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The genesis of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is both incredibly unique and exceptionally fascinating. Written -- or perhaps more appropriately, dictated -- by French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby after suffering a massive stroke which left...

The Aftermath is a novel written by Welsh author Rhidian Brook and published in 2013. The book is set in Hamburg, Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The story centers around a British colonel, Lewis Morgan, who is tasked with...

The Elephant Vanishes is a collection of 17 short stories, the title being the title of the last story by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1980 and 1991, and published in Japan in various magazines, then...

In the 1960s, the new age of technology seemed to create a level of paranoia amongst the population that led to a generalized fear of apocalypse; it is this post-apocalyptic future that British author J.G. Ballard sets his 1962 novel The Drowned...

Down and Out in Paris and London is a memoir by famous English writer George Orwell. The memoir, although considered fictional by some critics, is actually completely true. Although the events that occur in the story did not happen to the same...

Released in 2003, Lost in Translation is a multinational film directed by Sofia Coppola. The film, which is a romantic comedy, has received many positive reviews, and stars acclaimed actor Bill Murray and renowned actress Scarlett Johansson....

The Demon Lover is a 2011 erotic fantasy novel by Juliet Dark, a pseudonym ("pen name") of award-winning American author Carol Goodman. The novel is the first installment of the Fairwick Trilogy, which centers on protagonist Callie McFay, a...

Fresh off the success of 2000's Memento, Christopher Nolan was hired by Warner Bros in 2003 to reboot the Batman property. The result was 2005's Batman Begins, which he cowrote with David S. Goyer and which starred Christian Bale as Bruce...

Rocket Boys is a bestselling memoir by Homer Hickam published in 1998. It was made into a movie the year titled October Sky (an anagram of Rocket Boys) in the year following its publication, and the memoir was subsequently re-published under the...

The Return of Martin Geurre has roots in both fiction and non-fiction. The book, written in 1983 by Canadian and American author Natalie Zemon Davis, centers around the 16th century legendary story of Martin Geurre. Geurre, who had a wooden leg,...

How do you follow up a debut novel that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction? The answer is, you don't - at least, not with another novel. University of Southern California professor, and multiple award winning author, Viet Thanh Nguyen...

A young adult fantasy novel, Red Queen was published in 2015 and written by American author Victoria Aveyard. In the novel, there are different types of people - Reds and Silvers among them. The Silvers have special blood that gives them special...

"The Red Convertible" is a short story by American author Louise Erdrich. The story and its characters draw heavily on the author's own partial Native American background: Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa...

It is one thing to receive universal critical acclaim and commercial success with your debut novel, and quite another thing entirely to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for it; this extraordinary experience graced University of Southern...

Swallow the Air is the 2006 debut novel by Australian author Tara June Winch. It draws on Winch's own mixed ethnic background: while she is of partial European English descent, her father is a member of the Wiradjuri aboriginal nation of New South...

Published in 1969, The Sunflower is a memoir written by Austrian Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal. The book poses the complex ethical dilemma faced by Wisenthal as he remained at a concentration camp. One day, he is called to the hospital by a...

After Jamaican-American author Nicola Yoon published her first novel and New York Times Bestselling book, Everything, Everything, in September 2015, she quickly began writing her next novel. The Sun Is Also a Star was as big of a hit as Yoon’s...

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a play written by Australian playwright Ray Lawler, and first performed on November 28, 1955. The play is very popular in Australian culture, as it was a breakthrough for true Australian theater. For one of the...

Spare Parts (2014) tells the story of four undocumented Mexican American students and their competition to build the best underwater robot -- even though they had never been to the ocean. In the end, the group built their robot and won the...

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a novel by American writer Lisa See. The book was published in 2005, and has about 250 pages. The book has to deal with China during the nineteenth centuries, when it was highly decentralized and refusing to adapt...

Small Great Things was published in 2016 by American author Jodi Picoult. The book has been such a hit that it is now being adapted to film. The title of the book was chosen from the words of Martin Luther King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech,...

The Sixth Extinction was published by Elizabeth Kolbert in 2014 and would go on to earn the author the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction. Inspired by such precursors as Darwin’s Origin of the Species and Rachel Carson’s influential Silent Spring,...

In the Heat of the Night is a 1967 film directed by Norman Jewison with a screenplay by Stirling Silliphant based on the novel of the same name by John Ball. The film was produced by Walter Mirisch and won 5 Academy Awards while grossing over...

10:04 is a novel by American poet and writer Ben Lerner. His second fictional novel, 10:04 follows the story of a writer living in New York City that has become very successful. However, after being diagnosed with a serious heart condition, the...