A Wizard of Earthsea is a fantasy novel written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin and first published by the small press Parnassus in 1968. It is regarded as a classic of children's literature and of fantasy, within which it is widely influential. The story is set in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea and centers on a young mage named Ged, born in a village on the island of Gont. He displays great power while still a boy and joins a school of wizardry, where his prickly nature drives him into conflict with a fellow student. During a magical duel, Ged's spell goes awry and releases a shadow creature that attacks him. The novel follows Ged's journey as he seeks to be free of the creature.
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".
Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, and she is one of the more frequently read and recognized writers of Louisiana Creole heritage. She is best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening.
Henry Green was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke, an English writer best remembered for the novels Party Going, Living and Loving. He published a total of nine novels between 1926 and 1952.
Tehanu, initially subtitled The Last Book of Earthsea, is a fantasy novel by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin, published by Atheneum in 1990. It is the fourth novel set in the fictional archipelago Earthsea, following almost twenty years after the first three Earthsea novels (1968–1972), and not the last, despite its subtitle. It won the annual Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Kate Atkinson is an English writer of novels, plays and short stories. She is known for creating the Jackson Brodie series of detective novels, which has been adapted into the BBC One series Case Histories. She won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in 1995 in the Novels category for Behind the Scenes at the Museum, winning again in 2013 and 2015 under its new name the Costa Book Awards.
Master of the Game is a novel by Sidney Sheldon, first published in hardback format in 1982. Spanning four generations in the lives of the fictional McGregor/Blackwell family, the critically acclaimed novel spent four weeks at number one on the New York Times Best Seller List, and was later adapted into a 1984 television miniseries.
Gilead is a novel written by Marilynne Robinson published in 2004. It won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is Robinson's second novel, following Housekeeping (1980). Gilead is an epistolary novel, as the entire narrative is a single, continuing, albeit episodic, document, written on several occasions in a form combining a journal and a memoir. It comprises the fictional autobiography of John Ames, an elderly, white Congregationalist pastor in the small, secluded town of Gilead, Iowa, who knows that he is dying of a heart condition. At the beginning of the book, the date is established as 1956, and Ames explains that he is writing an account of his life for his seven-year-old son, who will have few memories of him. Ames indicates he was born in 1880 and that, at the time of writing, he is seventy-six years old.
The Knife of Never Letting Go is a young-adult science fiction novel written by British-American author Patrick Ness. It was published by Walker Books on 5 May 2008. It is the first book in the Chaos Walking series, followed by The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men. The story follows Todd Hewitt, a 12-year-old boy who runs away from Prentisstown, a town where everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts, after learning of a secret about its past.
The Ask and the Answer is a 2009 young-adult science fiction novel written by British-American author Patrick Ness. It was published on 4 May 2009 by Walker Books. It is the second book in the Chaos Walking series, preceded by The Knife of Never Letting Go and followed by Monsters of Men. The story follows Todd Hewitt, a 13-year-old boy held captive by the mayor of New Prentisstown.
The Left Hand of Darkness is a science fiction novel by U.S. writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Published in 1969, it became immensely popular, and established Le Guin's status as a major author of science fiction. The novel is set in the fictional Hainish universe as part of the Hainish Cycle, a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin, which she introduced in the 1964 short story "The Dowry of Angyar". It was fourth in sequence of writing among the Hainish novels, preceded by City of Illusions, and followed by The Word for World Is Forest.
Monsters of Men is a young-adult science fiction novel by Patrick Ness, published by Walker Books in May 2010. It is the third book of the Chaos Walking trilogy inaugurated two years earlier by The Knife of Never Letting Go. Walker's U.S. division Candlewick Press published hardcover and audiobook editions within the calendar year.
Chaos Walking is a young adult science fiction series written by American-British novelist Patrick Ness. It is set in a dystopian world where all living creatures can hear each other's thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called Noise. The series is named after a line in the first book: "The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking." The series consists of a trilogy of novels and three short stories.
Life After Life is a 2013 novel by Kate Atkinson. It is the first of two novels about the Todd family. The second, A God in Ruins, was published in 2015. Life After Life garnered acclaim from critics.
Mistral's Daughter is a 1984 American television miniseries, adapted from Judith Krantz's 1982 bonkbuster novel of the same name.
The Dressmaker is a Gothic novel written by the Australian author Rosalie Ham, and is Ham's debut novel. It was first published by Duffy & Snellgrove on January 1, 2000. The story is set in a 1950s fictional Australian country town, Dungatar, and explores love, hate and haute couture.
Transcription is a spy novel by British novelist Kate Atkinson, published in September 2018.
Viola Roseboro' was an American literary editor. She was the fiction editor for McClure's and, later, for Collier's, in which role she discovered several important authors. Ida Tarbell called her a "born reader" and a "reader of real genius".
Life After Life is a 2022 British television adaptation by playwright Bash Doran of the 2013 novel Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. It follows the story of Ursula Todd, a woman in the first half of the 20th century who experiences an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a 2021 historical fiction novel by Dawnie Walton. It received the 2022 Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award, the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction.
