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The Old Man and the Sea was published 1952 after the bleakest ten years in Hemingway's literary career. His last major work, Across the River and into the Trees, was condemned as unintentional self-parody, and people began to think that Hemingway...

Nikki Erlick is an American author based in Los Angeles, CA. The Measure, Erlick's debut novel and her first attempt at a full-length manuscript, was published in June 2022 and was an instant New York Times bestseller.

Erlick has explained that...

"A Small Needful Fact" is one of Ross Gay's most well-known poems. It was originally published by the poetry organization Split This Rock in 2015, and was shared widely across social media. Responding to the murder of Eric Garner at the hands of...

The Henna Artist (2020) by Alka Joshi revolves around Lakshmi, a gifted henna artist in 1950s Jaipur, who escapes an abusive marriage to build her own life. She services the high-class women of Jaipur, maintaining their secrets as she navigates...

Saint X (2020) is a novel by Alexis Schaitkin that centers around Claire, who was a child when her older sister Alison mysteriously died during a family vacation on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint X. In the aftermath of Alison's death,...

Originally a short story, "Wool" takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where humanity lives in an underground silo. After receiving positive feedback on his work, author Hugh Howey expanded the story into a novel-length text, which he...

Killers of the Flower Moon, published in 2017, is a nonfiction book by journalist David Grann. It follows the investigation of several high-profile murders within the Osage Nation, a Native American tribe in Oklahoma.

The book begins in 1920, with...

"The Fish" is one of Elizabeth Bishop's most celebrated and widely anthologized works. First published in 1946 in the collection North & South, the poem describes the experience of a speaker who catches a fish and then closely observes its...

Dig is a young adult novel written by an award-winning American author Amy Sarig King under the name A.S. King. Dig is the eleventh novel by A.S. King, published in 2019. She is an acclaimed author known for writing gripping young adult and short...

Out of Africa is a memoir by the Danish author Karen Blixen, who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Set in colonial Kenya from 1914 to 1931, the book chronicles the seventeen years Blixen spent managing a coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills...

Oodgeroo Noonuccal is an Aboriginal Australian writer and political activist whose work centers the experience of indigenous people in Australia. "We Are Going," a poem originally published in her 1964 collection of the same name, examines the...

Geek Love is the third novel published by Katherine Dunn. The book was published in 1989, eighteen years after her second novel, Truck. Although published in 1989, Dunn actually finished writing it a decade earlier. It would take her nearly as...

Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice (called The Legacy in the United States) was published in 1950. It tells the story of a young woman named Jean Paget who becomes romantically involved with a fellow prisoner of war during WWII in modern-day...

As its title suggests, A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) is a short history of nearly everything in the world. In the book, Bryson attempts to provide short and simple explanations of otherwise seemingly inaccessible topics like...

Published in 1964, The Rector of Justin is a fiction novel written by American lawyer and writer Louis Auchincloss. It tells the story of Frank Prescott—the revered headmaster of the Justin Martyr School for Boys.

Set in an elite boarding school,...

The Things We Cannot Say (2019) by Kelly Rimmer is set in the backdrop of World War II. It weaves together two timelines and features two separate but nonetheless compelling protagonists. In 1942, Alina Dziak navigated a life interrupted by the...

Nick Lake's In Darkness was published in 2014 by Bloomsbury USA. It tells the story of a young boy nicknamed "Shorty," who is trapped in a hospital after the Haitian Earthquake of 2010. Initially, Shorty is hopeful that he will be rescued....

Magisterium is a sci-fi and Fantasy Fiction novel by American author Jeff Hirsch. It was published in 2012 by Scholastic Press. The novel explores a world split in half by a mysterious Rift. On one side exists a technologically advanced...

The Yearling (1938) was borne out of advice author Marjorie Rawlings received from her editor: write about her life. Rawlings did just that. Although The Yearling is a work of fiction, it was directly inspired by Rawlings' own life. It tells the...

Shadowmancer (2002) by G.P. Taylor is a fantasy novel and religious allegory in 18th-century Yorkshire, England. The plot centers on Obadiah Demurral, a vicar with malicious intentions of controlling the world by manipulating the powers of a...

The novel Wolf by Wolf, published in 2015, is a historical fiction work written by American author Ryan Graudin. She is an acclaimed author of young adult fiction who has authored eight novels, including The Walled City and the series The World...

The Serpent King (2016) by Jeff Zentner is set in a small town in rural Tennessee. The novel follows three friends: Dill, the son of a Pentecostal snake-handling minister who is grappling with his faith; Travis, a gentle giant obsessed with a...