Writing her first novel during World War I, West examines the relationship between three women and a soldier suffering from shell-shock. This novel of an enclosed world invaded by public events also e…
Born a slave circa 1818 (slaves weren't told when they were born) on a plantation in Maryland, Douglass taught himself to read and write. In 1845, seven years after escaping to the North, he published…
Sula and Nel are two young black girls: clever and poor. They grow up together sharing their secrets, dreams and happiness. Then Sula breaks free from their small-town community in the uplands of Ohio…
Often cited as the best work of short fiction ever written, Joyce's story details a New Year's Eve gathering in Dublin that is so evocative and beautiful that it prompts the protagonist's wife to make…
Widely admired for its vivid accounts of the slave trade, Olaudah Equiano's autobiography -- the first slave narrative to attract a significant readership -- reveals many aspects of the eighteenth-cen…
A quintessential novel of America & the Beat Generation On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the N. American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy We…
Homer's epic poem, The Iliad is brought to life by Rosemary Sutcliff with the skill of a good storyteller, and with the dramatic and haunting illustrations of Alan Lee (Art Direction, The Lord of the …
Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles …
Ralph was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes, the pleasures and perils of ranching in the early twentieth century are experienced...…
When Prince Oroonoko's passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko's noble…
