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58901
/m/0g2bw
Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card
1985
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
In the far future, humanity has discovered interstellar travel and faster-than-light communication enabled by ansibles. In exploring the galaxy, they encountered an alien race known as the Formics, derogatorily dubbed "buggers" due to their insect-like appearance. The Formics attacked the humans and the two races ente...
59375
/m/0g5k6
Titus Andronicus
William Shakespeare
null
null
The play begins shortly after the death of the Roman Emperor, with his two sons, Saturninus and Bassianus, squabbling over who will succeed him. Their conflict seems set to boil over into violence until a tribune, Marcus Andronicus, announces that the people's choice for the new emperor is his brother, Titus, who will...
59411
/m/0g5t6
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare
1861
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, makes it known that he intends to leave the city on a diplomatic mission. He leaves the government in the hands of a strict judge, Angelo. Claudio, a young nobleman, is betrothed/unofficially married to Juliet. At the time, marriages were supposed to be announced by banns in advance. Due...
59692
/m/0g7tz
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Philip K. Dick
1974
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The novel is set in a dystopian future United States following a Second Civil War which led to the collapse of the nation's democratic institutions. The National Guard ("nats") and US police force ("pols") reestablished social order through instituting a dictatorship, with a "Director" at the apex, and police marshals...
59782
/m/0g8ln
Job: A Comedy of Justice
Robert A. Heinlein
1984
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The story examines religion through the eyes of Alex, a Christian political activist who is corrupted by Margrethe, a Danish Norse cruise ship hostess — and who loves every minute of it. Enduring a shipwreck, an earthquake, and a series of world-changes brought about by Loki (with Jehovah's permission), Alex and...
59784
/m/0g8m0
Farmer in the Sky
Robert A. Heinlein
1950
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The story is set in a future, overcrowded Earth, where food is carefully rationed. Teenager William (Bill) Lermer lives with his widower father, George. George decides to emigrate to the farming colony on Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons. After marrying Molly Kenyon, George, Bill and Molly's daughter Peggy embark on t...
59786
/m/0g8mt
Friday
Robert A. Heinlein
1982-04
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The book's protagonist is Friday Baldwin, an artificial person both mentally and physically superior in many ways to an ordinary human, but she faces great prejudice and will most likely be killed if her "non-human" status is discovered. Employed as a highly self-sufficient combat courier, her various missions take he...
59804
/m/0g8rz
Have Space Suit-Will Travel
Robert A. Heinlein
1958
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}
Clifford "Kip" Russell, a bright high school senior with an eccentric father, enters an advertising jingle writing contest, hoping to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Moon. He instead gets an obsolete, but genuine, used space suit. Though a few make fun of him, with the help of sympathetic townspeople, and using h...
59826
/m/0g8xg
Requiem
Robert A. Heinlein
null
null
The story centers around Delos David Harriman, the lead character of "The Man Who Sold The Moon". Harriman, a tycoon and latter-day robber baron, had always dreamed of going to the Moon, and had spent much of his career and resources making space flight a practical commercial enterprise. Unfortunately, his business pa...
59842
/m/0g8_z
Red Planet
Robert A. Heinlein
1949
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
On Mars, Jim Marlowe and Frank Sutton travel to the Lowell Academy boarding school for the start of the academic year. Jim takes along his native, volleyball-sized pet, Willis the Bouncer, who is about as intelligent as a human child and has a photographic memory for sounds, which he can also reproduce perfectly. At a...
59844
/m/0g90b
The Number of the Beast
Robert A. Heinlein
7/12/1980
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}
The book is a series of diary entries by each of the four main characters: Zebadiah John Carter, programmer Dejah Thoris "Deety" Burroughs Carter, her mathematics professor father Jacob Burroughs, and an off-campus socialite Hilda Corners. The names "Dejah Thoris", "Burroughs", and "Carter" are overt references to Joh...
60128
/m/0gc8j
Foundation's Edge
Isaac Asimov
1982-06
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
Five hundred years after the establishment of the Foundation, the Mayor of Terminus, Harla Branno, is basking in a political glow, her policies having been vindicated by the recent successful resolution of a Seldon Crisis. Golan Trevize, a former officer of the Navy and now a member of Council, believes the Second Fou...
60129
/m/0gc8_
The Caves of Steel
Isaac Asimov
1954-06
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The book's central crime is a murder, which takes place before the novel opens. (This is an Asimovian trademark, which he attributed to his own squeamishness and John Campbell's advice of beginning as late in the story as possible.) Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, a Spacer Ambassador, lives in Spacetown, the Spacer outpost just ...
60130
/m/0gc9g
Prelude to Foundation
Isaac Asimov
1988-11
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The story takes place on Trantor during the reign of Emperor Cleon I. It starts with Hari's presentation of a paper at a mathematics convention detailing how practical use of psychohistory might theoretically be possible. The Emperor of the Galactic Empire learns of this and wants to use Hari for political gain. After...
60131
/m/0gc9y
Foundation and Earth
Isaac Asimov
1986
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
Councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Pelorat, and Blissenobiarella of the planet Gaia (all of whom were introduced in Foundation's Edge) set out on a journey to find humanity's ancestral planet — Earth. The purpose of the journey is to settle Trevize's doubt with his decision at the end of Foundation's Edge...
60139
/m/0gcf1
Time Enough for Love
Robert A. Heinlein
1973-06
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The book covers several periods from the life of Lazarus Long (birth name: Woodrow Wilson Smith), the oldest living human, now more than two thousand years old. The first half of the book takes the form of several novellas connected by Lazarus's retrospective narrative. In the framing story, Lazarus has decided that l...
60145
/m/0gchb
The Rolling Stones
Robert A. Heinlein
1952
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The Stones, a family of "Loonies" (residents of the Moon, known as "Luna" in Latin), purchase and rebuild a used spaceship, and go sightseeing around the solar system. The twin teenage boys, Castor and Pollux, buy used bicycles to sell on Mars, their first stop, where they run afoul of import regulations and are freed...
60146
/m/0gchp
The Door into Summer
Robert A. Heinlein
1957
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The novel opens in 1970 with Daniel Boone Davis, an engineer and inventor, well into a long drinking binge. He has lost his company, Hired Girl, Inc., to his partner Miles Gentry and the company bookkeeper, Belle Darkin. She had been Dan's fiancée, deceiving him into giving her enough voting stock to allow her and Mil...
60149
/m/0gcjx
Farnham's Freehold
Robert A. Heinlein
1964
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}
Hugh Farnham, a middle-aged man, holds a bridge club party for his wife Grace (an alcoholic), son Duke (a law graduate), daughter Karen (a college student), and Barbara (Karen's sorority sister). During the bridge game, Duke berates him for frightening his mother with preparations for a possible nuclear attack by the ...
60161
/m/0gcm_
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
1930
{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}
Sam Spade and Miles Archer are hired by a Miss Wonderly to follow a man, Floyd Thursby, who has allegedly run off with Wonderly's younger sister. Spade and Archer take the assignment because the money is good, but Spade implies that the woman looks like trouble. That night, Spade receives a phone call telling him that...
60171
/m/0gcqp
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
B. Traven
null
{"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"}
Three down-and-out gringos meet by chance in a Mexican city and discuss how to overcome their financial distress. They then set out to discover gold in the remote Sierra Madre mountains. They ride a train into the hinterlands, surviving a bandit attack en route. Once in the desert, Howard, the old-timer of the group, ...
60266
/m/0gd4j
Funeral in Berlin
Len Deighton
1964
{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The protagonist, who is unnamed, travels to Berlin to arrange the defection of a Soviet scientist named Semitsa, this being brokered by Johnny Vulkan of the Berlin intelligence community. Despite his initial scepticism the deal seems to have the support of Russian security-chief Colonel Stok and Hallam in the British ...
60267
/m/0gd4w
Billion-Dollar Brain
Len Deighton
1966
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The unnamed protagonist travels to Helsinki to deliver a package after receiving instructions from a mysterious mechanically operated telephone message. On his arrival the protagonist discovers that the message was from 'The Brain', a one billion dollar super-computer owned by eccentric Texan billionaire General Midwi...
60269
/m/0gd5k
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
1901
{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"}
Kim (Kimball O'Hara) is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier and a poor white mother who have both died in poverty. Living a vagabond existence in India under British rule in the late 19th century, Kim earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore. He occasionally works for Mahbub Ali,...
60310
/m/0gdfn
Whit
Iain Banks
1995
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
Isis, otherwise The Blessed Very Reverend Gaia-Marie Isis Saraswati Minerva Mirza Whit of Luskentyre, Beloved Elect of God III, is the 19-year-old granddaughter and designated spiritual heir of Salvador Whit, patriarch of the Luskentyrians. They are a religious cult who live in a commune in Stirlingshire and reject mo...
60364
/m/0gdq1
Mostly Harmless
Douglas Adams
null
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"}
After the events in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Arthur Dent and his love interest Fenchurch attempt to sightsee across the Galaxy, but when Fenchurch disappears during a hyperspace jump due to being from an unstable sector of the Galaxy, Arthur becomes depressed and travels the Galaxy alone, raising money to...
60878
/m/0gjjf
The Lion in Winter
James Goldman
null
null
Set during Christmas 1183 at Henry II of England's castle in Chinon, Anjou, Angevin Empire, the play opens with the arrival of Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he has had imprisoned since 1173. The story concerns the gamesmanship between Henry, Eleanor, their three surviving sons Richard, Geoffrey, and John, an...
60956
/m/0gk1s
Native Son
Richard Wright
1940
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
Bigger Thomas wakes up in a dark, small room at the sound of the alarm clock. He lives in one room with his brother Buddy, his sister Vera, and their mother. Suddenly, a rat appears. The room turns into a maelstrom and after a violent chase, Bigger claims the life of an animal with an iron skillet and terrorizes Vera ...
61050
/m/0gknq
East Lynne
null
null
null
Lady Isabel Carlyle, a beautiful and refined young woman, leaves her hard-working but neglectful lawyer-husband and her infant children to elope with an aristocratic suitor. After he deserts her, and she bears their illegitimate child, Lady Isabel disguises herself and takes the position of governess in the household ...
61069
/m/0gkw2
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
1929
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The novel is divided into five books. In the first book, Rinaldi introduces Henry to Catherine Barkley; Henry attempts to seduce her, and their relationship begins. While on the Italian front, Henry is wounded in the knee by a mortar shell and sent to a hospital in Milan. The second book shows the growth of Henry and ...
61172
/m/0glpp
Imitation of Life
Fannie Hurst
1933
{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The story is a look at early 20th-century American race relations. In Hurst's novel, Bea Chipley is a quiet, mousey, Atlantic City teenage girl whose mother passes away, leaving her to keep house for her father (Mr. Chipley) and Benjamin Pullman, a boarder who peddles ketchup and relish on the boardwalk and sells mapl...
61179
/m/0glrw
The Last Command
Timothy Zahn
null
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The book is set a month after Dark Force Rising. Now emboldened by his recent capture of the Katana fleet and staffing them with clone personnel, Grand Admiral Thrawn launches his offensive against the New Republic with great success. Through certain deception techniques (such as faking a turbolaser barrage using cloa...
61181
/m/0glsq
The Way of All Flesh
Samuel Butler
1903
{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"}
The story is narrated by Overton, godfather to the central character. The novel takes its beginnings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in order to trace Ernest's emergence from previous generations of the Pontifex family. John Pontifex was a carpenter; his son George rises in the world to become a ...
61324
/m/0gmnj
Alice Adams
Booth Tarkington
1921-06
{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The novel begins with Virgil Adams confined to bed with an unnamed illness. There is tension between Virgil and his wife over how he should go about recovering, and she pressures him not to return to work for J. A. Lamb once he is well. Alice, their daughter, attempts to keep peace in the family (with mixed results) b...
61489
/m/0gnfq
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
1862
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The story starts in 1815 in Digne. The peasant Jean Valjean has just been released from imprisonment in the Bagne of Toulon after nineteen years (five for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family, and fourteen more for numerous escape attempts). Upon being released, he is required to carry a yellow passpo...
61506
/m/0gnkp
Dodsworth
Sinclair Lewis
1929
{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
Samual 'Sam' Dodsworth is an ambitious and innovative automobile designer, who builds his fortunes in Zenith, Winnemac. In addition to his success in the business world, he had also succeeded as a young man in winning the hand of Frances 'Fran' Voelker, a beautiful young socialite. While the book provides the courtshi...
61528
/m/0gnsh
Lost Horizon
James Hilton
1933
{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0277ppz": "Non-fiction novel", "/m/08g5mv": "Lost World", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The origin of the eleven numbered chapters of the novel is explained in a prologue and epilogue, whose narrator is a neurologist. This neurologist and a novelist friend, Rutherford, are given dinner at Tempelhof, Berlin, by their old school-friend Wyland, a secretary at the British embassy. A chance remark by a passin...
61958
/m/0grxd
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane
1895
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
On a cold day the fictional 304th New York Regiment awaits battle beside a river. Eighteen-year-old Private Henry Fleming, remembering his romantic reasons for enlisting as well as his mother's resulting protests, wonders whether he will remain brave in the face of fear, or turn and run. He is comforted by one of his ...
62113
/m/0gs_c
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
James Hilton
null
{"/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}
The novel tells the story of a much-beloved schoolteacher and his long tenure at Brookfield, a fictional British boys' public boarding school (a private school in American terminology). Mr. Chipping conquers his inability to connect with his students, as well as his initial shyness, when he marries Katherine, a young ...
62120
/m/0gt2b
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
1937
{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}
Two migrant field workers in California on their plantation during the Great Depression—George Milton, an intelligent but uneducated man, and Lennie Small, a man of large stature and great strength but limited mental abilities—are on their way to another part of California in Soledad. They hope to one day attain their...
62651
/m/0gxw1
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare
1623
null
Helena, the orphan daughter of a famous physician, is the ward of the Countess of Rousillon, and hopelessly in love with the son of the Countess, Count Bertram, who has been sent to the court of the King of France. Despite her beauty and worth, Helena has no hope of attracting Bertram, since she is of low birth and he...
62654
/m/0gxwz
The Taming of the Shrew
William Shakespeare
1623
null
Prior to the first act, an induction frames the play as a "kind of history" played in front of a befuddled drunkard named Christopher Sly who is tricked into believing that he is a lord. In the play performed for Sly, the "Shrew" is Katherina Minola, the eldest daughter of Baptista Minola, a lord in Padua. Katherina's...
62695
/m/0gy7g
Our Town
Thornton Wilder
null
null
The Stage Manager guides the play, taking questions from the audience, describing the locations (as scenery is sparse) and making key observations about the world the play creates. The Stage Manager introduces the audience to the small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, and its residents as a morning begins in 1...
63099
/m/0g_7x
Ishmael
Daniel Quinn
1992
{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
Ishmael begins with a newspaper ad: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." The nameless narrator and protagonist begins his story, telling how he first reacted to this ad with scorn because of the absurdity of "wanting to save the world," a notion he feels that once he f...
63110
/m/0g_b_
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
1850
{"/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The story traces the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David was born in Blunderston near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, in 1820, six months after the death of his father. Seven years later, his mother re-marries Edward Murdstone. David is given good reason to dislike his stepfather and has simi...
63335
/m/0h0nb
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke
1953
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/09vxq_p": "Catastrophic literature", "/m/07g8l": "Transhumanism"}
The novel is divided into three parts, following a third-person omniscient narrative with no main character. In the late 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union are competing to launch the first spaceship into orbit, to military ends. However, when vast alien spaceships suddenly position themselves above ...
63425
/m/0h11p
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
1943
null
The reader is introduced to the narrator who, as a young boy, drew a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. However, he is discouraged from drawing when all adults who look at his picture see a hat, instead. The narrator attempts to explain what his first picture depicts by drawing another one clearly showing the elep...
63738
/m/0h31w
Brigadoon
Alan Jay Lerner
null
null
;Act I New Yorkers Tommy Albright and Jeff Douglas have traveled to the Scottish Highlands on a game-hunting vacation, only to get lost their first night out. They begin to hear music ("Brigadoon") coming from a nearby village; strangely, the village isn't on their map of the area. Tommy and Jeff decide to visit it to...
63750
/m/0h362
The Two Towers
J. R. R. Tolkien
11/11/1954
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
As Aragorn searches for Frodo, he suddenly hears Boromir's horn. He finds Boromir mortally wounded by arrows, his assailants gone. Before Boromir dies, Aragorn also learns that Merry and Pippin were kidnapped by Saruman's Uruk-hai in spite of his efforts to defend them, and that Frodo had vanished after Boromir had tr...
63751
/m/0h36k
The Return of the King
J. R. R. Tolkien
10/20/1955
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}
Gandalf and Pippin arrive at Minas Tirith in the kingdom of Gondor, delivering the news to Denethor, the Lord and Steward of Gondor, that a devastating attack on his city by Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor is imminent. Pippin then enters the service of the Steward as repayment of a debt he owes to Boromir, Denethor's ...
63754
/m/0h37w
Akallabêth
null
null
null
Akallabêth (The Downfallen in Adûnaic; Quenya is Atalantë) is the story of the destruction of the Kingdom of Númenor, written by Elendil. After the downfall of the Dark Lord Morgoth at the end of the First Age (which is described in the Quenta Silmarillion) the Edain, those Men who had aided the Elves in their war aga...
63985
/m/0h4g1
The Drawing of the Three
Stephen King
1987-05
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The book begins less than seven hours after the end of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger after The Man in Black has described The Gunslinger's fate using tarot cards. Roland wakes up on a beach, where he is suddenly attacked by a strange, lobster-like creature, which he dubs a "lobstrosity." He kills the creature but not...
63987
/m/0h4gh
The Gunslinger
Stephen King
6/10/1982
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/025txgl": "Western fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
It tells the story of the gunslinger, Roland of Gilead, and his quest to catch the man in black, the first of many steps towards his ultimate destination - the Dark Tower. The main story takes place in a world that is somewhat similar to the Old West but exists in an alternate time frame or parallel universe to ours. ...
63992
/m/0h4hb
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King
10/3/2000
{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}
The first section of On Writing is an Autobiography mainly about King’s early exposure to writing, and his childhood attempts at writing. King talks about his early attempts to get published, and his first novel Carrie. King also talks about his fame as a writer, and what it took to get there. This includes his relati...
63997
/m/0h4kb
The Body
Stephen King
1982
{"/m/0l67h": "Novella"}
Vern Tessio informs his three friends that he has overheard his older brother Billy talking with his friend Charlie Hogan, about the location of the corpse of Ray Brower, a boy from Chamberlain, a town 40 miles or so east of Castle Rock, who has gone missing, while going out to pick blueberries with one of his mother'...
64002
/m/0h4ld
Wizard and Glass
Stephen King
11/4/1997
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The novel begins where The Waste Lands ended. After Jake, Eddie, Susannah and Roland fruitlessly riddle Blaine the Mono for several hours, Eddie defeats the mad computer by telling childish jokes. Blaine is unable to handle Eddie's "illogical" riddles, and short-circuits. The four gunslingers and Oy the billy-bumbler ...
64007
/m/0h4m_
The Waste Lands
Stephen King
1991-08
{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The story begins five weeks after the end of The Drawing of the Three. Roland, Susannah, and Eddie have moved east from the shore of the Western Sea, and into the woods of Out-World. After an encounter with a gigantic cyborg bear named Shardik, they discover one of the six mystical Beams that hold the world together. ...
64010
/m/0h4nt
The Eyes of the Dragon
Stephen King
2/2/1987
{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The Eyes of the Dragon takes place entirely within the realm of Delain (which itself is located within In-World from The Dark Tower series). It is told from the perspective of an unnamed storyteller/narrator, who speaks casually and frankly to the reader, frequently adding his own commentary on characters' motivations...
64019
/m/0h4s1
Riding the Bullet
Stephen King
null
null
Alan Parker is a student at the University of Maine who is trying to find himself. He gets a call from a neighbor in his hometown, Lewiston, telling him that his mother has been taken to the hospital after having a stroke. Lacking a functioning car, Parker decides to hitchhike the 120-miles south to visit his mother. ...
64024
/m/0h4tj
Dolores Claiborne
Stephen King
null
{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
As the story begins, Dolores Claiborne is in a police interrogation and wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill her wealthy employer, an elderly woman named Vera Donovan whom she has looked after for years. She does, however, confess to the murder of her husband, Joe St. George, almost 30 years before,...
64025
/m/0h4ty
Gerald's Game
Stephen King
null
{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}
The story begins with Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald in the bedroom of their secluded cabin in western Maine, where they have gone for an off-beat romantic weekend. Gerald, a successful lawyer with an aggressive personality, has been able to reinvigorate the couple's sex life by handcuffing Jessie to the bed...
64026
/m/0h4v9
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Novel
Stephen King
4/6/1999
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The story is set in motion by a family hiking trip, during which Trisha's brother, Pete, and mother constantly squabble about the mother's divorce with her father, as well as other topics. Trisha falls back to avoid listening and is therefore unable to find her family again after she wanders off the trail to take a ba...
64029
/m/0h4wh
The Green Mile
Stephen King
1996-03
{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"}
A first-person narrative told by Paul Edgecombe, the novel switches between Paul as an old man in the Georgia Pines nursing home sharing his story with fellow resident Elaine Connelly in 1996, and his time in 1932 as the block supervisor of the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row, nicknamed "The Green Mile" for the c...
64035
/m/0h4xv
The Long Walk
Stephen King
null
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}
One hundred teenage boys participate in an annual walking contest called "The Long Walk", which is the "national sport". Each Walker must maintain a speed of at least four miles per hour; if he drops below that speed for 30 seconds, he receives a verbal warning (which can be erased by walking for one hour without bein...
64199
/m/0h5l0
Solaris
Stanisław Lem
1961
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/059r08": "Psychological novel"}
Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life on a far-distant planet. Solaris, with whom Terran scientists are attempting communication, is almost completely covered with an ocean that is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing organism. What appear to be wav...
64594
/m/0h78p
You Can't Take It with You
Moss Hart
null
null
At first the Sycamores seem mad, but it is not long before you realize that if they are mad, then the rest of the world is madder. In contrast to these delightful people are the unhappy Kirbys. Tony, the attractive young son of the Kirbys, falls in love with Alice Sycamore and brings his parents to dine at the Sycamor...
65169
/m/0hb7d
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
1623
null
Mark Antony – one of the Triumvirs of Rome along with Octavian and Lepidus – has neglected his soldierly duties after being beguiled by Egypt's Queen, Cleopatra. He ignores Rome's domestic problems, including the fact that his third wife Fulvia rebelled against Octavian and then died. Octavian calls Antony back to Rom...
65379
/m/0hcby
The Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
1951-12
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The protagonist is Bill Masen, who has made his living working with "triffids"—tall plants capable of aggressive and seemingly intelligent behaviour. They are able to move about by "walking" on their roots, appear to communicate with each other, and possess a deadly whip-like poisonous sting that enables them to kill ...
65953
/m/0hgq8
Antigone
Sophocles
null
null
Before the beginning of the play, two brothers leading opposite sides in Thebes' civil war died fighting each other for the throne. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, has decided that Eteocles will be honored and Polyneices will be in public shame. The rebel brother's body will not be sanctified by holy rites, and will l...
66219
/m/0hj3z
Love and Mr Lewisham
H. G. Wells
1900
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Lewisham is an 18-year-old teacher at a boys' school in Sussex, earning forty pounds a year. He meets and falls in love with Ethel Henderson, who is paying a visit to relatives. His involvement with her causes him to lose his position, but he is unable to find her when he moves to Lo...
66346
/m/0hjxw
The Stardroppers
John Brunner
1972
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}
The Stardroppers is about an undercover United Nations agent investigating a new fad, "stardropping", whereby physics-violating equipment is used to listen to sounds believed to be alien or paranormal signals. Superficially a harmless but expensive hobby, stardropping reins in a fanaticism resembling addiction, where ...
66627
/m/0hlg3
The Little Foxes
Lillian Hellman
null
null
The focus is on Southerner Regina Hubbard Giddens, who struggles for wealth and freedom within the confines of an early 20th century society where a father considered only sons as legal heirs. As a result, her avaricious brothers Benjamin and Oscar are independently wealthy, while she must rely upon her sickly, wheelc...
67003
/m/0hngp
Carrie
Stephen King
4/5/1974
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}
The book uses false documents to frame the story of one of the worst disasters in American history--the destruction of the town of Chamberlain, Maine by high school student Carietta "Carrie" White. For years, Carrie has been abused at home by her unstable Christian fundamentalist mother, Margaret White. She does not f...
67013
/m/0hnj0
King John
William Shakespeare
1623
null
King John receives an ambassador from France, who demands, on pain of war, that he renounce his throne in favour of his nephew, Arthur, whom the French King, Philip, believes to be the rightful heir to the throne. John adjudicates an inheritance dispute between Robert Falconbridge and his older brother Philip the Bast...
67015
/m/0hnjc
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare
null
null
The play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study, promising not to give in to the company of women – Berowne somewhat more hesitantly than the others. Berowne reminds the king that the princess and her thre...
67317
/m/0hq4m
Watership Down
Richard Adams
1972-11
{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their chief rabbit of the need to evacuate, they set out on their own with a small band of rabbits to search for a new home, barely elud...
67838
/m/0hsz9
Harriet the Spy
Louise Fitzhugh
1964
{"/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
Eleven-year-old Harriet M. Welsch is an aspiring writer, who lives in New York City's Upper East Side. A precocious and enthusiastic girl, Harriet enjoys writing and aspires to become a spy. Encouraged by her nanny, Ole Golly, Harriet carefully observes others and writes her thoughts down in a notebook as practice for...
68201
/m/0hvkr
Richard II
William Shakespeare
null
null
Richard II is the main character of the play. The first Act begins with King Richard sitting majestically on his throne in full state. We learn that Henry Bolingbroke, Richard's cousin, is having a dispute with Thomas Mowbray, and they both want the king to act as judge. The subject of the quarrel is Bolingbroke's acc...
68348
/m/0hwk2
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
1939
{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"}
Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the home of wealthy, elderly General Sternwood. He wants Marlowe to deal with a blackmail attempt by a bookseller named Arthur Geiger on his wild young daughter Carmen. She had previously been blackmailed by a Joe Brody. Sternwood mentions his other, older daughter Vivi...
68851
/m/0hzkp
The State of the Art
Iain Banks
1991
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}
* Road of Skulls * A Gift from the Culture * Odd Attachment * Descendant * Cleaning Up * Piece * The State of the Art At 100 pages long, the title novella makes up the bulk of the book. The novella chronicles a Culture mission to Earth in the late Seventies, and also serves as a prequel of sorts to Use of Weapons by f...
68857
/m/0hznb
The Player of Games
Iain Banks
1988
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}
Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a famously skilful player of board games and other similar contests, lives on Chiark Orbital, and is bored with his successful life. The Culture's Special Circumstances inquires about his willingness to participate in a long journey, though won't explain further unless Gurgeh agrees to participate...
68863
/m/0hzpk
Excession
Iain Banks
1996
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}
The Excession of the title is a perfect black-body sphere that appears mysteriously on the edge of Culture space, appears to be older than the Universe itself and resists the attempts of the Culture and technologically equivalent societies (notably the Zetetic Elench) to probe it. The Excession is what the Culture's s...
68870
/m/0hzrs
Look to Windward
Iain Banks
2000
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}
Despite the passage of time, Major Quilan still suffers grief and bereavement from the death of his wife, killed during the Chelgrian civil war that resulted from the Culture's interference. Quilan is offered the chance to avenge the lost Chelgrians who died in a civil war and is inducted into a plot to strike back at...
68871
/m/0hzs4
Use of Weapons
Iain Banks
2/1/1990
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"}
The book is made up of two narrative streams, interwoven in alternating chapters. The numbers of the chapters indicate which stream they belong to: one stream is numbered forward in words (One, Two ...), while the other is numbered in reverse with Roman numerals (XIII, XII ...). The story told by the former moves forw...
69111
/m/0j087
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Douglas Adams
1984
{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction"}
Arthur Dent has hitch-hiked through the galaxy and is dropped off on a planet in a rainstorm. He realises that he appears to be in England on Earth, even though he saw it destroyed by the Vogons. While he has been gone for several years, it appears only a few months have passed on Earth. He manages to hitch a ride wit...
69485
/m/0j2th
Choke
Chuck Palahniuk
5/22/2001
{"/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. He had grown up moving from one foster home to another, as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him. Several times throughout his childhood, his mother would kidnap h...
69868
/m/0j58l
A Friend of the Earth
T. Coraghessan Boyle
2000-09
{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"}
A Friend of the Earth is the story of Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, a U.S. citizen born in 1950, half Irish Catholic and half Jewish ("I'm a mess and I know it. Jewish guilt, Catholic guilt, enviro-eco-capitalistico guilt: I can't even expel gas in peace."), whose personal tragedy fits in with, and adds to, the gloo...
69919
/m/0j5mn
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust
1913
{"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The novel recounts the experiences of the Narrator while growing up, participating in society, falling in love, and learning about art. The Narrator begins by noting, “For a long time, I went to bed early.” He comments on the way sleep seems to alter one’s surroundings, and the way Habit makes one indifferent to them....
69931
/m/0j5ql
Liza of Lambeth
W. Somerset Maugham
null
{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The action covers a period of roughly four months—from August to November—around the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee. Liza Kemp is an 18-year-old factory worker and the youngest of 13 children, now living alone with her ageing and incompetent mother. Very popular with all the residents—both young and old—of Vere Stre...
70070
/m/0j65x
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
Alan Garner
1960
{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}
The book's introduction concerns the origin of the Weirdstone. Following the defeat of Nastrond, it was decided to take steps to prevent what must otherwise be his eventual return. This involved bringing together a small band of warriors of pure heart, each of whom must be partnered by a horse, and to gather them insi...
70153
/m/0j6sy
The Human Stain
Philip Roth
2000-05
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}
The story is told by Nathan Zuckerman, a writer who lives quietly in New England, where Coleman Silk is his neighbor. Silk is a former classics professor and dean of faculty at nearby Athena College, a fictional institution in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. At 71, Silk is accused of racism by two black stude...
70206
/m/0j72r
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Joan Lindsay
1967
{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}
Picnic at Hanging Rock centers around a trip by a party of girls from Appleyard College, a fictitious upper class private boarding school, who travel to Hanging Rock in the Mount Macedon area, Victoria, for a picnic on Valentine's Day 1900. The excursion ends in tragedy when three of the girls, and later one of their ...
70258
/m/0j78y
I, the Jury
Mickey Spillane
1947
{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"}
New York City, summer 1944. Although she runs a successful private psychiatric clinic on New York's Park Avenue, Dr. Charlotte Manning — young, beautiful, blonde, and well-to-do — cannot get enough. In order to increase her profit, she gets involved with a group of criminals — a "syndicate" — s...
70375
/m/0j7s8
Thinks ...
David Lodge
2001
{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}
The novel is exclusively set at the (entirely fictitious [cf. "Author's Note"]) University of Gloucester, based loosely on the University of York thanks to the author's brief residence there. (Its Cognitive Science and Creative Writing departments also bear uncanny resemblances to those of the universities of Sussex a...
70829
/m/0jb2_
The Adventures of Pinocchio
Carlo Collodi
1883
{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
The story begins in Tuscany. A carpenter has found a block of pinewood which he plans to carve into a leg for his table. When he begins, however, the log shouts out, "Don't strike me too hard!" Frightened by the talking log, the carpenter, Antonio or Master Cherry as he is called does not know what to do until his nei...
70850
/m/0jb7s
Smith of Wootton Major
J. R. R. Tolkien
null
{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"}
The village of Wootton Major was well-known around the countryside for its annual festivals, which were particularly famous for their culinary delights. The biggest festival of all was the Feast of Good Children. This festival was celebrated only once every twenty-four years: twenty-four children of the village were i...
71029
/m/0jc4c
The Tie That Binds
Kent Haruf
null
null
In 1896, newlyweds Roy and Ada Goodnough leave Iowa and settle down in northeastern Colorado under the Homestead Act of 1862. The business of farming is a tough affair in those days, but Roy is a hard-working man who eventually succeeds in tilling the soil and breeding cattle. Ada bears him two children: Edith, who is...
71290
/m/0jd3p
England, England
Julian Barnes
1998
{"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}
England, England is divided into three parts entitled "England", "England, England" and "Anglia". The first part focuses on the protagonist Martha Cochrane and her childhood memories. Growing up in the surrounding of the English countryside, her peaceful childhood gets disrupted when her father leaves the family. Mart...
71416
/m/0jdh5
Dune
Frank Herbert
1965
{"/m/0594kx": "Conspiracy fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/04chq5": "Planetary romance", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"}
Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV of House Corrino has come to fear House Atreides due to the growing popularity of Duke Leto Atreides within the Landsraad, the convocation of ruling Houses. Shaddam decides that House Atreides must be destroyed, but cannot risk an overt attack on a single House, as this would not be accepte...
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 dead to be easily reincarnated (though by custom, only a limited number of reincarnations are allowed). Humanity has...