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Poet Juan Felipe Herrera has been publishing poetry for almost four decades, and most of his body of work is represented in his poem Half the World in Light. Like all of his previous poems, its central theme is the Chicano experience in the United...

In her memoir entitled Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (released in 2012), author Deborah Feldman discusses her early life in an incredibly religious Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. She chronicles not only her life...

The Winter of Our Discontent was published in 1961 by John Steinbeck and was the last novel he wrote. The novel gets its title from Richard III, a play written by William Shakespeare:

"Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by...

Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning is a play about a man named Thomas Mendip. Thomas is a discharged soldier who wants to commit suicide but ultimately doesn't. Later on, Thomas meets with the mayor and is about to hang himself but,...

Robert Cormier's Eight Plus One: Stories is about a seventeen-year-old boy named Mike who goes to visit his grandmother's house. Mike's grandmother is about to die, the grandmother invites him so she can tell him the family secrets. Some secrets...

The Last Lunar Baedeker is a collection of poetry, satires, manifestos, feminist tracts, experimental plays, and autobiographical profiles by English author Mina Loy. Much of Loy's work talks about things like feminism, God and religion, and...

Written by Canadian author Esi Edugyan, Washington Black tells the story of a young man named George Washington "Wash" Black, who endeavors to escape the bonds of slavery in the Barbados. The book follows Black's escape, as well as what he does...

Carlos Fuentes' The Old Gringo is about a man named Ambrose Bierce. He is an American writer, soldier, and journalist. It tells the story about some of his days in Mexico around Pancho Villa's soldiers. It mostly talks about his encounter with...

Esteban Echeverria was born in 1805 and died in 1851. Though he lived a rather short life, his contributions to literary process can hardly be overestimated, as Echeverria’s works are considered the first of Argentinian prose fiction.

Echeverria...

Written by author Martin L. Shoemaker, Today I Am Carey (published in 2009) tells the story of a person who is loses her memory and needs an android named Carey to help her have a normal life - and fill in all of the things that she can no longer...

Although best-known for his poems (including classics like "Do not go gentle into that good night"), Welshman Dylan Thomas wrote a number of unproduced screenplays and plays during his long and illustrious career. Among those plays is The Doctor...

It is almost impossible to hear the name Chernobyl and think of anything other than the catastrophic nuclear disaster that took place there in 1986. Chernobyl is many things - including the birthplace of tennis megastar Maria Sharapova - but it...

Written by Unca Eliza Winkfield (likely a pseudonym; the real of name of the author is still not known), The Female American (originally published in 1767) tells the story of a half-Native American, half-English woman who is marooned on an island...

If one were instructed to construct a list of the five most famous playwrights, Irish writer Samuel Beckett would almost certainly be included in most of those lists. His most famous works were written between World War II and the decade of 1960....

Written by multi-talented author Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (originally published in 2010) combines prose, graphic art (images), elements of plays, and philosophy to tell the story of the American Civil Rights Movement. The book begins in 1968,...

In what is yet another adaption of William Shakespeare's classic play Hamlet, director Gregory Doran's 2009 film Hamlet is a filmed modern-dress adaption of the famed play. Hamlet tells the story of the eponymous Prince Hamlet (played in the film...

Le Grand Meaulnes (translated to The Lost Estate in English) is French author's Alain-Fournier's one and only novel published 1913, just a year before his death on the battlefields of World War I. It tells the semi-biographical tale of a young man...

James Baxter is a New Zealand-born poet and playwright responsible for some of the countries best - and most famous - poems and plays. Among his many famous works is the poem "The Bad Young Man," which tells the simple yet profound story of a...

Isabella Whitney is thought of as the first professional female poet and writer in England, where she lived during the late 1550s. She is attributed as being the first Englishwoman to have written and published her own unreligious poetry. Whitney...

Written by Elizabeth Ehrlich, Miriam's Kitchen: A Memoir (originally published in 1998), tells the story of Elizabeth's life and her Jewish religious upbringing. Initially, she was put off by her religion and didn't really appreciate her past and...

Written by Latino LGBTQ+ writer Rigoberto Gonzalez, Red-Inked Retablos (originally released in 2013) is his memoir. Through essays and stories, Gonzalez tells the story of his life - particularly his life in writing and his life in the Chicano...

What would happen to the world if a new bacterial disease appeared in the world that was immune to antibiotics and more deadly than the 1918 Spanish Flu? Or Ebola spread to much of the world? What would the world do? How could we prepare? How...

Written by American author Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer (released in 2000) tells the story of a small town in Appalachia (the United States) and the various people who inhabit it. Particularly, it tells three separate - but connected -...

Le Pur et l'impur was written in 1932 by French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. It is not a traditional novel in its structure; it consists of different conversations about sex, sexual attraction and gender, and is far less fictional than its...