Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Regarded as one of Arnold Bennett's finest works, The Old Wives' Tale was first published in 1908. It tells the story of sisters Constance and Sophia Baines, both very different from one another, and follows their lives from youth into old age. Bennett's inspiration was an encounter in a Parisian restaurant: "an old woman came into the restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous
...Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Chance (1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's...
3) The pearl
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"For the diver Kino, finding a magnificent pearl means the promise of better life for his impoverished family. His dream blinds him to the greed and suspicions the pearl arouses in him and his neighbors, and even his loving wife cannot temper his obsession or stem the events leading to tragedy. Kino and his wife illustrate the fall from innocence of people who believe that wealth erases all problems"--P. [4] of cover.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Liza of Lambeth (1897) is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Written while the author was living as a medical student in London, the Maugham's debut marked an electrifying start to an illustrious career in literature. Controversial for its portrayal of infidelity, domestic violence, and women's reproductive health, Liza of Lambeth is a gritty realist tale that takes an honest look at, the everyday struggles of actual Londoners in a time of celebration...
Author
Language
English
Description
The powerful drama of Willy Loman & his tragic end. Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has...
7) Hunger
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Knut Hamsun believed that modern literature should express the complexity of the human mind and nowhere is that philosophy more evident than in this stunning modern masterpiece, "Hunger." First published in 1890 in Norwegian and based on Hamsun's own experiences with poverty prior to his success as an author, "Hunger" tells the story of an unnamed vagrant who stumbles around the streets of Norway's capital city of Kristiania (now Oslo) looking for...
8) Cannery row
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Unburdened by the material necessities of the more fortunate, the denizens of Cannery Row discover rewards unknown in more traditional society. Henry the painter sorts through junk lots for pieces of wood to incorporate into the boat he is building, while the girls from Dora Flood's bordello venture out now and then to enjoy a bit of sunshine. Lee Chong stocks his grocery with almost anything a man could want, and Doc, a young marine biologist who...
9) Three lives
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
• New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
• Biographies of the authors
• Chronologies of contemporary...
10) Humboldt's gift
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
For many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie's life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman, and involved with a neurotic mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Growing up as an orphan, Razumou adopted the belief that all of Russia was his family, a sentiment that he carries into his higher education. Because of this, when talks of revolution start arising in Russia, Razumou decides to stay neutral. However, this becomes increasingly difficult when most of his classmates start to express their ardent support for a revolution. Still, Razumou decides not to take a stand on either side. Since he feels all of...
12) Of mice and men
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2023 Summer Reading - Read Outside Your Comfort Zone: Frequently Challenged Books
ALA Most Challenged Books
Banned Books
More Lists...
ALA Most Challenged Books
Banned Books
More Lists...
Description
"They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they...
Author
Language
English
Description
Part surrealistic comedy, part psychological thriller, G. K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday" inventively unravels the nightmare of paradox and surprise to probe the mysteries of human behavior. The seven members of Europe's Central Anarchist Council, who, for reasons of security, call themselves by the names of the days of the week, have sworn to destroy the world. But events soon cast doubt upon their real identities, for the man called Thursday...
15) Kim
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Classics - St. Charles Public Library
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
Formats
Description
Rudyard Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Born in India and growing into early manhood, Kim is the son of an Irish soldier born under British Imperial rule in 19th century India. Left in the care of a half-caste woman, Kim is free to explore the back allies and bazaars of Lahore. But when he meets with his father's old regiment he trades his native clothes for European suits and abandons his...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Plain Tales From the Hills" is a classic collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Contained here in this volume are the following tales: Lispeth, Three and-an Extra, Thrown Away, Miss Youghal's Sais, 'Yoked with an Unbeliever', False Dawn, The Rescue of Pluffles, Cupid's Arrows, The Three Musketeers, His Chance in Life, Watches of the Night, The Other Man, Consequences, The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin, The Taking of Lungtungpen, A Germ-Destroyer,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"From a swashbuckling pirate fantasy to a meditation on American morality-- two classic Steinbeck novels make their black spine debuts. In awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with 'The Winter of Our Discontent, ' he had "resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American." Ethan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of the novel,...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
Mikhail Bulgakov's devastating satire of Soviet life was written during the darkest period of Stalin's regime. Combining two distinct yet interwoven parts-one set in ancient Jerusalem, one in contemporary Moscow-the novel veers from moods of wild theatricality with violent storms, vampire attacks, and a Satanic ball; to such somber scenes as the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, and the murder of Judas in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane; to the substanceless,...
19) Of human bondage
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Originally published in 1915, Of Human Bondage is a potent expression of the power of sexual obsession and of modern man's yearning for freedom. This classic bildungsroman tells the story of Philip Carey, a sensitive boy born with a clubfoot who is orphaned and raised by a religious aunt and uncle. Philip yearns for adventure, and at eighteen leaves home, eventually pursuing a career as an artist in Paris. When he returns to London to study medicine,...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
In a brawling Chicago of crooks, con artists, second-story men, extravagant dreamers, snappy dressers, and cold-eyed pragmatists, Augie March undergoes his sentimental education an education that, though imbued with reality, will take him into realms progressively stranger, more marvelous, more filled with indecipherable meaning.