Book List

Agee, James

• A Death in the Family - In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel set in Tennessee in the 1910s, a young boy tries to understand and cope with his father's death. It explores conflicts among members of the family, as well as society.

Alcott, Louisa May

• Little Women - Four sisters and their independent mother deal with a father away in the Civil War. The girls grow up, fall in love, and find out what they want to do with their lives.

Alvarez, Julia

• Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest - Drawing on interviews with survivors as well as soldiers' journals and letters, the author chronicles the true stories of the heroes from world War II as he describes in vivid detail how theses troops saw their first action on D-Day behind the Normandy beachhead, held the perimeter around Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and were the first to reach Hitler's Bavarian outpost at Berchtesgaden. (Call #: 940.54 Amb)

Anaya, Rudolpho

• Bless Me Ultima - A young boy in New Mexico in the 1940s tries to figure out who he really is among the various influences around him, including Ultima who cures with herbs and magic and teaches the young boy her magic.

Anderson, Sherwood

• Winesburg, Ohio - Young adults in a small Midwestern town must decide whether to remain trapped in their lonely lifestyle or try building new lives outside its confines.

Arnow, Harriet

Baldwin, James

Baum, Frank

Berendt, John

Brown, Claude

• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Tells how, during the second half of the 19th century, the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society as it details how white settlers cleared Indian tribes off the plains by forcing them onto reservations, or simply by killing them. Using council records, autobiographies and firsthand descriptions, the author enabled chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties – of the losses that they suffered as the American West was “won.” (Call #: 970.4 Bro) (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Buck, Pearl

Capote, Truman

• Breakfast at Tiffany's - Holly Golightly is a free-spirited woman living in New York City who doesn't let an occasional case of anxiety or fear get her too down.

Caputo, Phillip

• Silent Spring - This book, published in 1962 by the biologist/writer, revealed the atrocities of pesticide poisoning of the entire world of living things, humanity included. Carson’s work not only left chemical companies trying to discredit her findings, but prompted an enormous environmental movement which continues today. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Cather, Willa

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish artist, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. He joins his cousin Sammy Clay to create heroes, stories, and art for comic books, while they draw on their own fears and dreams as inspiration for the creation of The Escapist, The Monitor, and Luna Moth. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Cheever, John

• The Wapshot Chronicle - Follows the eccentric Wapshot family of New England, including Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; his licentious older son, Moses; and Moses' adoring and errant younger brother.

Chopin, Kate

• The Awakening - Considered one of the first feminist novels, since it is about a woman who can not find fulfillment in being only a wife and a mother.

Cisneros, Sandra

• The House on Mango Street - A collection of vignettes about a young Hispanic girl growing up in a poor neighborhood.

Clancy, Tom

• The Ox-Bow Incident - Set in 1885, this is a searing and realistic portrait of frontier life and mob violence in the American West. It focuses on the lynching of three innocent men and the tragedy that ensues when law and order are abandoned.

Conroy, Pat

Cooper, James Fenimore

• And Still We Rise: the Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City Students - The odyssey of twelve high school seniors who qualify for a gifted program, but face incredible challenges as they attend South-Central, a Los Angeles school where bullets are known to rip through windows. A story of transcending obstacles that would dash the hopes of any but the most exceptional spirits. (Not available in the BHS library. Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Crane, Stephen

Doctorow, E.L.

Dorris, Michael

• A Yellow Raft in Blue Water - Saga of three generations of American Indian women beset by hardship and torn by angry secrets.

Dos Passos, John

• Manhattan Transfer - A tale of New York City in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants, chronicling the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it in their search for the American Dream.
• Mid-Century - A collage of people and events from the mid-1900s, including the Great Depression, World War II and General Douglas MacArthur, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Eleanor Roosevelt; labor unions and John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, and James Hoffa; James Dean and others. (Not available in the BHS library.)
• Three Soldiers - Chronicles the experiences of a trio of American Army privates during World War I in this denunciation of the military and its exploitation of young men.

Dreiser, Theodore

• An American Tragedy - A young man sees his way out of a lifetime of poverty after he and a rich, young socialite fall in love. Unfortunately he has gotten his crass, lower-class girlfriend pregnant and must figure a way out of impending fatherhood.
• Sister Carrie - Tells the story of a pretty small-town girl who comes to the big city filled with vague ambitions. She is used by men and uses them in turn to become a successful Broadway actress.

Eggers, Dave

• What is the What - In this fictionalized memoir, when Arab militia destroy his Sudanese village and he is separated from his family, Valentino joins thousands of other “Lost Boys." After 15 years of civil war and refugee-camp exile, he comes to the U.S. where life in many ways is more difficult than in the camps. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Ellison, Ralph

• Invisible Man - A post World War II novel in which a black man realizes he is basically invisible to white people living in their own little world.

Erdrich, Louise

• Love Medicine - A multi-generational portrait of two families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines, and of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable drama of anger, desire, and the healing power that is love medicine.

Faulkner, William

• Absalom, Absalom - The story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness -- a man who wanted sons, but the sons destroyed him.
• As I Lay Dying - Addie Bundren's family sets out to fulfill her last wish by taking her body to be buried back in her native Jefferson, Mississippi.
• Go Down Moses - Faulkner examines the changing relationship of black to white and of man to the land, and weaves a complex work that is rich in understanding of the human condition. (Not available in the BHS library.)
• Light in August - Joe Christmas, a black man passing for white, is held responsible for the murder of his lover. Relays the story of his tragic life, and the horrifying consequences of his escape from, and recapture by, the townspeople of Jefferson.
  
• The Hamlet - This story, set in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, describes the rise of the Snopes family in a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation. Flem Snopes -- wily, energetic, a man of shady origins -- quickly comes to dominate the town and its people with his cunning and guile. (Not available in the BHS library.)
• The Reivers - Three unlikely car thieves from rural Mississippi experience a series of wild misadventures involving horse smuggling, trainmen, sheriff's deputies, and jail.
• The Sound and the Fury - The story of the disintegraton of a Mississippi family, as told through the inner monlogues of three brothers.
• The Unvanquished - Set in Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction, this story focuses on the Sartoris family, who, with their code of personal responsibility and courage, stand for the best of the Old South's traditions.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

• Tender Is the Night - Dick and Nicole Diver are good-looking, rich, glamorous and enormous fun. But something is wrong, and together they head toward the rocks on which their lives crash -- and only one of them really survives.
• The Beautiful and the Damned - While a couple waits for their inheritance, they squander their lives on parties and too much alcohol.
• The Love of the Last Tycoon (Originally published as The Last Tycoon) - A mysterious woman stands and smiles at Monroe Stahr, the last of the great Hollywood movie moguls. Enchanted by one another, they begin a passionate but hopeless love affair in this exposé of the movie studio system in the ‘30s.
• This Side of Paradise - A young man's journey to finding himself as he travels through his college years and beyond. It reveals the image of seemingly carefree, party-mad young men and women out to create a new morality for a Post-World War I America.

Flagg, Fannie

• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café - Cleo Threadgood shares a lifetime of memories of Whistle Stop, Alabama, where the social scene centered on its one café, with Evelyn Couch, a younger woman who is looking for meaning in her life.

Foer, Jonathan Safran

• Everything is Illuminated - On their journey through eastern Europe, a Jewish American and a Ukrainian translator discover what life was like in the villages before the Nazis destroyed them, as they unearth facts about the Nazi atrocities and the extent of Ukrainian complicity that have implications for both of them. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Ford, Madox Ford

• The Good Soldier - The story of two couples - one American, the other German - who meet each year at a fashionable German resort. Their pre-World War I veneer of good behavior is removed to reveal deceit, infidelity and betrayal.

• A Gathering of Old Men - Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, this is a powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man.
• A Lesson Before Dying - A black man is unjustly accused of murder in a small town and sentenced to death. His grandmother wants the neighbor teacher, who is also black, to make sure her grandson dies with dignity.

Glasgow, Ellen

• Barren Ground - Set in Virginia, this novel evokes the irony of change in the rural South as seen through the eyes of Dorinda Oakley, a passionate, intelligent, and independent young woman who is disillusioned in love, and who struggles to define herself in a world she does not choose. (Not available in the BHS library.)

• The Woman Within - This autobiography depicts the spiritual landscape against which Ellen Glasgow's novels were written. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Guest, Judith

• Ordinary People - A seemingly idyllic family is shattered when the older son dies in an accident and the younger son lives. The mother can't admit to her grief and the surviving son is tormented by what has happened.

Hansberry, Larraine

• A Raisin in the Sun - An award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago. The title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem,"Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up like a raisin in the sun." (Call # 812.54 Han)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

• Blithedale Romance - Concerns the friendship of four members of a communal farm, which starts intensely during the spring and summer, but as autumn approaches begins to disintegrate toward a tragic end.
• The House of Seven Gables - Set in New England in the 1840s, the Pyncheon family lives for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love.
• The Marble Faun - Three American artists and their friend, an Italian count, find their lives linked when one of them commits a murder.

Heller, Joseph

• Catch-22 - An absurdist novel about a fighter pilot in World War II who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. The story moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. Good for people with a quirky sense of humor and strong nerves.

Heinlein, Robert

• Stranger in a Strange Land - A martian, Valentine Michael Smith, comes to earth to teach people about truth and love.

Hemingway, Ernest

• Death in the Afternoon - A look at the history and grandeur of bullfighting, as the author describes the technical aspects of this dangerous ritual. It is also a deeper contemplation on the nature of cowardice and bravery, sport and tragedy, and is enlivened throughout by his commentary on life and literature. (Not available in the BHS library.)
• For Whom the Bell Tolls - Timeless epic of the Spanish Civil War portraying the struggles on the battle fields as well as the ongoing conflict within Robert Jordan as he struggles to fulfill his mission, perhaps at the cost of his own life.
• The Old Man and the Sea - The story of an old Cuban fisherman who is down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal – a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Pulitzer Prize winner.

• The Sun Also Rises - Jakes Barnes, wounded World War I veteran, and friends try to make sense of their lives as they go from drinking and dancing in Paris cafés, to a week-long fiesta in the Spanish town of Pamplona.
  

Herbert, Frank

• Dune - An intricate power struggle takes place on the planet Arrakis, the sole source of Melange, the substance necessary for interstellar travel, and that also grants psychic power and longevity.

Hersey, John

• A Bell for Adano - In this post World War II story set in Adano, Sicily, Major Victor Joppolo, an American army officer who is part ot the Allied military government ruling the area, attempts to bring democracy to the people by treating them with respect and decency, including replacing a bell that the fascists had melted down to use for ammunition.

Hurston Zora Neale

• Their Eyes Were Watching God - Follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a black woman in the 1930s, who has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them.

Irving, John

• A Prayer for Owen Meany - Owen is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball, and believes -- accurately -- that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom.
• The World According to Garp - A tale of the life and times of T. S. Garp, a novelist who could make things up, one right after the other, and they seemed to fit, including wild characters and weird events such as transsexual football players, ball turret gunners lobotomized in battle, and unicycling bears.

Jackson, Shirley

James, Henry

• Portrait of a Lady - When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, turning down two suitors, finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself.
• The Ambassadors - Lambert Strether is sent to Paris by Mrs. Newsome to bring her son Chad home, but he finds Chad transformed by the influence of a remarkable woman, and Lambert himiself succumbs to the allure of this "vast bright Babylon" and the mysterious charm of Madame de Vionnet.
• The Turn of the Screw - A naive young governess is put in charge of two seemingly angelic children, but something isn't right in this controversial ghost story.
• The Wings of a Dove - A wealthy young woman, full of life, finds out she is dying and decides to live as passionately as possible until the end.
• Washington Square - Catherine's father threatens to disinherit her if she marries the fortune hunter, Morris Townsend. Morris then abandons her, but many years later he reappears, and attempts to renew their relationship.

Jewett, Sarah Orne

• Country of the Pointed Firs - A woman rents a cottage in New England where she finds time for her art and to get to know the quaint townspeople.

Kerouac, Jack

• Dharma Bums - Relates the adventures of an ebullient group of Beatnik seekers in a freewheeling exploration of Buddhism and the search for Truth. (In Jack Kerouac: Road Novels 1957 - 1960 ) (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)
• On the Road - Depicts the life of fifties underground America and the Beat Generation, jazz, generosity and drugs, as experienced by Sal Paradise and his hero, Dean Moriarty, traveler and mystic.

Kesey, Ken

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - The story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, including the tyrannical Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her.

Kidd, Sue Monk

• The Secret Life of Bees - A young girl escapes her unhappy home and moves in with beekeepers who show her happiness.
  

King, Stephen

• On Writing - Really contains two books: an autobiography (describing how a writer grew out of a misbehaving kid who became a janitor raising a family in a trailer) and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists (including a “tool kit” of a reading list, writing assignments, a corrected story, advice on plot and character, the basic building block of the paragraph and literary models). (Not available in the BHS library. Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Kingsolver, Barbara

• Animal Dreams - Blends flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends in this telling of Codi Nodine's return to her Arizona home to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. She finds a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life.
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life - The Kentucky author chronicles a year of trying to eat locally and think globally. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)
• Pigs in Heaven - When a young Cherokee tribal lawyer comes to the door to claim Taylor's illegally adopted Indian daughter, the white woman must face the fact that her stable life is about to be torn apart. The story follows her and six-year-old Turtle across the West as they flee from the threat of separation and exist on minimum-wage earnings. (Sequel to The Bean Trees )
• Prodigal Summer - Weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia.
• The Bean Trees - In this story of love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, Taylor Greer travels from rural Kentucky to Tucson where she encounters Central American refugees and "inherits" a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle.

Kingston, Maxine Hong

• The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - A Chinese girl growing up in America tells of the conflict of cultures between her mother's Chinese ways and her own new, American ways. Includes magic realism. (Call#: B Kin)

Larsen, Nella

• Passing - This story follows Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield, two light-skinned black women who try to escape racism. Clare chooses to sever all ties with her background and passes herself off as white, while Irene simply denies that racism exists. Both, however, eventually are forced to face the awful truth. (Not available in the BHS library.)

LeGuin, Ursula K.

• Always Coming Home - Short stories, poetry and artwork immerse the reader of this futuristic story in the culture of the Kesh, a peaceful people of the far future who inhabit a place called The Valley on the northern Pacific Coast.
• The Dispossessed - In this science fiction tale, Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to do whatever it takes, even risk his life, to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe.
• The Left Hand of Darkness - The story of a lone human's mission to Winter, an unknown alien world whose inhabitants can choose -- and change -- their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Lewis, Sinclair

• Arrowsmith - For Martin Arrowsmith, his work has become his life. But forced to give up successive careers--instructor in medicine, small-town doctor, research pathologist--by obstacles ranging from public ignorance to the publicity-mindedness of a great foundation, he becomes virtually isolated as a seeker after truth.
• Babbitt - Businessman George F. Babbitt loves being a solid citizen until his middle-class life feels like a trap. He decides his life has no meaning and tries to move beyond that.
• Main Street - When Carol Kennicott moves to Gopher Prairie, she dreams of making it a better town, only to come up against the disapproval of the townspeople.

London, Jack

• The Call of the Wild - The story of Buck, a dog living in the lower 48 states who is kidnapped and ends up in Alaska as a sled dog. He is faced with challenges in the brutal weather, the harshness of the men, and the other dogs and the wolves with which he comes in contact.
• The Seawolf - After a shipwreck, Humphrey Van Weyden discovers that his rescuers on a seal-hunting schooner are desperate, brutal outcasts led by a murderous, tyrannical captain--"The Sea Wolf"--who uses his superhuman strength to torture and destroy, and his relentless will to control his mutinous crew.

Ludlum, Robert

• The Bourne Identity - Jason Bourne’s memory is blank. He only knows that he was fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, his body riddled with bullets. Now he is marked for death by Carlos, the world’s most dangerous assassin.

Malamud, Bernard

• The Assistant - Frank Alpine, an Italian-American drifter on the run from his past, meets a struggling Brooklyn grocer named Morris Bober. Seeing a chance to atone for his sins, Frank becomes Bober's stock boy and runs the store when the owner takes ill. But it is Bober's daughter, Helen, who gives Frank a real reason to turn his life around.
• The Fixer - A Russian boy from Kiev is found dead, drained of blood, and the townspeople accuse the Jews of ritual child murder.
• The Natural - Roy Hobb makes the mistake of pronouncing aloud his dream: to be the best baseball player there ever was. Such hubris invites divine intervention, but then a second chance is offered to the hero.

Marshall, Paule

• Praisesong for the Widow - Avey Johnson – a black, middle-aged, middle-class widow – abandons her two friends with whom she is sharing a Caribbean cruise, and travels to one of the islands in search of her cultural heritage and family history. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Mason, Bobbie Ann

• In Country -- Sam Hughes, 17, whose father was killed in Vietnam, lives in rural Kentucky with her Uncle Emmett, a veteran whom she suspects is suffering from exposure to Agent Orange. She is obsessed with the Vietnam War and tries to sort out why and how it has altered the lives of those in her community.

McBride, James

• The Color of Water: a Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother - Tells the remarkable story of the daughter of a Jewish rabbi who left her family and faith behind in Virginia to move to New York City where she married a black man, and battled poverty and racism to raise 12 children. (Call#: B McB) (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

• All the Pretty Horses - John Grady Cole sets off across the Mexican border for an adventure in a land that is beautiful and desolate, a place where dreams are sometimes paid for in blood.
• The Road – The setting for this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is post-apocalyptic America--a world where a disaster has occurred, reducing nature to a nuclear-gray winter and humans to savage, scavenging cannibals. A father and son are walking south in hope of finding a better life once they reach the coast. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

McCullers, Carson

• Reflections in a Golden Eye - Set on an Army base in the American South of the 1930s, this is the story of Captain Penderton, his tempestuous and flirtatious wife, and the passions and jealousies that ensue with the arrival of Major Langdon and the fragile Alison Langdon. (In Complete Novels by Carson McCullers)
• The Ballad of the Sad Café - A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, this novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose café serves as the town's gathering place.
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Set in a small town in the South, it is the story of a group of people who have little in common except that they are all hopelessly lonely. A young girl, a drunken socialist and a black doctor are drawn to a gentle, sympathetic deaf mute, whose presence changes their lives.
• The Member of the Wedding - Twelve-year-old Frankie is hopelessly bored with life until she hears about her older brother’s upcoming marriage. She takes an overly active role in the wedding, and even has ambitions of going (uninvited) on the honeymoon, so deep is her desire to become part of something larger, more accepting, than herself.

McKay, Claude

• Home to Harlem - Jake Brown is a lover of life and takes in all that Harlem has to offer--its colorful street life, jazz venues and back rooms--and though he's subjected to the same oppression as those around him, he chooses to rise above it. On the other hand, Ray has been defeated one too many times,and is bent on revolt. (Not available in the BHS library.)

McMurtry, Larry

• Lonesome Dove - This story of heroism, honor and betrayal, sweeps from the Rio Grande, where Gus and Call acquire the cattle for their long drive by raiding the Mexicans, to the Montana highlands, where they find themselves besieged by the last, defiant remnants of an older West.

Melville, Herman

• Benito Cereno - An American ship on the South Chile coast meets a Spanish ship where slaves have mutinied and taken over the ship. (In Bartleby and Benito Cereno )
• Billy Budd - Melville's classic story of an innocent young man who is unable to defend himself against a wrongful accusation of plotting mutiny.
• Moby Dick - This epic saga pits Ahab, a brooding sea captain, against the great white whale that crippled him.

Michener, James

• Tales of the South Pacific - This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel depicts the exotic world of the South Pacific during World War II, and the soldiers, sailors, and nurses who are playing at war and waiting for love in a tropical paradise. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Miller, Arthur

• Death of a Salesman - Willy Loman, an unsuccessful aging traveling salesman, finally confronts his shattered dreams. This drama has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. (Call#: 812.52 Mil)

Mitchell, Margaret

• Gone With the Wind - The tale of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled, ruthless daughter of a wealthy plantation owner who sees the Civil War sweep away the life for which her upbringing has prepared her. After the fall of Atlanta she returns to the plantation and by stubborn shrewdness saves her home from both General Sherman and the carpetbaggers. Pulitzer Prize winner.

Momaday, N. Scott

• House Made of Dawn - He was a young American Indian named Abel, and he lived in two worlds. One was that of his father, wedding him to the harsh beauty of the land; the other was the world of the 20th century, goading him into a compulsive cycle of sexual exploits, dissipation, and disgust. (Not available in the BHS library.)

• The Way to Rainy Mountain - Stories of myth, history and memoir told in the style of the native Kiowa oral tradition. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Morrison, Toni

• Beloved - In the troubled years following the Civil War, the angy, destructive spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. Nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting, for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved. The Bluest Eye - Story of an 11-year-old black girl in a small Ohio town who prays to have blue eyes so she will be considered beautiful.
• Jazz - This novel of murder, hard lives, and broken dreams embraces the vibrant music and lifestyle of 1920s Harlem, an urban renaissance of opportunity and glamour.
• Song of Solomon - Lays out the complex lives and backgrounds of four generations of black family life in the South. Central to the story is Milkman who develops into a fundamentally strong person, and eventually learns to cherish his family and the importance of his roots.
• Sula - Traces the lives of two African-American women who grew up together in a small Ohio town and chose different lifestyles as adults.
• Tar Baby - The story of the love affair between a black model, molded by white culture, and a black man who represents everything she fears and desires.
• The Bluest Eye - Story of an 11-year-old black girl in a small Ohio town who prays to have blue eyes so she will be considered beautiful.

Nabakov, Vladimir

• Bend Sinister - The story of Adam Krug, a philosopher who disregards his country's totalitarian regime until his son David is killed by the forces he has attempted to ignore. (Not available in the BHS library.)
• Lolita - An older man has an affair with an inappropriately young girl.
• Pnin - Timofey Pnin is a bald, myopic, middle-aged professor of Russian at Waindell College who researches a long-standing project: a commentary on his native Russia's folklore and literature that will reflect in miniature the major events of Russian history up to the Bolshevik Revolution. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Nafisi, Azar

• Reading Lolita in Tehran - A blend of memoir, literary criticism and social history, this story describes how an Iranian college professor met in secret with seven female students to study works of Western literature that were officially banned by the government. This testament to the power of art and its ability to improve people’s lives describes how the women became inspired to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways.

Naylor, Gloria

• Mama Day - A mesmerizing tale of the modern-day descendants of a white slave owner and the black woman who was his slave.
• The Women of Brewster Place - Chronicles the communal strength of seven diverse black women who live in decaying rented houses on a walled-off street of an urban neighborhood.

Oates, Joyce Carroll

• The Gravedigger's Daughter - At the beginning of the novel, Rebecca Schwart who is walking along a footpath in Chatauqua Fall, NY, is mistaken by a seemingly harmless man for another woman. Only later does Rebecca learn that he is a serial killer. (Not available in the BHS library.)
• Them - Set in the turbulent '60s, it is the depiction of a young woman's struggle to rise above the poverty and trauma of life with an alcoholic father and a murderous young brother.
• We Were the Mulvaneys - An incident affects their family life with tragic consequences. Ultimately there is a miracle that allows them to overcome the secrets and deception, and to reunite in love and healing.
• Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - Connie, a beautiful but somewhat irresponsible teenager, is picked up by a guy she recognizes, which leads to unfortunate consequences. (Not available in the BHS library.)

O'Brien, Tim

• The Things They Carried - Depicts the experiences of a platoon of American soldiers in Vietnam. As they battle the enemy, along with their loneliness, rage and fear, they are comforted by their love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. A testament to the men who risked their lives in this controversial war.

O’Connor, Flannery

• The Violent Bear it Away - Young Francis Marion Tarwater has been reared by his fanatical, tyrannical grand-uncle Mason to be a prophet. When Mason dies, however, Francis rejects his mission and consequently suffers tortures of doubt and indecision. (In Three by Flannery O'Connor )
• Wise Blood - The story centers on Hazel Motes, a discharged serviceman who abandons his fundamentalist faith to become a preacher of anti-religion in a Tennessee city, establishing the "Church Without Christ." (In Three by Flannery O'Connor )

Plath, Sylvia

• The Bell Jar - Chronicles the mental breakdown of Esther Greenwood--a beautiful, talented and successful young woman.

Porter, Katherine Anne

• Noon Wine - This dark tragedy about a farmer's futile act of murder which leads to suicide takes place on a small dairy farm in Southern Texas during the 1890s. (In Pale Horse, Pale Rider and The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter )
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider (included in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter) - In a story set during a flu epidemic, the line between lilfe and death turns out to be very fragile.
• Ship of Fools - During the summer of 1931 a cruise ship of diverse characters bound for Bremerhaven, Germany becomes a crucible of intense experience, out of which everyone emerges forever changed.

Potok, Chaim

• My Name Is Asher Lev - Asher Lev is a New York-born religious Jew who finds the gift of painting within him early on, yet is isolated from his community due to the belief that traditional Judaism, modern art, and Christianity are distinctly separate worlds.
  
• The Chosen - Two Jewish boys become friends in spite of the differences in their interpretation of their faith.
• The Promise - Reuven Malter lives in Brooklyn, he's in love, and he's studying to be a rabbi. He also keeps challenging the strict interpretations of his teachers, and if he keeps it up, his dream of becoming a rabbi might die.

Preston, Richard

• Demon in the Freezer - A factual tale about how United States scientists are working to fight against bioterrorism. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Rand, Ayn

• Atlas Shrugged - The story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world -- and did. Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies but against those who needed him most -- and his hardest battle against the woman he loved.
• The Fountainhead - A story of society attempting to stifle the creativity of one man, and failing.

Remarque, Erich

• All Quiet on the Western Front- The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes one sees all the realities of war: under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, in hospitals and at home on leave. There is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and an indictment of war told for a whole generation of victims.

Rice, Anne

• The Vampire Lestat - Once an aristocrat in pre-revolutionary France, now a rock star in the 1980s, the vampire hero rushes through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his eternal, terrifying existence.

Rodriguez, Richard

• Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez - This biography of Ricardo Rodriguez follows his life from the time he moves with his Mexican parents to a middle-class California neighborhood. While he rejoices in his integration into the dominant culture, he describes the silence that falls between him and his family with the painful loss of his mother tongue, as Spanish fades and “Richard,” as he is now called, belongs more and more to the white English society in which he is educated. (Not available in the BHS library. Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

• Empire Falls - In this tale of blue-collar life, Miles Roby, called back from college to the small town of Empire Falls to take care of his ailing mother, falls into a rut that keeps him trapped until years later when a series of revelations and tragedies jolts him back into an awareness of his life. A Pulitzer Prize winner. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

• The Human Comedy - The time is World War II. Homer Macauley, determined to become one of the fastest telegraph messengers in the West, finds himself caught between reality and illusion as delivering his messages of wartime death, love, and money brings him face-to-face with human emotion at its greatest intensity.

See, Lisa

• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - This novel, set in remote 19th-century China, details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends, Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. (Might be difficult to research due to limited material.)

Silko, Leslie Marmon

• Ceremony - Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His quest for healing leads him back to his Indian heritage and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people.

Sinclair, Upton

• The Jungle - An immigrant family working in the stockyards of Chicago during the early 1900s deals with life's hardships. Famous for it's gruesome depictions of meat processing, which led to social reforms.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

• The Slave - Jacob, a Jewish slave and cowherder in a 17th century Polish village, falls in love with Wanda, his gentile master's daughter. Even after Jacob is ransomed, he finds he can't live without her, and the two escape together to a distant Jewish community. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Stein, Gertrude

• Three Lives - Portraits of Anna and Lena are examples of realistic depictions of immigrant women who had no occupational choice but to become domestic workers. This collection of documents from the history of women's suffrage, medical history, modernist art, and literature enables readers to see how radical Stein's subject was. (Not available in the BHS library.)

• Wars I Have Seen - A memoir published in 1945 describing the period during World War II when she lived with Alice B. Tokias in southeastern France while that area was under Nazi control. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Steinbeck, John

• Cannery Row - The story follows the adventures of Mack and the boys, a group of unemployed yet resourceful men who inhabit a converted fish-meal shack on the edge of a vacant lot in the cannery district of Monterey, California.
• East of Eden- Portrays the intertwined destinies of two families whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
• The Grapes of Wrath - Chronicles the struggles of the Joad family's life on a failing Oklahoma farm, their difficult journey to California, and their hardships there as migrant farm workers.
• Tortilla Flat - Set in the hills near Monterey, California, this is the story of a group of men looking for adventure, camaraderie, and a sense of belonging.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin - An anti-slavery novel written in the mid-1800s about the unbreakable spirit of an American slave.

Styron, William

• Sophie’s Choice - The story of a southern writer’s intellectual and emotional entanglements with his neighbors in a Brooklyn rooming house: Nathan, a tortured, brilliant Jew, and his lover, Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman whose wrist bears the grim tattoo of a concentration camp . . . and whose past is strewn with death that she alone survived.
• Confessions of Nat Turner - Pulitzer Prize-winning novel based on the true story of an abortive slave rebellion in 1831, depicting the leader of the revolt.

Tan, Amy

• The Joy Luck Club - Four women friends from China immigrant to America and have daughters of their own. The mothers and daughters try to reconcile their traditional values and the new ways of a new land.
• The Kitchen God’s Wife - Pressured to reveal to her daughter her secret past in war-torn China in the 1940s, Winnie weaves an unbelievable account of a childhood of loneliness and abandonment, and a young adulthood marred by a nightmarish arranged marriage.

Tarkington, Booth

• The Magnificent Ambersons - This Pulitzer Prize winner traces the growth of the U.S. through the decline of the once-powerful, socially prominent Amberson family. Their fall is contrasted with the rise of new industrial tycoons and land developers, whose power comes not through family connections but through manufacturing and financial dealings.

• My Life and Hard Times - A humorous memoir dealing with everyday matters and the incredible things people do when they think they're acting sensibly.

• Presumed Innocent - Rusty Sabich, family man and the number-two prosecutor of Kindle County, is handed an explosive case — the brutal murder of a woman who happens to be his former lover. A shocking turn of events suddenly transforms him from the accuser into the accused.
• The Burden of Proof - Defense attorney Sandy Stern faces an event so emotionally shattering that no part of his life is left untouched. It reveals a family caught in a maelstrom of hidden crimes and shocking secrets. (Not available in the BHS library.)

Twain, Mark

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - Hank Morgan wakes up one morning and instead of being in 19th-century New England, he's in King Arthur's court.
• Puddin’head Wilson – In this literary condemnation of slavery and racial inequality, Roxana, a light-skinned mixed-race slave, switches her baby with her white owner's baby. Her natural son, Tom Driscoll, grows up in a privileged household to become a criminal who finances his gambling debts by selling her to a slave trader. Meanwhile, Roxy raises Valet de Chambre as a slave. David ("Pudd'nhead") Wilson is the attorney who tries to sort it all out. (Not available in the BHS library.)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - A classic American tale of a young white boy trying to escape from his brutal father and his friendship with a slave who is trying to escape to freedom
• The Prince and the Pauper - A beggar and a prince look so much alike that they change places but then cannot immediately switch back.

Tyler, Anne

• The Accidental Tourist - Macon Leary, a travel writer who hates to travel, is about to embark on a surprising journey that will lead to falling in love with a disorganized but friendly dog trainer.
• Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - A single mother and her three adult children look back on their lives as a family, their pitfalls and successes.

Updike, John

• Rabbit Run - Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was a high school superstar only a handful of years ago. Now he is a young married father, trapped in the suburban 60's, unhappy with a cluttered house, a drunken wife, and a son who will never be the athlete he was. Will this former basketball star find a way to make his life better, or will he run like a rabbit?

Vonnegut, Kurt

• Breakfast of Champions - The author sets all the characters from his previous novels free but only Kilgore Trout, the science fiction writer, understands what is happening.
• Cat’s Cradle - In this satirical science fiction novel, assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature.
• Slaughterhouse-Five - Centers on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Germany. Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects a mythic journey in the search for meaning in what one is afraid to know.
• Welcome to the Monkey House - A collection of short stories and shorter pieces of fiction full of satire and black humor.

Walker, Alice

• Meridian - Meridian Hill is a young woman at an Atlanta college attempting to find her place in the revolution for racial and social equality. With the old rules of Southern society collapsing around her, she fights a lonely battle to reaffirm her own humanity – and that of all her people – despite a paralyzing illness. (Not available in the BHS library.)
• The Color Purple - Celie is a poor black woman whose letters to her sister Nettie tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate. The letters continue over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her, until finally the rage she feels pushes her to develop her creative abilities and independence.
• The Temple of My Familiar - The time and place range from pre-colonial Africa to post-slavery North Carolina to modern-day San Francisco, and the characters themselves change and evolve as their stories are told, their myriad histories revealed.

Warren, Robert Penn

• All the King’s Men - Traces the rise and fall of Willie Stark, a fictional character who resembles the real-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. He begins his political career as an idealistic man of the people but soon becomes corrupted by success and caught between dreams of service and lust for power

Welty, Eudora

• Delta Wedding - A vivid portrait of a large southern family who lives on a plantation in the Mississippi delta. The story, set in 1923, is woven from the ordinary events of family life, centered around the visit of a young relative and the family’s preparations for her cousin’s wedding. (In Complete Novels by Eudora Welty)
• The Optimist’s Daughter - Laurel Hand, long absent from the South, comes from Chicago to New Orleans, where her father dies after surgery. With Fay, the stupid new young wife of her father, Laurel returns to her former Mississippi home where she comes to terms with her father’s death and with the life of the small Mississippi town with which he was so intimately involved. (In Complete Novels by Eudora Welty)

• Ethan Frome - A man who is married to a shrew falls in love with his wife's cousin and must decide what he wants to do.
• House of Mirth- The story of Lily Bart, beautiful, impoverished and in need of a rich husband to safeguard her place in the social elite, and to support her expensive habits. When she is unjustly accused of an affair with a married man, her life begins to spiral downard.
• The Age of Innocence - A young man is torn between the conventional girl to whom he is engaged and his fascination with an exotic, divorced countess. A portrayal of New York society in the 1870s where money counted for less than manners and morals.

Wilder, Thornton

• The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Five travelers in 18th-century Peru are killed when a bridge across a canyon collapses; a priest interprets the story of each victim in an attempt to explain the workings of divine providence.

Williams, Tennessee

• A Streetcar Named Desire - This drama is the story of a haggard and fragile Blanche DuBois who moves in with her sister and her brutish brother-in-law, which then causes her life to spiral downward. (Call#: 812.54 Wil)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - In this drama, a dying Southern patriarch clashes with his alcoholic son in an emotion-charged drama of greed, guilt, and frustration. (Call#: 812.54 Wil)

Wolfe, Tom

• Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - The saga of novelist Ken Kesey who, in the 1960s, led a group of psychedelic sympathizers around the country in a painted bus, presiding over LSD-induced "acid tests." Depicts the history of the hippies.

• The Right Stuff - A look into the lives and training of American astronauts in the early years of NASA.

Wolfe, Thomas

• Look Homeward Angel - The coming-of-age story of Eugene Gant, whose desire to experience life to the fullest takes him from his rural home in North Carolina to Harvard. Autobiographical.
• You Can’t Go Home Again - George Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. However, when he returns to that town he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him.

Wouk, Herman

• The Caine Mutiny: a Novel of World War II - The story of a modern-day mutiny aboard a U.S. naval vessel.

Wright, Richard

• Black Boy - Wright's classic autobiography revealing what it was like to grow up black in a segregated America. (Call#: B Wri)
• Native Son - A black man in the 1930s murders his white employer's daughter and then tries to pin the murder on the girl's fiancé.