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In 1957, mystery novelist Robert Bloch was inspired to write Psycho after studying the grisly details of the crimes committed by serial killer Ed Gein, who notoriously slaughtered nearly 40 women over 10 years. Simon and Schuster published Bloch's...

A Grain of Wheat is considered one of Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s greatest literacy achievements. The title derives from 1 Corinthians 15:36: "How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies"; the verse John 12:24 also...

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book by American writer Nathaniel Philbrick about the loss of the whaleship Essex in the Pacific Ocean in 1820. The book was published by Viking Press on May 8, 2000, and won the...

Flying Home and Other Stories is a collection of stories by prominent American author Ralph Waldo Ellison (most notable for his National Book Award-winning novel Invisible Man). The stories in this compilation were published between 1937 and 1954,...

Not much is known of English writer Thomas Heywood’s early life. It is believed that he was born in 1575 in Lincolnshire. He attended the University of Cambridge to study English. After graduating from college, he worked as an actor and wrote...

Paradise was published in 1997, the seventh of Morrison’s novels and her first after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. It completes a trilogy that begins with Beloved and follows with Jazz, each probing themes of memory, violence,...

Maniac Magee is the sixth book written by American children's author Jerry Spinelli. Due to its careful, bittersweet rendering of racism in 1980s and 1990s in the United States, the book, published in 1990, won an incredible number of awards...

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, published in 2011, is the first YA novel published by author Ransom Riggs. The story's premise of a boy using photos to investigate the mystery surrounding his grandfather's death echoes the author's...

On Beauty was published in 2005. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize that September, and won Zadie Smith the Orange Prize for Fiction (now called the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction) in 2006. The book follows a hysterical realistic style...

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of seven volumes of Maya Angelou's autobiography, which cover the years from the early 1930's, up until about 1970. Out of the seven, it is probably the most popular and critically acclaimed volume,...

Salvage the Bones is Jesmyn Ward’s second novel and the recipient of the 2011 National Book Award.

Deeply in dialogue with the Southern Gothic genre, Ward's narrative functions as a gritty yet dreamy first-person account of Hurricane Katrina's...

The story of two children who run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the "Met"), From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is one of the most beloved young adult novels of all time.

Inspiration for the novel came from numerous...

Freakonomics is the first book by economist Steven D. Levitt, co-authored with Stephen J. Dubner. It was published in 2005 by William Morrow. Stringing together numerous stories, anecdotes, and data analyses of unusual phenomena, Freakonomics ...

“Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of Sexual Politics” is Gayle Rubin’s germinal statement about the politics and history of sex in the United States. It was published in 1984, two years after Rubin had given a famous “pro-sex” statement at...

Gattaca, released in 1997, is a multi-generic film that incorporates elements of Science Fiction, Dystopic Fiction and Crime Fiction. The film was directed and written by Andrew Niccol, a screenwriter and director who made Gattaca, Simone, Lord of...

Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism is a canonical statement on the principles and foundations of literary criticism. It is widely noted for its scope and ambition, synthesizing theory from Aristotle to the present, critiquing the state of the...

Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal is an influential book-length statement on sexual politics in the United States. Published at the end of the 1990s, it includes discussions of sex scandals like the one that plagued President Bill Clinton,...

Walled States, Waning Sovereignty is an influential book published in 2010 by the American political theorist Wendy Brown. It seeks to explain a contemporary trend of nations building border walls throughout the world. Brown says this is a symptom...

Imamu Amiri Baraka is a prolific writer and poet active during the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by the popular culture at the time, as well as the veins of the civil rights movements, Baraka provided powerful commentaries on race and the role it...

Saint Godric of Fichale (sometimes known as Saint Goderic) is an historical figure died on 21st May 1170 at the age of approximately ninety and shortly after his death he became a saint, although he was never formally canonized. In life he was an...

Tishani Doshi was born in Madras, India to a father from Gujarat and a mother from Wales. After qualifying herself for her occupation by obtaining a master's degree in creative writing from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University, she went on to...

Jesus' Son was written by Denis Johnson and published in 1992. Johnson was an American writer, playwright, and journalist who was born in 1949 and died in 2017. This novel made him popular, as well as his other novel, Tree of Smoke, which won an...

The book Hondo was written based on the film Hondo, starring John Wayne and directed by John Farrow. Adapted by Louis L'Amour, the film was actual based on another one of his books. Hondo is a Western novel set in 1870. The book was published in...

Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood movie was Rebecca, based on the novel by author Daphne DuMaurier. It became the only Hitchcock movie ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture. After what must have seemed an unlikely twenty-year stretch in which he...