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The idea for Irish author Sally Rooney's fourth novel, Intermezzo (Faber & Faber, 2024), came during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Rooney observed her husband playing online chess, and she herself became fascinated with the "mathematical elegance"...

Eugene O’Neill is one of the most famous American dramatists, and while his 1928 play Strange Interlude is not as well known today, it is still one of the most important, albeit quite controversial, works in his oeuvre.

The play opened January 30,...

Consisting of 15,693 lines of verse, the Iliad has been hailed as the greatest epic of Western civilization. Although we know little about the time period when it was composed and still less about the epic's composer, the Iliad's influence on...

"The Fall of the House of Usher" was one of Edgar Allan Poe's first contributions to Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, of which he was an associate editor. The story was printed in 1839, a little over a year after "Ligeia," which Poe always...

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was the last of Twain's novels written during the apex of his career. As a work it shows his more mature writing, hinting at some of the cynical and dark themes that he would obsess over in his final...

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt is a nonfiction self-help book first published in March 2024. Haidt—a social psychologist currently teaching at New York University's Stern School of Business—blends social commentary, cultural criticism,...

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" was adapted for film in 1992 by Jeri Cain Rossi, starring Joe Coleman. The film, titled "Black Hearts Bleed Red," was not well-received by critics. The story was also adapted as a modern chamber opera by David Volk at...

The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk is a nonfiction psychology and self-help book first published in September 2014. As the subtitle Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma suggests, the book is a holistic exploration of...

"The Monkey's Paw" is a chilling and suspenseful short story by W.W Jacobs, first included in Harper’s Magazine and then published in England in 1902 in his collection "The Lady of the Barge." The story has been included in dozens of collections,...

Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America was published in 2023. It was a New York Times bestseller and was reviewed favorably.

The origins of the book lie in Richardson’s desire to answer questions that people...

An irreverent science-fiction adventure novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy constitutes the first installment of a five-book “trilogy” by Douglas Adams. The story is derived largely from a radio show, the scripts of which Adams compiled to...

Little Women: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, The Story of Their Lives, A Girls’ Book was written by Louisa May Alcott and published in two parts. Roberts Brothers published the first part on September 30, 1868. After its success, with the first 2000...

Sido est une nouvelle d'inspiration auto-biographique écrite par Colette en 1929-1930 alors qu'elle est âgée de 56 ans. Dans cette oeuvre en trois parties, Colette évoque ses souvenirs d'enfance, inspirée par la personnalité de sa mère et de son...

We Do Not Part is a novel in three parts written by South Korean author Han Kang and translated into English by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, first published in 2021 in Korean and 2025 in English. Kang considers this book to form a pair with...

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest opened at the St. James's Theatre in London on February 14, 1895, only a month after Wilde's previous success, An Ideal Husband. The packed-in audience rollicked with laughter at the on-stage...

On Tyranny is historian Timothy Snyder’s most famous work. Published in 2017 and updated after the attack on the Capitol in 2020, it uses examples from European history to warn and instruct Americans about the imminent arrival of tyranny in their...

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was first published in serial form in the Egoist in the years 1914-15. Chronicling the life of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to young adulthood and his life-changing decision to leave Ireland, the...

"Barn Burning" was originally published in the June, 1939 issue of Harper’s Magazine. It is a prequel to the "Snopes" trilogy, made up of the novels The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959). In 1980, "Barn Burning" was made into...

Drew Hayden Taylor's Motorcycles and Sweetgrass is a novel that largely follows Virgil Second, a thirteen-year-old boy who realizes that the mysterious stranger his mother is dating is Nanabush, a legendary Trickster god with suspicious...

The Vegetarian is a novel in three parts written by South Korean author Han Kang and translated into English by Deborah Smith, first published in 2007 in Korean and 2015 in English. The concept for the book came from a short story Han wrote ten...

The Midnight Library is a novel by British author Matt Haig, published in 2020. The book explores the idea of unlived lives through the story of a woman named Nora Seed, who struggles to find meaning in her daily life.

The book follows Nora as she...

Klara and the Sun (2021) is Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel, and his first published one since he won the Nobel Prize in 2017. Ishiguro first considered writing this story as a children’s book, but his daughter told him it would traumatize young...

Han Kang's Human Acts was first published serially in the online literary magazine Window from 2013 to 2014. The novel was later published in full in 2014 by Changbi Publishers, with Deborah Smith finishing an English translation in 2016. The...

Lonesome Dove is a Western novel by Larry McMurtry published in 1985. Set in the 1870s, the book follows two retired Texas Rangers named Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae as they organize a cattle drive and set out from Lonesome Dove, Texas to...