East of Eden is a novel by American author and Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Published in September 1952, the work is regarded by many to be Steinbeck's most ambitious novel and by Steinbeck himself to be his magnum opus. Steinbeck stated about East of Eden: "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years," and later said: "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this." The novel was originally addressed to Steinbeck's young sons, Thom and John. Steinbeck wanted to describe the Salinas Valley for them in detail: the sights, sounds, smells and colors.
Persuasion is the last novel fully completed by Jane Austen. It was published at the end of 1817, six months after her death.
Froth on the Daydream is a 1947 novel by French author Boris Vian. Though told as a linear narrative, the novel employs surrealism and contains multiple plot lines, including the love stories of two couples, talking mice, and a man who ages years in a week. One of the main plot lines concerns a newlywed man whose wife develops a rare and bizarre illness that can only be treated by surrounding her with flowers.
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf, first published in September 1929. The work is based on two lectures Woolf delivered in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, women's constituent colleges at the University of Cambridge.
Looking for Alaska is John Green's first novel, published in March 2005 by Dutton Juvenile. Based on his time at Indian Springs School, Green wrote the novel as a result of his desire to create meaningful young adult fiction. The characters and events of the plot are grounded in Green's life, while the story itself is fictional.
Grief is a novel by American author Andrew Holleran, published in 2006. The novel takes place in Washington D.C., following the personal journey of a middle-aged, gay man dealing with the death of his mother. The novel received the 2007 Stonewall Book Award.
Mating (1991) is a novel by American author Norman Rush. It is a first-person narrative by an unnamed American anthropology graduate student in Botswana around 1980. It focuses on her relationship with Nelson Denoon, a controversial American anthropologist who has founded an experimental matriarchal village in the Kalahari desert.
What We Lose is the debut novel of American author Zinzi Clemmons. It is loosely based on her own experiencies caring for her mother who was dying of cancer.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a 1962 mystery novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was Jackson's final work, and was published with a dedication to Pascal Covici, the publisher, three years before the author's death in 1965. The novel is written in the voice of eighteen-year-old Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, who lives with her sister and uncle on an estate in Vermont. Six years before the events of the novel, the Blackwood family experienced a tragedy that left the three survivors isolated from the rest of their small village.
Evelyn Rose Strange "Evie" Wyld is an Anglo-Australian author. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2009, and her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, won the Encore Award in 2013 and the Miles Franklin Award in 2014. Her third novel, The Bass Rock, was published September 1, 2020.
Elliot Ackerman is an American author. He is the son of businessman Peter Ackerman and author Joanne Leedom-Ackerman and the brother of mathematician and wrestler Nate Ackerman.
All My Puny Sorrows is the sixth novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. The novel won the 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2015 Folio Prize for Literature, and the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize. Toews has said that the novel draws heavily on the events leading up to the 2010 suicide of her sister, Marjorie.
Green on Blue: A Novel is a 2015 work of fiction written by Elliot Ackerman. Set in modern-day Afghanistan, it is told through the point of view of Aziz, a young boy who must join the "Special Lashkar" – a U.S. funded militia – in order to save his injured brother. Dr. Truman Anderson has called Green on Blue a "morally complex debut novel" for how Ackerman explores the themes of loyalty to family and nation, revenge, and the brutality of war throughout the novel.
Sheila Kohler is a South African author now living in the United States and the author of ten novels, and three short story collections. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, O Magazine and included in the Best American Short Stories. She has twice won an O'Henry Prize.
Layover is a novel by the American writer, Lisa Zeidner, first published in 1999 by Random House. It is one of New York Times' Notable Books of the Year. As of 2016, a film of Layover is in production. The novel focuses on the theme of maternal grief.
The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting.
Civilisations is a 2018 British art history television documentary series produced by the BBC in association with PBS as a follow-up to the original 1969 landmark series Civilisation by Kenneth Clark. Individual episodes are presented by Simon Schama, Mary Beard, and David Olusoga, with music composed by Tandis Jenhudson. The PBS release differs in several respects, including series narration by Liev Schreiber.
Permanent Record is a 2019 young adult novel by Mary H.K. Choi. It is her second novel and was published on September 3, 2019, by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. In September 2019, it was selected for the Teen Vogue Book Club.
Luster is a 2020 debut novel by Raven Leilani. The book follows a Black woman in her twenties who gets involved with a fortysomething white man in an open marriage. Luster was released on August 4, 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It received mainly positive critical reception and won the 2020 Kirkus Prize for fiction. In December 2020, the book was found in Literary Hub to have made 16 lists of the year's best books.
The Friend is a novel by the American writer Sigrid Nunez published by Riverhead Books in 2018. The book concerns an unnamed novelist who adopts a Great Dane that belonged to a deceased friend and mentor.
