The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.
David Copperfield is a novel by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to maturity. As such, it is typically categorized in the bildungsroman genre. It was published as a serial in 1849 and 1850 and then as a book in 1850.
Abraham Jebediah "Abe" Simpson II, better known as Grampa Simpson, is a recurring character in the animated television series The Simpsons. He made his first appearance in the episode entitled "Grandpa and the Kids", a one-minute Simpsons short on The Tracey Ullman Show, before the debut of the television show in 1989.
Coraline is a 2002 British dark fantasy horror children's novella by British author Neil Gaiman. Gaiman started writing Coraline in 1990, and it was published in 2002 by Bloomsbury and HarperCollins. It was awarded the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers. The Guardian ranked Coraline #82 in its list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. It was adapted as a 2009 stop-motion animated film, directed by Henry Selick under the same name.
Eleanor of Provence was a Provençal noblewoman who became Queen of England as the wife of King Henry III from 1236 until his death in 1272. She served as regent of England during the absence of her spouse in France in 1253.
Skellig is a children's novel by the British author David Almond, published by Hodder in 1998. It was the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and it won the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British author. In the US it was a runner up for the Michael L. Printz Award, which recognises one work of young adult fiction annually. Since publication, it has also been adapted into a play, an opera, and a film. In 2010, a prequel entitled My Name is Mina was published, written by David Almond himself. William Blake poems are also in the book, the play and the film.
Hansel and Gretel is an opera by nineteenth-century composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who described it as a Märchenoper. The libretto was written by Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, based on the Grimm brothers' fairy tale of the same name. It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the "Abendsegen" from act 2.
Ceres, Celestial Legend, known in Japan as The Mystery of Ceres, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yuu Watase. It was originally serialized in Shōgakukan's magazine Shōjo Comic from May 1996 to March 2000, with its chapters collected in 14 tankōbon volumes. The manga was licensed for English release in North America by Viz Media. The series focuses on Aya Mikage, who learns on her sixteenth birthday that she is the reincarnation of an ancient and supremely powerful celestial maiden or angel (tennyo) named Ceres, and her twin brother Aki the reincarnation of Ceres' former husband, Mikagi, the progenitor of the Mikage family, who had stolen Ceres' robe. Ceres' spirit begins manifesting in Aya, and to save her brother she must find Ceres' long-lost celestial robe, while avoiding being killed or captured by family members who want to use Ceres's supreme celestial abilities for their own personal gain.
Persistence of Memory is the tenth novel by American teen author Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and is the fifth novel in her Den of Shadows series. Published on December 9, 2008 the novel tells the story of Erin Misrahe and her struggles with her alter-ego Shevaun, who is in fact a vampire with whom Erin has a link. The novel also mentions a character from Atwater-Rhodes's previous novel, In the Forests of the Night (1999), Alexander, the brother of the protagonist, Risika. The poem by Edgar Allan Poe entitled "A Dream Within a Dream" is featured in the novel.
Cleo Virginia Andrews, better known as V. C. Andrews or Virginia C. Andrews, was an American novelist. She was best known for her 1979 novel Flowers in the Attic, which inspired two movie adaptations and four sequels. While her novels are not classified by her publisher as Young Adult, their young protagonists have made them popular among teenagers for decades. After her death in 1986, a ghostwriter who was initially hired to complete two unfinished works has continued to publish books under her name.
The Simpson family are the main fictional characters featured in the animated television series The Simpsons. The Simpsons are a nuclear family consisting of married couple Homer and Marge and their three children, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. They live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the fictional town of Springfield, United States, and they were created by cartoonist Matt Groening, who conceived the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name. The family debuted on Fox on April 19, 1987, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" and were later spun off into their own series, which debuted on Fox in the U.S. on December 17, 1989, and started airing in Winter 1989.
David Almond is a British author who has written many novels for children and young adults from 1998, each one receiving critical acclaim.
Jacquelyn Mitchard is an American journalist and author. She is the author of the best-selling novel The Deep End of the Ocean, which was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club, on September 17, 1996. Other books by Mitchard include The Breakdown Lane, Twelve Times Blessed, Christmas, Present, A Theory of Relativity, The Most Wanted, Cage of Stars, No Time to Wave Goodbye, Second Nature - A Love Story, and Still Summer.
Maureen Patricia Duffy is an English poet, playwright, novelist and non-fiction author. Long an activist covering such issues as gay rights and animal rights, she campaigns especially on behalf of authors. She has received the Benson Medal for her lifelong writings.
In the Forests of the Night is a vampire novel written by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, and published in 1999. It was originally entitled White Wine. Atwater-Rhodes wrote it at the age of thirteen, but it was published on May 11, 1999, about a month after she turned fifteen. It is the first novel in the Den of Shadows series. It tells the story of a three-hundred-year-old vampire named Risika and her struggles throughout her life, both before and after she was turned into a vampire. The novel is told in first-person narrative by the protagonist, Risika. It was well-received by critics.
Michael Gary Scott is a fictional character in the NBC sitcom The Office, portrayed by Steve Carell. Michael is the regional manager of the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of Dunder Mifflin, a paper company, for the majority of the series. Like his counterpart in the original British version of the show, David Brent, he is characterized as a largely incompetent, unproductive, unprofessional boss, though he is depicted as kinder and occasionally shown to be effective at his job in key moments.
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries is a 1998 drama film directed by James Ivory from a screenplay he co-wrote with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It stars Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, Leelee Sobieski and Jesse Bradford. The film is a fictionalized account of the family life of writer James Jones and is based on Kaylie Jones' novel of the same name.
Jean Edith Camilla Läckberg Sköld is a Swedish crime writer. As of the early-2010s, her work has been translated into more than 40 languages in 60 countries. She has been called "the rock star of Nordic noir."
Kit's Wilderness is a children's novel by David Almond, published by Hodder Children's Books in 1999. It is set in a fictional English town in the northeast of the country and was based on the former coal-mining towns the author knew as a child growing up in Tyne and Wear. It was silver runner-up for the Smarties Prize in ages category 9–11 years, highly commended for the Carnegie Medal, and shortlisted for the Guardian Prize.
The Child Thief is a 2009 dark fantasy novel by the artist and novelist Gerald Brom. A dark retelling of the stories of Peter Pan and The Lost Boys, Brom takes many liberties with the originals by J M Barrie. Brom incorporates monsters and faeries, as well as a poverty-ridden populace in New York.
