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Exeter Book, or the Codex Exoniensis, is a 10th Century book, or codex, that contains most of the surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry. Only four collections of Old English verse exist, out of which the Exeter Book is the largest and most impressive....

We The Living is the first novel by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand. It is the story of life in post-revolutionary Russia and was her first public statement against communism. In the foreword of the book Rand observes that We The Living is the...

As a young damsel, Anne Kingsmill was one of the ladies-in-waiting at the court of King Charles II. She served as maid of honor at the marriage of Mary of Modena to the Duke of York. Later, the Duke of York would become better known to history as...

Middlesex, published in 2002 by Jeffrey Eugenides, is the story of Cal Stephanides, an intersex person born in 1960 to a Greek-American family living in a wealthy suburb of Detroit. Thanks to a recessive gene passed down by his inbred family, Cal...

The Master Butcher's Singing Club was written in 2003 by Louise Erdirch, a native American writer. It revolves around German American traditions and culture, which is part of Erdrich's personal heritage.

The book follows the lives of Fidelis...

Let the Great World Spin was written by Colum McCann and published in 2009 by Random House. Its inception occurred shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, in which the Twin Towers of New York City's World Trade Center were destroyed....

Survivor, Chuck Palahnuik's second novel, after the massively popular and cult classic debut of Fight Club, was released in 1999, keeping with the the author's favoured genre of trangressional fiction.

The book addresses the topics of capitalism...

Written by the Australian author Bryce Courtenay in 1989, The Power of One became a huge success, being translated into 18 languages, selling more than eight million copies, and transforming into a Hollywood film. It is categorized as a...

My Side of the Mountain was written in 1959 by Jean Craighead George. It is a heartwarming story about a boy, Sam Gribley, who is fed up with city life and decides to run away to live in the Catskill Mountains with only forty dollars, a penknife,...

Willa Cather first published “Paul’s Case” in a 1905 issue of McCall’s Magazine and almost since the day that edition was delivered to doors across the country, the story has been one of the most anthologized in the history of . The sad, strange...

If you are the type of person who loves when poets experiment a little with the basic essential rules of grammar, then Rainer Maria Rilke is your man. Navigating the world of Rilke’s prodigious verse is a voyage through a land where nouns become...

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo is a play written by riveting author Rajiv Joseph and was published during 2012 by Dramatists Play Service. This play tells the story of the life-changing impact a Bengal tiger has on two American Marines as well as...

Through a quirk of fate, Clotel: Or, The President’s Daughter, a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, is considered the first novel written by an African-American, but not the first novel to be published in America by an African-American....

Half a Life is a novel written by V.S. Naipaul in 2001. The novel revolves around the story of Willie Somerset Chandran, whose father is a Brahmin from the Hindu caste system and his mother a Dalit. Willie's middle name 'Somerset' comes from the...

The Analects of Confucius, Lun Yu, or simply, The Analects, were written about 500 BC and are traditionally attributed to Confucius. However, much of the actual text was written by his students over a time period spanning the thirty to fifty years...

The Satanic Verses is a magical realist epic with three major plotlines. The first of these plotlines follows two Indian actors, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, after they miraculously survive a plane crash over the English Channel. The...

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel. It was published in two installments in 1837 in the Southern Literary Messenger but was not completed due to Poe’s firing from the magazine. The full novel was...

Though D. H. Lawrence's third published novel, Sons and Lovers (1913) is largely autobiographical. The novel, which began as "Paul Morel," was sparked by the death of Lawrence's mother, Lydia. Lawrence reexamined his childhood, his relationship...

The Light in the Forest is a fictional novel written by the American author Conrad Richter and published in the year 1953. The novel is considered as being a coming of age novel because it follows the development of the main character, True Son.

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The Pilgrim’s Progress is John Bunyan’s most enduring legacy. The book, which went through eleven editions in the author’s lifetime, has never subsequently been out of print. Though it now appears as two parts in one volume, the parts were...

In the Skin of a Lion covers the years 1913 – 1938, and is set in the city of Toronto and surrounding rural areas. It is a time of industrialization and growth for Toronto, a change that could not be accomplished without the labor of immigrants.

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Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, stands as one of the great slave narratives, in the company of Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick...

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow, is without a doubt one of the most beloved children's books of all time. Its 1939 film adaptation is equally renowned; it routinely appears on lists of the...

Published in 1955 and initially dismissed by critics and audiences, Pedro Páramo has since established itself as the precursor to a new phase of Latin American writing, as well as a superlative example of modernism in contemporary literature.

The...