeyfield dispatches his gentle daughter Tess to the home of their noble
kin, anticipating a lucrative match between the lovely girl and a titled cousin. Innocent
Tess finds the path of the d'Urberville estate paved with ruin in this gripping tale of the
inevitability of fate and the tragic nature of existence.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
The Scarlett Letter
vol. 1
Hester Prynne is the adulteress, forced by the Puritan community to wear a scarlet letter
A on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister and the secret father of her
child, Pearl, struggles with the agony of conscience and his own weakness. Roger
Chillingworth, Hester's husband, revenges himself on Dimmesdale by calculating assaults
on the frail mental state of the conscience-stricken cleric.
Heller, Joseph
Catch 22
vol. 1
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering
bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never
met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army,
which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their
service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions
he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a
man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but
if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore
ineligible to be relieved.
Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to Arms
vol. 1
Hemingway, Ernest
The Old Man and the Sea
vol. 6
Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman,
down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant
marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.
Hemingway, Ernest
The Sun Also Rises
vol. 5
Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the
hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal
bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral
bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions.
Hugo, Victor
Les Miserables
vol. 5
In it, Victor Hugo takes readers deep into the Parisian underworld, immerses them in a
battle between good and evil, and carries them to the barricades during the uprising of
1832 with a breathtaking realism that is unsurpassed in modern prose. Within his
dramatic story are themes that capture the intellect and the emotions: crime and
punishment, the relentless persecution of Valjean by Inspector Javert, the desperation of
the prostitute Fantine, the amorality of the rogue Thénardier, and the universal desire to
escape the prisons of our own minds. Les Misérables gave Victor Hugo a canvas upon
which he portrayed his criticism of the French political and judicial systems, but the
portrait that resulted is larger than life, epic in scope—an extravagant spectacle that
dazzles the senses even as it touches the heart.
Irving, John
The World According to Garp
vol. 12
This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny
Fields--a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death
of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual
extremes--even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy
and sorrow"; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a
comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than
forty countries--with more than ten million copies in print--this novel
provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line:
"In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases."
Joyce, James
A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man
vol. 7
Like much of James Joyce's work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a fictional
re-creation of the Irish writer's own life and early environment. The experiences of the
novel's young hero, Stephen Dedalus, unfold in astonishingly vivid scenes that seem
freshly recalled from life and provide a powerful portrait of the coming of age of a young
man of unusual intelligence, sensitivity, and character.
The interest of the novel is deepened by Joyce's telling portrayals of an Irish upbringing
and schooling, the Catholic Church and its priesthood, Parnell and Irish politics,
encounters with the conflicting roles of art and morality (problems that would follow
Joyce throughout his life), sexual experimentation and its aftermath, and the decision to
leave Ireland.
Rich in details that offer vital insights into Joyce's art, this masterpiece of
semiautobiographical fiction remains essential reading in any program of study in
modern literature.
Kafka, Franz
The Trial
vol. 7
The story of The Trial's publication is almost as fascinating as the novel itself. Kafka
intended his parable of alienation in a mysterious bureaucracy to be burned, along with
the rest of his diaries and manuscripts, after his death in 1924. Yet his friend Max Brod
pressed forward to prepare The Trial and the rest of his papers for publication.
Kesey, Ken
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
vol. 2
the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero
Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers
into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a
gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to
join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything
she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results.
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
vol. 2
Oscar-winning film Charly starring Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom-a mentally
challenged man receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to
heartache.
Kogawa, Joy
Obasan
vol. 3
Based on the author's own experiences, this award-winning novel was the first to tell the
story of the evacuation, relocation, and dispersal of Canadian citizens of Japanese
ancestry during the Second World War.
Knowles, John
A Separate Peace
vol. 2
Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A
Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence.
Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil
athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes
the innocence of these boys and their world.
Lawrence, D.H.
Sons and Lovers
vol. 18
This semi-autobiographical novel explores the emotional conflicts through the
protagonist, Paul Morel, and the suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and
two very different lovers. It is a pre-Freudian exploration of love and possessiveness.
London, Jack
The Call of the Wild
vol. 8
The story is set in the Yukon during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush—a period when
strong sled dogs were in high demand. The novel's central character is a dog named
Buck, a domesticated dog living at a ranch in the Santa Clara valley of California as the
story opens. Stolen from his home and sold into the brutal existence of an Alaskan sled
dog, he reverts to atavistic traits. Buck is forced to adjust to, and survive, cruel treatments
and fight to dominate other dogs in a harsh climate. Eventually he sheds the veneer of
civilization, relying on primordial instincts and lessons he learns, to emerge as a leader in
the wild.
Mailer, Norman
The Naked and the Dead
vol. 10
Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers
who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed
in 1948, The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century
American writing.
Malamud, Bernard
The Fixer
vol. 9
Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story
of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy.
Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds
himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy
is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual
murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not
commit.
Malamud, Bernard
The Natural
vol. 4
--the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball
era--and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable,
that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds
true: "Malamud has done something which--now that he has done it!--looks as if we have
been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and
fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
vol. 10
A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier,
determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful
Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to
her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin
brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister.
Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop
it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, and as the story races to its
inexplicable conclusion, an entire society--not just a pair of murderers—is put on trial.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
Love in the Time of Cholera
vol. 1
In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When
Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is
devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the
years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and
Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after
he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.
Mason, Bonnie Ann
In Country
vol. 4
In the summer of 1984, the war in Vietnam came home to Sam Hughes, whosefather was
killed there before she was born. The soldier-boy in the picture never changed. In a way
that made him dependable. But he seemed so innocent. "Astronauts have been to the
moon," she blurted out to the picture. "You missed Watergate. I was in the second grade."
She stared at the picture, squinting her eyes, as if she expected it to cometo life. But
Dwayne had died with his secrets. Emmett was walking around with his. Anyone who
survived Vietnam seemed to regard it as something personal andembarrassing. Granddad
had said they were embarrassed that they were still alive. "I guess you're not
embarrassed," she said to the picture.
Melville, Herman
Billy Budd
vol. 9
Aboard the warship Bellipotent, the young orphan Billy Budd was called the handsome
sailor. Billy was tall, athletic, nobel looking; he was friendly, innocent, helpful and evercheerful. He was a fierce fighter and a loyal friend. All the men and officers liked him...
All but one: Master-at-Arms Claggart. Envious, petty Claggart plotted to make Billy's life
miserable. But when a fear of mutinies swept through the fleet, Claggart realized he could
do more than just torment the Handsome Sailor...He could frame Billy Budd for treason...
McCourt, Frank
Angela's Ashes
xxxxx
Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland.
“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of
course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse
than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is
the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”
So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to
recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother,
Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works,
and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible, and
beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story.
Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the
Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.
Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a
pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank
endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet
lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.
McCullers, Carson
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
vol. 6
At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types
of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from
small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly
house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds
solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the
human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a
haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the
mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search
for beauty.
Miller, Arthur
All My Sons
xxxxx
Joe Keller and Steve Deever, partners in a machine shop during World War II, turned out
defective airplane parts, causing the deaths of many men. Deever was sent to prison while
Keller escaped punishment and went back to business, making himself very wealthy in
the ensuing years. In Miller’s work of tremendous power, a love affair between Keller's
son, Chris, and Ann Deever, Steve’s daughter, the bitterness of George Keller, who
returns from the war to find his father in prison and his father's partner free, and the
reaction of a son to his father's guilt escalate toward a climax of electrifying intensity.
Mistry, Rohinton
A Fine Balance
xxxxx
With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles
Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and
heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The
government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a
spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who
have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share
one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine
Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.
Mistry, Rohinton
Such a Long Journey
xxxxx
It is Bombay in 1971, the year India went to war over what was to become Bangladesh. A
hard-working bank clerk, Gustad Noble is a devoted family man who gradually sees his
modest life unravelling. His young daughter falls ill; his promising son defies his father’s
ambitions for him. He is the one reasonable voice amidst the ongoing dramas of his
neighbours. One day, he receives a letter from an old friend, asking him to help in what at
first seems like an heroic mission. But he soon finds himself unwittingly drawn into a
dangerous network of deception. Compassionate, and rich in details of character and
place, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of a moral heart in a turbulent world of
change.
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
vol. 6
Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she
is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so
many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her
baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Morrison, Toni
The Bluest Eye
vol. 1
Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other
children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for
normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit
in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of
adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and
conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race,
class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.
Morrison, Toni
Song of Solomon
vol. 8
not in LCHS library
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a
rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly.
With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story
as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from
his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of
strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.
Morrison, Toni
Sula
vol. 14
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse
than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel
Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their
devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It
endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has
become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end?
Morrison, Toni
Tar Baby
xxxxx
Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, Tar Baby is Toni Morrison’s
reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron,
a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive
who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which
plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances
of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and
women.
Oates, Joyce
Them
vol. 8
not in LCHS library
As powerful and relevant today as it on its initial publication, them chronicles the
tumultuous lives of a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, from the
1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her “potent, life-gripping
imagination,” Oates traces the aspirations and struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy
young mother who is filled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequent destinies
of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight to survive in a world of violence and
danger.
O'Connor, Flannery
Wise Blood
vol. 3
It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle
against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a “blind” street preacher
named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an
ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than
Hawks, Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to
lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with “wise blood,” who leads him to a
mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Motes’s
existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness,
blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.
O'Neill, Eugene
Long Day's Journey into Night
xxxxx
Tyler, Anne
The Accidental Tourist
vol. 7
Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and anything out of the ordinary. He
is grounded by loneliness and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts
when he meets Muriel, a deliciously peculiar dog-obedience trainer who up-ends
Macon’s insular world–and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life.
Tyler, Anne
Breathing Lessons
vol. 10
Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty-eight years–and it shows: in their
quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other’s
eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants
nothing more than to fix her son’s broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a man
“who should have married Ann Landers.” And what begins as a day trip to a funeral
becomes an adventure in the unexpected. As Maggie and Ira navigate the riotous twists
and turns, they intersect with an assorted cast of eccentrics–and rediscover the magic of
the road called life and the joy of having somebody next to you to share the ride . . .
bumps and all.
Tyler, Anne
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
vol. 2
Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not of her memory. It was a Sunday night in
1944 when her husband left the little row house on Baltimore’s Calvert Street,
abandoning Pearl to raise their three children alone: Jenny, high-spirited and determined,
nurturing to strangers but distant to those she loves; the older son, Cody, a wild and
incorrigible youth possessed by the lure of power and money; and sweet, clumsy Ezra,
Pearl’s favorite, who never stops yearning for the perfect family that could never be his
own.
Now Pearl and her three grown children have gathered together again–with anger, hope,
and a beautiful, harsh, and dazzling story to tell.
Rand, Ayn
Atlas Shrugged
vol. 10
Atlas Shrugged is the astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of
the world--and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged
stretches the boundaries further than any book you have ever read. It is a mystery, not
about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder--and rebirth--of man's spirit.
Shute, Nevil
On the Beach
vol. 9
After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining
survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and
bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine
captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States
must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere
near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the
ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. Both terrifying and intensely moving,
On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the
most unimaginable nightmare.
Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle
vol. 6
his devastating exposé of the meat-packing industry. A protest novel he privately
published in 1906, the book was a shocking revelation of intolerable labor practices and
unsanitary working conditions in the Chicago stockyards. It quickly became a bestseller,
arousing public sentiment and resulting in such federal legislation as the Pure Food and
Drug Act.|The brutally grim story of a Slavic family who emigrates to America, The
Jungle tells of their rapid and inexorable descent into numbing poverty, moral
degradation, and social and economic despair. Vulnerable and isolated, the family of
Jurgis Rudkus struggles — unsuccessfully — to survive in an urban jungle.
A powerful view of turn-of-the-century poverty, graft, and corruption, this fiercely
realistic American classic is still required reading in many history and literature classes. It
will continue to haunt readers long after they've finished the last page.
Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath
vol. 7
Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust
Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the
Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of
California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an
America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet
majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately
stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength,
the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of
equality and justice in America.
Swift, Johnathon
Gulliver's Travels
vol. 6
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) intended this masterpiece, as he once wrote Alexander Pope,
to "vex the world rather than divert it." Savagely ironic, it portrays man as foolish at best,
and at worst, not much more than an ape.
The direct and unadorned narrative describes four remarkable journies of ship's surgeon
Lemuel Gulliver, among them, one to the land of Lilliput, where six-inch-high
inhabitants bicker over trivialities; and another to Brobdingnag, a land where giants
reduce man to insignificance.
Written with disarming simplicity and careful attention to detail, this classic is diverse in
its appeal: for children, it remains an enchanting fantasy. For adults, it is a witty parody
of political life in Swift's time and a scathing send-up of manners and morals in 18thcentury England.
Vonnegut Jr., Kurt
Breakfast of Champions
xxxxx
In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging
writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as
truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism,
success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.
Vonnegut Jr., Kurt
Slaughterhouse Five
vol. 3
Slaughterhous-Five is one of the world's great anti-war books. Centering on the
infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the
mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid
to know.
Walker, Alice
The Colour Purple
vol. 5
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that tells the story of two sisters through their
correspondence.
Wharton, Edith
Ethan Frome
vol. 5
Set against a bleak New England background, the novel tells of Frome, his ailing wife
Zeena and her companion Mattie Silver, superbly delineating the characters of each as
they are drawn relentlessly into a deep-rooted domestic struggle.
Burdened by poverty and spiritually dulled by a loveless marriage to an older woman.
Frome is emotionally stirred by the arrival of a youthful cousin who is employed as
household help. Mattie's presence not only brightens a gloomy house but stirs longdormant feelings in Ethan. Their growing love for one another, discovered by an
embittered wife, presages an ending to this grim tale that is both shocking and savagely
ironic.
Wilde, Oscar
The Picture of Dorian Gray
vol. 20
not in LCHS library
Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young
aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel
and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray
sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor
while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which
he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror
and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important
creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.
Wright, Richard
Native Son
vol. 7
not in LCHS library
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for
assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story
of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman
in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright’s powerful novel
is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by
people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
CRITICISM NEEDED FROM VOLUME 7
Adams, Douglas
Flagg, Fannie
Gaines, Earnest J,
Kafka, Franz
Joyce, James
Tyler, Anne
Steinbeck, John
Wright, Richard
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy
Fried Green Tomatoes at
the Whistle Stop Café
A Lesson Before Dying
The Trial
A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man
The Accidental Tourist
The Grapes of Wrath
Native Son
vol.7
vol.7
vol. 7
vol. 7
vol. 7
vol. 7
vol. 7
vol. 7
CRITICISM NEEDED FROM VOLUME 8
Ballard, J. G.
Dreiser, Theodore
London, Jack
London, Jack
Morrison, Toni
Empire of the Sun
Sister Carrie
The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild
Song of Solomon
vol. 8
vol. 8
vol. 8
vol. 8
vol. 8
NOT FOUND IN NOVELS FOR STUDENTS
Callaghan, Morley
Davies, Robertson
Findlay, Timothy
McCourt, Frank
Miller, Arthur
Mistry, Rohinton
Mistry, Rohinton
Morrison, Toni
O'Neill, Eugene
Vonnegut Jr., Kurt
More Joy in Heaven
Fifth Business
The Wars
Angela's Ashes
All My Sons
A Fine Balance
Such a Long Journey
Tar Baby
Long Day's Journey into Night
Breakfast of Champions
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