ORWELL, G

A young boy reaches manhood while fleeing down the Mississippi River with Jim, a runaway slave.

The story of an exuberant, high-spirited boyhood by the Mississippi River that captures the magical years of the very young.

Angela's Ashes

Frank McCourt tells the story of his poverty-stricken childhood years after his family returned to the slums of Limerick, Ireland.

Animal Farm*

A devastating, satirical attack on the avaricious rulers in an imaginary totalitarian state.

Beet Queen

When Mary Adare's father dies, and her mother abandons her, the young girl takes a freight train to an aunt and uncle in North Dakota. She lives with them and her cousin Sita as well as a friend of both, Celestine. Years later, her older brother Karl turns up in the town, and fathers a daughter with Celestine.

Beloved*

In post-Civil War Ohio, the past continues to haunt the ex-slave Sethe, and the surviving members of her family.

Black Boy

Richard Wright's unforgettable story of growing up in the Jim Crow South. The book is told from the perspective of the adult Wright, who was still trying to come to grips with the cruel deprivations and humiliations of his childhood.

Bluest Eye

Haunting story of a young black girl who prays every night for blue eyes, thinking that blue eyes would change her life and make it better.

Brave New World

Catcher In The Rye

Holden Caulfield is the typically alienated private school rebel in this 1945 classic.

Color Purple

WALKER, A

A triumphant novel of a black woman's life in the South.

Dracula

Famous Gothic horror story of courageous people who set out to destroy vampires.

Dubliners

Seminal modernist collection of stories describing the moral history of Joyce's community: middle-class Catholic Dublin.

Emma

Classic novel about a self-assured young lady whose capricious behavior is dictated by a romantic fantasy.

Fahrenheit 451*

BRADBURY, R

Unsettling view of the future in which all books are banned or burned.

Farewell To Arms

One of Ernest Hemingway's most enduring creations, a tale of love set on the Italian front during WW I.

For Whom The Bells Toll

The epic story of Robert Jordan, who fought, loved and died with the anti-Fascist guerrillas of the Spanish Civil War.

Frankenstein

A genius rejected by society exacts his revenge through the monster he brings to life.

Grapes Of Wrath

Powerful chronicle of dispossessed landowners who leave Oklahoma during the Great Depression and head for the "promised land" of California.

Great Expectations

The story of young Pip's difficult coming-of-age in the genteel but corrupt world of Victorian society.

Great Gatsby

FITZGERALD, S

Classic novel of life in the 1920's.

Grendel

GARDNER, J

Witty, original retelling of Beowulf's legend from the monster's point of view.

Heart Of Darkness And The Secret Sharer

CONRAD, J

Two brilliant short novels that explore the human soul, its capacity for good, and its inclination for evil.

Hobbit

Tolkien has created a world of fantasy called Middle-Earth, populated by small creatures known as Hobbits. This prelude to Lord of the Rings trilogy chronicles the adventures of Bilbo Baggins.

House On Mango Street

CISNEROS, S

Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago, captures her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories in order to rise above hopelessness and create a space for herself.

Invisible Man

Compelling saga of a black man who struggles from the South to the North, always encountering other people's preconceived notions about him.

Jane Eyre

The love story of a strong, yet gentle, woman and a harsh mannered society man with a mysterious past and a secret hidden in his attic.

Jazz

MORRISON, T

Morrison, in her sixth novel, enters 1926 Harlem, a new black world then (``safe from fays [whites] and the things they think up''), and moves into a love story - with a love that could clear a space from the past, give a life or take one.

Joy Luck Club

Chronicles the lives of four Chinese women, their forty-year friendship, and how the death of one member brings her daughter into the group, creating a new understanding for each.

Lesson Before Dying

Set in the 1940's, this is a heartbreaking story of friendship between two black men, one condemned to die.

Lord Of The Rings

TOLKIEN, J

Tolkien's trilogy of the Hobbits of Middle Earth and the Great War of Rings.

Love Medicine

This is a powerful and poetic tale of Kashpaws and Lamartines, two Native American families caught up in a multigenerational drama of anger, magic and healing.

Metamorphosis

The best-known novellas and stories of one of the seminal writers of the twentieth century. Included are "The Judgment ", "A Country Doctor " and "A Hunger Artist".

Moby Dick

Ahab's quest for the great White Whale is an allegory of the individual's struggle with fate.

Moll Flanders

Native Son

Caught up in forces of racism he can't understand or control, Bigger Thomas, a black man living in Chicago in the early 1930’s, turns to violence.

Oliver Twist

The moving tale of an orphan who must make his way through the horrors of London's sinister underworld.

Paradise

MORRISON, T

Settled by nine African American clans during the 1940s, the town Ruby, Oklahoma represents a small miracle of self-reliance and community spirit.

Poisonwood Bible

The story of an American missionary and his family in 1959. A compelling exploration of religion, conscience, imperialist arrogance, and the many paths to redemption.

Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

Vivid, eccentric picture of 1920's Dublin and a young man's struggle with Catholicism.

Pride And Prejudice

A superb comedy of manners, detailing the romantic clash between an opinionated woman and her proud beau.

Red Badge Of Courage

A young and frightened soldier comes of age under the stress of combat in the Civil War.

Scarlet Letter

A dramatic and powerful love story dealing with shame and salvation, set in Puritan new England.

Sense And Sensibility

AUSTEN, J

Two high-spirited sisters search for true love in a straight-laced society.

Separate Peace

Two young prep school roommates learn to cope with the emotions of adulthood when one of them is struck down by a crippling accident.

Slaughterhouse Five

Song Of Solomon

Macon Dead, an upper-class Northern black businessman, tries to insulate his family the danger and despair of the rank and file blacks with whom he shares the neighborhood. The plan leads his son onto a path exactly opposite the one his father had hoped.

Sula

Traces the lives of two black women from their youth in small-town Georgia, through their divergent paths of womanhood to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.

Sun Also Rises

HEMINGWAY, E

A spellbinding story of an American expatriate in Europe after WW II.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

This classic of black literature, written in 1937, tells with sympathy and immediacy the story of Janie Crawford's evolving selfhood through three marriages.

Things Fall Apart

The tragedy of a leading member of the Obi tribe in Africa in the days when white men were first appearing on the scene.

Things They Carried

A profound study of men at war and the intangible burdens of soldier - grief, terror, love, longing.

Wide Sargasso Sea

A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the coldhearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbs to his need for money and his lust.

Woman Warrior: Memoirs Of A Girlhood Amongst Ghosts

Vivid and poetic account of what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a traditional Chinese family that found women inferior to men and considered all non-Chinese "ghosts".

Wuthering Heights

A savage, tormented orphan falls wildly in love with the daughter of his benefactor.