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Francois Begaudeau published his book Entre Les Murs in 2006; part autobiography, part fiction, it tells the story of the experiences of a literature teacher in a difficult junior high school in Paris' multi-cultural and often troubled inner city....

Controversial intellectual Christopher Hitchens called The Child In Time Ian McEwan's literary masterpiece. Like the majority of McEwan's work, it is both sombre and melancholy at its heart, and tells the story of children's book author Stephen...

A Treatise is a work of philosophy by George Berkeley, an Irish Empiricist. The work was published in 1710, and was an addition as well as refute to the philosophy of John Locke. In it, Berkeley argues that the outside world (the material world)...

"The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" is a literary buy-one-get-one as it combines two volumes, "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" and "Further Adventures of Nils". This is a style of writing popularized by early twentieth century children's author...

If you have never watched classic film noir "Black Narcissus" before, you could be forgiven for thinking, based on the title alone, that it is a psychological murder mystery about a serial killer whose nickname inspires the title of the movie. In...

Sarah Grand, born as Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke in 1854 in Ireland, was a feminist writer and activist of English descent. Grand found little comfort or intellectual nourishment in the educational opportunities available to young women of...

Amiri Baraka is known for his drama, poetry, and founding of the Black Arts Movement. His works Dutchman and The Slave are considered companion pieces in Black America’s “consciousness epic.” At the time of their staging and publication, Baraka...

By his contemporaries, George Barker was often described as a peculiar writer, who cannot be put into any specific box. His autobiography, written by Robert Fraser is fittingly called "The Chameleon Poet". While he is often associated with the...

Diary of A Wimpy Kid was in the works since 1998, when Jeff Kinney first came up with the idea for the character Greg. Kinney spent several years writing jokes revolving around Greg and workshopping the character, but it wouldn't be until 2004...

The Cartographer is a highly themed book of poetry written by Kei Miller and published in 2014. The book follows the story of a cartographer (one who makes maps) that tries to find a religious city by mapping his way to it. As a Rastaman (a member...

Written on the Body is a fictional romance novel published in 1994 and written by Jeanette Winterson. An incredibly notable feat of the novel is that the narrator, who is in love with another character in the novel, never has their gender or...

Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford was originally published in eight irregular installments of the magazine Household Words from 1851 to 1853 (the magazine was edited at the time by famed author Charles Dickens). Finally, it was published as a complete...

Collected during the Islamic Golden Age of the 8th to 14th century CE, One Thousand and One Nights is a book of short stories. Better known to most English speakers as Arabian Nights, A Retelling is the same collection, but translated to modern...

"Digging" appears in Seamus Heaney's first major volume of poetry, called Death of a Naturalist (1966). The poems in this book deal mainly with Heaney's rural upbringing, his family, and how his identity formed in that environment. The book was...

A Wrinkle in Time is Madeleine L'Engle's first and most popular book for young adults. It was written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, though the book was rejected numerous times by publishers before finally being published in 1962, just before...

A White Heron and Other Stories was published in 1886. Jewett had begun her writing career in 1868 when her story, “Mr. Bruce,” was published in Atlantic Monthly. Jewett had a supportive relationship with Thomas Fields, the editor of the magazine,...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" in 1955, and gave it the subtitle of A Tale For Children. "Very Old Man" is perhaps the clearest and most famous example of a genre that Garcia Marquez helped to create: magical...

Khaled Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, was written after Hosseini traveled back to his native Afghanistan to examine for himself the nation’s situation in the aftermath of decades of turmoil. In early 2007, Hosseini told Time...

Kiese Laymon generally writes essays and articles for sites like ESPN, Gawker, and the New York Times. Prior to the release of Heavy: An American Memoir in 2018, he'd only written two books, both of which released in 2013: a novel called Long...

First published in 1974, "Freedom and Resentment" and Other Essays is a collection of essays by British philosopher Sir Peter Frederick Strawson, commonly known as P.F. Strawson. Strawson "was a leading member of the ordinary language school of...

Miracle on 34th Street is a Christmas classic film directed by George Seaton who also wrote the screenplay based on the story by Valentine Davies. The picture was released in 1947 and was produced by William Perlberg with a budget of $630,000. It...

The Muppet Christmas Carol was released in 1992. It was directed by Brian Henson and based off of Charles Dickens' classic novel "A Christmas Carol", with a screenplay written by Jerry Juhl. Martin G. Baker along with Henson produced the film...

Scrooge was released in 1951 and was directed by Brian Desmond Hurst with a screenplay by Noel Langley which was based off of "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. It stars Alastair Sim as the titular character, Mervy Johns, Hermione Baddely,...

Home Alone (1990) is one of the top-five definitive Christmas movies. Both kids and parents love it -- and that's exceedingly rare. Written and produced by the world-famous John Hughes, Home Alone tells the story of Macaulay Culkin's Kevin...