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71479 /m/0jdry Feersum Endjinn Iain Banks 1994 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} The book is set on a far future Earth where the uploading of mindstates into a world-spanning computer network (known as "the data corpus", "cryptosphere" or simply "crypt") is commonplace, allowing the d... |
71480 /m/0jds8 Against a Dark Background Iain Banks 1993 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Seven of the original eight Lazy Guns were destroyed before the events of Against a Dark Background. One disappeared with its user when he tried to fire it at the local su... |
71567 /m/0jf0_ Just Like That Lily Brett 1994 {"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"} Edek Zepler is a Holocaust survivor who was born Edek Zeleznikow in Łódź, Poland in 1915, where his father owned several apartment blocks. He got married in the Łódź ghetto to Rooshka but had to marry her again after the war in a DP ... |
71791 /m/0jfmw Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man Siegfried Sassoon 1928 {"/m/016lj8": "Roman \u00e0 clef", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The story is a series of episodes in the youth of George Sherston, ranging from his first attempts to learn to ride to his experiences in winning point-to-point races. The ... |
71989 /m/0jgd2 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852-03-20 {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to ... |
72018 /m/0jgmp The Beach Alex Garland 1996 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} In a cheap hostel on Khao San Road in Bangkok, Richard, a young English traveller, meets a strange Scotsman going by the pseudonym of Daffy Duck who leaves him a hand-drawn map of a supposed hidden beach located in the Gulf of Thailand that is inaccess... |
72084 /m/0jgtn Murder Must Advertise Dorothy L. Sayers 1933 {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} Wimsey accepts an offer from the highly respectable management of Pym's Publicity, Ltd. (a light disguise for S. H. Bensons, where Sayers worked) to investigate a mystery and avert a sca... |
72398 /m/0jjff The Man Who Would Be King Rudyard Kipling {"/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} The narrator of the story is a British journalist in India–Kipling himself, in all but name. While on a tour of some Indian native states he meets two scruffy adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Car... |
73217 /m/0jp53 A Vicious Circle Amanda Craig 1996 The novel chronicles the life of Amelia, the only daughter of newspaper tycoon Max de Monde who, after having spoiled Amelia beyond hope while she was still young, abandons her when she becomes pregnant. Amelia decides to marry Mark Crawley, the father of her child, a... |
73408 /m/0jqbz To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960-07-11 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The book opens with the Finch family's ancestor, Simon Finch, a Cornish Methodist fleeing religious intolerance in England, settling in Alabama, becoming wealthy and, contrary to his religious beliefs, buying several slaves. The main st... |
73452 /m/0jqqt The Emperor Jones Eugene O'Neill 1920 The play is divided into eight scenes. Scenes 2 to 7 are from the point of view of Jones, and no other character speaks. The first and last scenes feature a character named Smithers, a white trader who appears to be part of illegal activities. In the first scene, S... |
73517 /m/0jr4g The Go-Between L. P. Hartley The story begins with the reminiscences of Leo Colston, an elderly man looking back on his childhood with nostalgia. Leo, in his mid-sixties, is looking through his old things. He chances upon a battered old red collar box. In it he finds a diary from 1900, the year of his... |
73530 /m/0jr96 Mildred Pierce James M. Cain 1941 {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Set in Glendale, California, in the 1930s, the book is the story of middle-class housewife Mildred Pierce's attempts to maintain her family's social ... |
73670 /m/0js1m A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens 1843-12-19 {"/m/048945": "Ghost story", "/m/0c5jx": "Morality play", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0bxg3": "Fairy tale", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Dickens divides the book into five chapters, which he labels "staves", that is, song stanzas ... |
74257 /m/0jv0d About a Boy Nick Hornby 1998 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The novel is about Will Freeman, a 36-year-old bachelor, and Marcus, an introverted, bullied 12-year-old who lives alone with his suicidal mother, Fiona. Will, who has never had to work thanks to the royalties from his father's hi... |
74389 /m/0jvv3 The Hustler Walter Tevis After losing to Fats, Eddie could spiral down to the scrapheap, but he meets Bert Gordon, a . Bert teaches him about winning, or more particularly about losing. Tautly written, it is a treatise on how someone, with all of the skills, can lose if he "wants" to lose; how a loser... |
74881 /m/0jyp8 Letter from an Unknown Woman Stefan Zweig A rich and well-known writer, returning from one of many holidays to Vienna, finds a long letter from an unknown woman. As a teenager she had lived with her poor widowed mother in the same building and had fallen totally in love with both the opulent cultured ... |
74960 /m/0jz1w Miss Lulu Bett Zona Gale 1920 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The story concerns a woman, Lulu, who lives with her sister's family, essentially acting as a servant. She does not complain about her position, but is not happy. When her brother-in-law's brother, Ninian, comes to visit, there i... |
75214 /m/0j_mj Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions Edwin Abbott Abbott 1884 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/01gw42": "Scientific romance"} The story is about a two-dimensional worl... |
75702 /m/0k14s Sick Puppy Carl Hiaasen 2000 {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Florida's corrupt governor, Dick Artemus, pursues schemes to line his pockets and those of his rich entrepreneur backers at the expense of the environment. His schemes have always foundered in the past, but he has high hopes of a plan involving Toad Isl... |
76028 /m/0k2wn The Prisoner of Zenda Anthony Hope 1894 {"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} On the eve of the coronation of King Rudolf of Ruritania, his brother, Prince Michael, has him drugged. In a desperate attempt no... |
76033 /m/0k2y7 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925-04-10 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The story begins with the narrator, Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner who has graduated from Yale and fought in World War I, returning home to begin a career. He is restless and has decided to move to New York to le... |
77652 /m/0kb7d For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 {"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} This novel is told primarily through the thoughts and experiences of the protagonist, Robert Jordan. The character was inspired by Hemingway's own experiences in the Spanish Civil War as a reporter for the No... |
77748 /m/0kby3 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? This gothic story deals with two aging sisters, Jane and Blanche Hudson, who are living alone together in a decaying Hollywood mansion. Jane, a former child star of early vaudeville known as "Baby Jane", was spoiled, pampered, and doted upon by her father due to her s... |
78016 /m/0kdr6 From Russia with Love Ian Fleming 1957-04-08 {"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction"} SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency, plans to commit a grand act of terrorism in the intelligence field. For this, it targets British secret service agent James Bond. Due in part to his role in the defeat of Le Chiffre, M... |
78145 /m/0kf99 The Tombs of Atuan Ursula K. Le Guin 1971 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"} The story centers on a Kargish child who is taken from her family and dedicated a... |
78797 /m/0kjjm Good Omens Neil Gaiman 1990-05-01 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} It is the coming of the End Times: the Apocalypse is near, and Final Judgment will soon descend upon the ... |
78799 /m/0kjk0 Coraline Neil Gaiman 2002 {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} This is about a "different" girl named Coraline Jones. She and her parents move into an old house that has been subdivided into flats. The other tenants inclu... |
79078 /m/0kkx2 The Sandman: Dream Country Neil Gaiman {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0py0z": "Graphic novel"} Like the sixth collection, Fables and Reflections, and the eighth, Worlds' End, Dream Country consists of short stories that do not have a common storyline running through them, though it... |
79111 /m/0kl43 The Sandman: Season of Mists The fourth collection belongs with the first as perhaps one of the two collections most focused on Morpheus himself. It begins with an Endless family meeting descending almost immediately into an Endless family argument. Desire angers Morpheus by taunting him about his in... |
79120 /m/0kl59 Interview with the Vampire Anne Rice 1976-04-12 {"/m/0kflf": "Vampire fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"} A vampire named Louis tells his 200-year-long life story to reporter Daniel Molloy (who i... |
79131 /m/0kl88 Seven Against Thebes Aeschylus When Oedipus, the king of Thebes, realized he had married his own mother and had two sons and two daughters with her, he blinded himself and cursed his sons to divide their inheritance (the kingdom) by the sword. The two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, in order to avoid bl... |
79498 /m/0kng8 Tartarin de Tarascon Alphonse Daudet {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him t... |
79532 /m/0knn6 The Sandman: The Kindly Ones The Kindly Ones belongs with the second collection, The Doll's House, and the seventh, Brief Lives, in that it finishes off a story that mostly originated in these collections. Parts from other collections are also important to its story, however, notably elements from Se... |
79569 /m/0knzs SS-GB Len Deighton 1978-08-24 {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} It is November 1941, nine months after a German invasion led to the British surrender. Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer, a British homicide detective assigned to Scotland Yard, is called in to inves... |
79578 /m/0kp1s Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939-05-04 {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Finnegans Wake comprises 17 chapters, divided into four Books. Book I contains 8 chapters, Books II and III contain 4, and Book IV consists of only one short chapter. The chapters appear without titles, and while Joyce never provided possible c... |
80124 /m/0ks36 The Virgin Suicides Jeffrey Eugenides 1993 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The Lisbons are a Catholic family living in Grosse Pointe, Michigan in the 1970s. The father, Ronald, is a math teacher at a private school and the mother is a homemaker. The family has five daughters: 13-year-old Ce... |
80394 /m/0kt94 What Makes Sammy Run? Budd Schulberg 1941 {"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Told in first person narrative by Al Manheim, drama critic of The New York Record, this is the tale of Sammy Glick, a young uneducated boy who rises from copy boy to the top of the screenwriting ... |
80497 /m/0ktr5 The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham 1944 {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Maugham begins by characterising his story as not really a novel but a thinly veiled true account. He includes himself as a minor character, a writer who drifts in and out of the lives of the major players. Larry Darrell’s lifestyle is cont... |
80934 /m/0kxlb Born Yesterday Garson Kanin An uncouth, corrupt rich junk dealer, Harry Brock, brings his showgirl mistress Billie Dawn with him to Washington, D.C. When Billie's ignorance becomes a liability to Brock's business dealings, he hires a journalist, Paul Verrall, to educate his girlfriend. In the process ... |
81166 /m/0kywj King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard 1885 {"/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} Allan Quatermain, an adventurer and white hunter based in Durban, in what is now South Africa, is approached by aristocrat Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Go... |
81812 /m/0l14f Babel-17 Samuel R. Delany 1966 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} During an interstellar war one side develops a language, Babel-17, that can be used as a weapon. Learning it turns one into an unwilling traitor as it alters perception and thought. The change is made more... |
81816 /m/0l14t The Languages of Pao Jack Vance {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The planet Pao is a quiet backwater with a large, homogeneous, stolid population ruled by an absolute monarch: the Panarch. The current Panarch attempts to hire an offworld scienti... |
82163 /m/0l3jh The Count of Monte Cristo Auguste Maquet 1844 {"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} In 1815 Edmond Dantès, a young and successful merchant sailor recently granted the succession of his erstwhile captain Leclère, returns to M... |
82287 /m/0l470 Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut 1963 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} At the opening of the book, the narrator, an everyman named John (a.k.a. Jonah), describes a time when he was planning to write a book about what important Americans did on the day H... |
82960 /m/0l862 Excellent Women Barbara Pym 1952 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The book details the everyday life of Mildred Lathbury, a spinster in her thirties in 1950s England. Perpetually self-deprecating, but with the sharpest wit, Mildred keeps busy with near-romances (her own and those of others),... |
83545 /m/0lcgx The Scarlet Pimpernel Baroness Emma Orczy 1905 {"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} The Scarlet Pimpernel is set in 1792, during the early stages of the French Revolution. Marguerite St. Just, a beautiful French actress, is the wife of wealthy English fop Sir Percy Blakeney, ... |
84104 /m/0lfp0 Becket Jean Anouilh The play is a re-enactment of the conflicts between King Henry II and Thomas Becket as the latter (Henry's best friend) ascends to power, becoming the King’s enemy. Becket begins as a clever, but hedonistic, companion; as a result of being created Archbishop of Canterbury, he is tr... |
84229 /m/0lghc The Robe Andrew Greeley 1942 {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The book explores the aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus through the experiences of the Roman tribune Marcellus Gallio and his Greek slave Demetrius. Prince Gaius, in an effort to rid Rome of Marcellus, banishes ... |
84449 /m/0lhgy The Closing of the American Mind Allan Bloom 1987 {|class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#white; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5" |style="text-align: left;"| "Education in our times must try to find whatever the... |
84515 /m/0lhv7 Murder in the Cathedral T. S. Eliot The action occurs between December 2 and December 29, 1170, chronicling the days leading up to the martyrdom of Thomas Becket following his absence of seven years in France. Becket's internal struggle is the main focus of the play. The book is divided into two parts... |
84791 /m/0lkh6 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving 1820 {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} "From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow... A... |
84938 /m/0llgk The Thirty-nine Steps John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir 1915 {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Richard Hannay, the protagonist and narrator, an expatriate Scot, returns from a long stay in southern Africa to his new home, a flat in London. One night he is buttonholed by a stranger, a well-t... |
85378 /m/0lp4m The Winter's Tale William Shakespeare 1623 King Leontes of Sicilia begs his childhood friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia, to extend his visit to Sicilia. Polixenes protests that he has been away from his kingdom for nine months, but after Leontes' pregnant wife, Hermione, pleads with him he relents and ... |
85766 /m/0lrqk Dead Air Iain Banks 2002 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The first person narrative begins on 11 September 2001, and Banks uses the protagonist's conversations - both on the radio and off - to discuss the consequences of the terrorist attacks in the United States on that day. Ken Nott is at... |
85818 /m/0lrsh Nibelungenlied {"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry"} Though the preface to the poem promises both joyous and dark tales ahead, the Nibelungenlied is by and large a very tragic work, and these four opening verses are believed to have been a late addition to the tex... |
86351 /m/0lvk3 The Exorcist William Peter Blatty 1971 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} An elderly Jesuit priest named Father Lankester Merrin is leading an archaeological dig in northern Iraq and is studying ancient relics. Following the d... |
86581 /m/0lwmz The Sweet Hereafter Russell Banks The Sweet Hereafter is a multiple first person narrative depicting life in a small town in Upstate New York in the wake of a terrible school bus accident in which numerous local children are killed. Hardly able to cope with the loss, their grieving parents are approac... |
86928 /m/0ly6j A Severed Head Iris Murdoch 1961 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Martin Lynch-Gibbon is a 41-year-old well-to-do wine merchant whose childless marriage to an older woman called Antonia has been one of convenience rather than love. It never occurs to him that his ongoing affair with a young ... |
87742 /m/0m1c0 Coming Up for Air George Orwell 1939 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The themes of the book are nostalgia, the folly of trying to go back and recapture past glories and the easy way the dreams and aspirations of one's youth can be smothered by the humdrum routine of work, marriage and getting old. It is written... |
88353 /m/0m4gh Shadow Puppets Orson Scott Card 2002 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Peter, Ender's brother, is now Hegemon of Earth. Accepting a tip from inside China, where Achilles is held prisoner, Peter had planned for Bean to opera... |
89960 /m/0md8t The Road to Mars Eric Idle 2000-10-10 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Told from the point of view of Professor Bill Reynolds, a scholar in the fictitious discipline of 'micropaloentology', this novel is set in the 24th and ... |
90022 /m/0mdk9 Regeneration Pat Barker 1991-05-30 {"/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The novel begins with Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, an army psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital (a mental institution at the time), reading poet Siegfried Sassoon’s declaration against the continuation of the war. Sassoon’s... |
90118 /m/0mdt7 House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski 2000-03-07 {"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/037750": "Ergodic literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance"} House of Leaves begins with a first-person narrative b... |
90119 /m/0mdtl The Whalestoe Letters Mark Z. Danielewski 2000-10-10 {"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"} Pelafina writes these letters to Johnny from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a mental institution where she has been residing for a number of years. While... |
92318 /m/0mzbz Restoree Anne McCaffrey 1967 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Restoree is the story of Sara, an introverted, beak-nosed, 24-year-old virgin librarian from New York who is abducted by the Mil, amorphous... |
92551 /m/0m_jg Mister Roberts Thomas Heggen 1946 {"/m/098tmk": "War novel"} The title character, a Lieutenant Junior Grade naval officer, defends his crew against the petty tyranny of the ship's commanding officer during World War II. Nearly all action takes place on a backwater cargo ship, the USS Reluctant that sail... |
92617 /m/0m_wq Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the story of a Southern family in crisis, especially the husband and wife Brick and Margaret (usually called Maggie or "Maggie the Cat"), and their interaction with Brick's family over the course of one evening gathering at the family e... |
92695 /m/0n07m Elmer Gantry Sinclair Lewis 1927-03 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry, who then becomes a notorious and cy... |
92699 /m/0n080 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence 1913 {"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Part I: The refined daughter of a "good old burgher family," Gertrude Coppard meets a rough-hewn miner at a Christmas dance and falls into a whirlwind romance characterize... |
95531 /m/0nmns Survivor Chuck Palahniuk 1999-02 {"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} Tender Branson sits in the cockpit of a Boeing 747-400, telling... |
96881 /m/0n_gw The Jungle Upton Sinclair, Jr. 1906-02-28 {"/m/05qt0": "Politics", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The main character in the book is a Lithuanian man called Jurgis Rudkus, an immigrant to the United States trying to make ends meet. The book begins describing the wedding feast beginning at four o'clock after the ... |
97723 /m/0p4s9 The Music Man Meredith Willson In the early summer of 1912, aboard a train leaving Rock Island, Illinois, Charlie Cowell and other traveling salesmen engage in a heated argument about consumer credit ("Rock Island"). They eventually turn to another topic: a con man known as "Professor" Harold Hill, wh... |
100141 /m/0pj6q Level 7 Mordecai Roshwald 1959 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"} During his forced residence, X-127 is ordered to push the bomb buttons to begin World War III (which lasts a total of 2 hours and 58 minutes). From that point, all civilian li... |
101521 /m/0prr3 The Prince Niccolò Machiavelli 1532 {"/m/02rx5hc": "Treatise", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} The work has a recognizable structure, for the most part indicated by the author himself, which can be summarized as follows. The Prince starts by describing the subject matter it will handle. In the first sentenc... |
101904 /m/0ptw0 Sounder William Armstrong 1969 {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} A black sharecropper's family is poor and hungry. The father and his dog, Sounder, go hunting each night, but the hunting is poor. The family subsists on fried corn mush, biscuits, and milk gravy until one morning they wake up to the ... |
102516 /m/0pygz Nemesis Isaac Asimov 1989-10 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The novel is set in an era in which interstellar travel is in the process of being discovered and perfected. Before the novel's opening, "hyper-as... |
102540 /m/0pyl4 Island of the Sequined Love Nun Christopher Moore 1997 {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} The main character, Tucker Case (Tuck), is a pilot for a cosmetics company, who crashes the company plane while having sex. This event causes Tuck to be blackl... |
102542 /m/0pylh The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Christopher Moore 1999 {"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0246p": "Comic fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"} Pine Cove suffers a major crisis when the town psych... |
103132 /m/0q0bl Lost Girls Alan Moore Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (now grey-haired, and called "Lady Fairchild"), Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz (now in her 20s) and Wendy from Peter Pan (now in her 30s, and married to a man in his 50s named Harold Potter) are visiting the expensive mountain resort "H... |
104114 /m/0q520 Quartet in Autumn Barbara Pym 1977-09-01 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Marcia, Letty, Norman and Edwin all work together in the same office, are all unmarried (Edwin being a widower) and have all reached retirement age. Letty, the "heroine" of the book, has plans to share a country retre... |
104116 /m/0q52c Some Tame Gazelle Barbara Pym {"/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Many of the characters in the book are based on Pym's own circle, as she pictured them in twenty or thirty years' time. The two heroines, Belinda and Harriet Bede, are Barbara herself and her sister, Hilary. Archdeacon Hocclev... |
105309 /m/0qdh6 Satyricon Petronius Arbiter {"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/05qgc": "Poetry", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The work is narrated by its central figure, Encolpius, a former gladiator. The surviving sections of the novel begin with Encolpius traveling with a ... |
106086 /m/0ql2g Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond {"/m/03g3w": "History"} The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 2... |
106353 /m/0qmgb On Golden Pond Ernest Thompson 1979 May Norman and Ethel arrive at the summer house, finding it in need of repairs. There are hints that Norman is having problems with his memory. June Norman makes a nominal effort to find a job in the classified ads, to Ethel's chagrin. The mailman, Charlie, stops by... |
113448 /m/0sxjf A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} A young British schoolmistress, Adela Quested, and her elderly friend, Mrs. Moore, visit the fictional city of Chandrapore, British India. Adela is to marry Mrs. Moore's son, Ronny Heaslop, ... |
113470 /m/0sxp_ A Room with a View E. M. Forster 1908 {"/m/014dsx": "Travel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} The first part of the novel is set in Florence, Italy, and describes a young English woman's confusion at the Pensione Bertolini over her feelings for an Englishman st... |
123422 /m/0x26k Alas, Babylon Pat Frank 1959 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Randy (Randolph) Bragg, the protagonist, is a man who dabbles at law and lives a ... |
125299 /m/0xnql Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Science and Health encapsulates the teachings of Christian Science and Christian Scientists often call it their "textbook." At Sunday services, passages from the book are read along with passages from the Bible. Eddy called the two books Christian Scienc... |
125588 /m/0xr69 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser 1900 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} Dissatisfied with life in her rural Wisconsin home, 18-year-old Caroline "Sister Carrie" Meeber takes the train to Chicago, where her older sister Minnie, and her husband Sven Hanson, have agr... |
129394 /m/0yy8n The Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler 1985-08-12 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} Set in Baltimore, Maryland, the plot revolves around Macon Leary, a writer of travel guides whose son has been killed in a shooting at a fast-food restaurant. He and his wife Sarah, separately lost in grief, find their marriage disint... |
133012 /m/0_3ph Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal Christopher Moore 2002 {"/m/03k9fj": "Adventure", "/m/0pym5": "Absurdist fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0246p": "Comic fantasy", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour... |
133721 /m/0_bnp The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989-05 {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} The Remains of the Day tells, in first person, the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington (mentioned in increasing detail in flashbacks).... |
133874 /m/0_d5g Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1866 {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} Raskolnikov, a conflicted former student, lives in a tiny, rented room in Saint Petersburg. He refuses all help, even from his friend Razumikhin, and devises a... |
140648 /m/011k8y The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul Douglas Adams 1988-10-10 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06mq7": "Science", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} * The central premise of the b... |
140913 /m/011lms Njáls saga Traditional The first episode covers the period from the betrothal of Hrútr Herjólfsson and Unnr to the ugly legacy of their divorce. We are shown Hrútr's exploits in Norway, where he gains honour at court and in battle, but he ruins his subsequent marriage by becoming the lover of the ag... |
141464 /m/011rc0 Damage Josephine Hart 1991 The first person narrator of the novel is an unnamed medical doctor turned politician (called Dr Stephen Fleming in the Louis Malle film) whose promotion from MP to cabinet member is imminent. Just then the MP is casually introduced to his grown-up son's enigmatic girlfrien... |
142161 /m/011x61 The Railway Children E. Nesbit 1906 {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} The story concerns a family who move to "Three Chimneys", a house near the railway, after the father, who works at the Foreign office, is imprisoned as a result of being falsely accused of selling state se... |
142164 /m/011x6r Imperial Earth Arthur C. Clarke 1975 {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} Duncan Makenzie is the latest generation of the 'first family' of Titan, a colonised moon of Saturn. Originally settled by his grandfather Malcolm Makenzie in the early 23rd century, Titan's econom... |
142323 /m/011xzq The Masque of the Red Death Edgar Allan Poe 1842-05 {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0707q": "Short story"} The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and one thousand other nobles have taken refuge in thi... |
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