Bucket List Books

One hundred
years of
solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One of the 20th century's enduring works,
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely
beloved and acclaimed novel known
throughout the world, and the ultimate
achievement of a Nobel Prize winning
career.

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo
through the history of the family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and
death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful,
and tawdry story of the family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history,
myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the
variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these
universal themes dominate the novel. Whether he is describing an affair of
passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Gabriel
Garcia Marquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the
mark of a master.

Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the
political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling.
Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an
accounting of the history of the human race.

1984

George Orwell

The year 1984 has come and gone, but
George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish
vision in 1949 of the world we were
becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still
the great modern classic of "negative
utopia" -a startlingly original and haunting
novel that creates an imaginary world that
is completely convincing, from the first
sentence to the last four words. No one can
deny the novel's hold on the imaginations
of whole generations, or the power of its
admonitions -a power that seems to grow,
not lessen, with the passage of time.

A confederacy of
dunces

John Kennedy Toole

Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John
Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A
Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old
medievalist lives at home with his mother in
New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big
Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his
bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the
traumatic experience he once had on a
Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton
Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like
hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet
life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history
screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman
Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident
with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before
he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job.

A Town like alice

Nevil Shute

Nevil Shute's most beloved novel, a tale of
love and war, follows its enterprising heroine
from the Malayan jungle during World War II
to the rugged Australian outback.

Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman living in
Malaya, is captured by the invading
Japanese and forced on a brutal seven-
month death march with dozens of other
women and children. A few years after the
war, Jean is back in England, the nightmare
behind her. However, an unexpected
inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya
to give something back to the villagers who saved her life. Jean's travels leads
her to a desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she finds a
challenge that will draw on all the resourcefulness and spirit that carried her
through her war-time ordeals.

The adventures of
Sherlock holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle

Complete in nine handsome volumes, each
with an introduction by a Doyle scholar, a
chronology, a selected bibliography, and
explanatory notes, the Oxford Sherlock
Holmes series offers a definitive collection of
the famous detective's adventures. No home
library is complete without it.

Comprising the series of short stories that
made the fortunes of the Strand, the
magazine in which they were first published,
this volume won even more popularity for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
Holmes is at the height of his powers in many of his most famous cases,
including The Red-Headed League, The Speckled Band, and The Blue
Carbuncle.

The alchemist

Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has
inspired a devoted following around the
world. This story, dazzling in its powerful
simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about an
Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago
who travels from his homeland in Spain to the
Egyptian desert in search of a treasure
buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he
meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls
himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom
point Santiago in the direction of his quest.
No one knows what the treasure is, or if
Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way. But what starts
out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure
found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an
eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the
importance of listening to our hearts.

Alice in
wonderland

Lewis Carroll

In 1865, Charles Lutwidge Dodson
composed a fantasy tale for a trio of
young sisters. His creative genius and
childlike ability to imagine a universe like
no other took form in one of the most
treasured children’s books of all time.
Under the pen-name of Lewis Carroll,
Dodson’s tale of an intrepid little girl who
discovers a surreal, beautiful, and
dangerous land would has shared its
magic with generations of readers. His
Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter, and Queen of Hearts have become cultural icons,
to say nothing of the heroic young Alice herself.

Animal farm

George Orwell

As ferociously fresh as it was more than a
half century ago, this remarkable allegory
of a downtrodden society of overworked,
mistreated animals, and their quest to
create a paradise of progress, justice, and
equality is one of the most scathing satires
ever published. As we witness the rise and
bloody fall of the revolutionary animals, we
begin to recognize the seeds of
totalitarianism in the most idealistic
organization; and in our most charismatic
leaders, the souls of our cruelest oppressors.

Anna
karenina

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy’s classic story of doomed love is
one of the most admired novels in world
literature. Generations of readers have
been enthralled by his magnificent heroine,
the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and
her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.

In their world frivolous liaisons are
commonplace, but Anna and Vronsky’s
consuming passion makes them a target for
scorn and leads to Anna’s increasing isolation. The heartbreaking trajectory of
their relationship contrasts sharply with the colorful swirl of friends and family
members who surround them, especially the newlyweds Kitty and Levin, who
forge a touching bond as they struggle to make a life together. Anna Karenina
is a masterpiece not only because of the unforgettable woman at its core and
the stark drama of her fate, but also because it explores and illuminates the
deepest questions about how to live a fulfilled life.

Anne of green
gables

L. M. Montgomery

Everyone's favorite redhead, the spunky
Anne Shirley, begins her adventures at
Green Gables, a farm outside Avonlea,
Prince Edward Island. When the freckled girl
realizes that the elderly Cuthberts wanted to
adopt a boy instead, she begins to try to
win them and, consequently, the reader,
over.

Atonement

Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and
war, childhood and class, guilt and
forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of a
brilliant narrative and the provocation we
have come to expect from this master of
English prose.

On a hot summer day in 1934, thirteen-year-
old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment’s
flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia,
and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and
Cecilia’s childhood friend. But Briony’s
incomplete grasp of adult motives—
together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will
change all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos
and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century,
Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and
authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.

The bell jar

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely
emotional novel about a woman falling into
the grip of insanity.

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful,
enormously talented, and successful, but
slowly going under—maybe for the last time.
In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork,
Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into
Esther's breakdown with such intensity that
her insanity becomes palpably real, even
rational—as accessible an experience as
going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing
corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment
and a haunting American classic.

beloved

Toni Morrison

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery,
this spellbinding novel transforms history into
a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate
as a lullaby.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to
Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not
free. She has too many memories of Sweet
Home, the beautiful farm where so many
hideous things happened. Her new home is
haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died
nameless and whose tombstone is engraved
with a single word: Beloved.

Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering
achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.

birdsong

Sebastian Faulks

Published to international critical and
popular acclaim, this intensely romantic yet
stunningly realistic novel spans three
generations and the unimaginable gulf
between the First World War and the
present. As the young Englishman Stephen
Wraysford passes through a tempestuous
love affair with Isabelle Azaire in France
and enters the dark, surreal world beneath
the trenches of No Man's Land, Sebastian
Faulks creates a world of fiction that is as
tragic as A Farewell to Arms and as
sensuous as The English Patient. Crafted
from the ruins of war and the
indestructibility of love, Birdsong is a novel that will be read and marveled at for
years to come.

Bleak house

Charles Dickens

Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens,
published in 20 monthly installments between
March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to
be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing
one of the most vast, complex and engaging
arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his
entire canon.

At the novel's core is long-running litigation in
England's Court of Chancery, Jarndyce v
Jarndyce, which has far-reaching
consequences for all involved. The litigation,
which already has taken many years and
consumed between £60,000 and £70,000 in court costs, is emblematic of the
failure of Chancery.

Though Chancery lawyers and judges criticized Dickens's portrait of Chancery
as exaggerated and unmerited, his novel helped to spur an ongoing
movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.

Brave new
world

Aldous Huxley

Far in the future, the World Controllers have
created the ideal society. Through clever
use of genetic engineering, brainwashing
and recreational sex and drugs, all its
members are happy consumers. Bernard
Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined
longing to break free. A visit to one of the
few remaining Savage Reservations, where
the old, imperfect life still continues, may be
the cure for his distress...

Huxley's ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and
is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece

Brideshead
revisited

Evelyn Waugh

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn
Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks
back to the golden age before the Second
World War. It tells the story of Charles
Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains
and the rapidly-disappearing world of
privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by
Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed
Catholic family, in particular his remote
sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to
recognize only his spiritual and social
distance from them.

Bridget jone’s
diary

Helen Fielding

Meet Bridget Jones—a 30-something
Singleton who is certain she would have all
the answers if she could:

a. lose 7 pounds
b. stop smoking
c. develop Inner Poise

"123 lbs. (how is it possible to put on 4
pounds in the middle of the night? Could
flesh have somehow solidified becoming
denser and heavier? Repulsive, horrifying notion), alcohol units 4 (excellent),
cigarettes 21 (poor but will give up totally tomorrow), number of correct lottery
numbers 2 (better, but nevertheless useless)..."

Bridget Jones' Diary is the devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily
chronicle of Bridget's permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement — a year
in which she resolves to: reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches,
visit the gym three times a week not just to buy a sandwich, form a functional
relationship with a responsible adult, and learn to program the VCR.

Over the course of the year, Bridget loses a total of 72 pounds but gains a total
of 74. She remains, however, optimistic. Through it all, Bridget will have you
helpless with laughter, and — like millions of readers the world round — you'll
find yourself shouting, "Bridget Jones is me!"

A brief history of
time

Stephen Hawking

In the ten years since its publication in 1988,
Stephen Hawking's classic work has become
a landmark volume in scientific writing, with
more than nine million copies in forty
languages sold worldwide. That edition was
on the cutting edge of what was then known
about the origins and nature of the universe.
But the intervening years have seen
extraordinary advances in the technology of
observing both the micro- and the
macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor
Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the
recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which
probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe's beginning and
revealed wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected. Eager to
bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these observations, as
well as his own recent research, Professor Hawking has prepared a new
introduction to the book, written an entirely new chapter on wormholes and
time travel, and updated the chapters throughout.

The call of the
wild

Jack London

Jack London's novels and ruggedly
individual life seemed to embody American
hopes, frustrations, and romantic longings in
the turbulent first years of the twentieth
century, years infused with the wonder and
excitement of great technological and
historic change. The author's restless spirit,
taste for a life of excitement, and probing
mind led him on a series of hard-edged
adventures from the Klondike to the South
Seas. Out of these sometimes harrowing
experiences — and his fascination with the theories of such thinkers as Darwin,
Spencer, and Marx — came the inspiration for novels of adventure that would
make him one of America’s most popular writers.
The Call of the Wild, considered by many London's greatest novel, is a gripping
tale of a heroic dog that, thrust into the brutal life of the Alaska Gold Rush,
ultimately faces a choice between living in man's world and returning to
nature. Adventure and dog-story enthusiasts as well as students and devotees
of American literature will find this classic work a thrilling, memorable reading
experience.

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

At the heart of Catch-22 resides the
incomparable, malingering bombardier,
Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his
schemes to save his skin from the horrible
chances of war.

His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who
keeps raising the number of missions the
men must fly to complete their service. Yet
if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse
himself from the perilous missions that he's
committed to flying, he's trapped by the
Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the
bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane
if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the
necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making
the request proves that he's sane and therefore, ineligible to be relieved.

Charlie & the
chocolate factory

Roald Dahl

Charlie Bucket can't believe his luck when
he finds the last of the five Golden Tickets
under the wrapper of a Wonka chocolate
bar, and wins the chance of a lifetime: a
magical day inside Wonka's mysterious
factory, witnessing the miraculous creation
of the most delectable eatables ever
made. The thing is, nobody has seen
Wonka or been inside his factory for 15
years, so neither Charlie, nor the other four
ticket holders, has any idea what surprises
the factory will contain...

Charlotte’s

web

E.B. White

This beloved book by E. B. White, author of
Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan, is
a classic of children's literature that is "just
about perfect."
Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the
words in Charlotte's Web, high up in
Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb
tells of her feelings for a little pig named
Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also
express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur's life when he was born
the runt of his litter.
E. B. White's Newbery Honor Book is a tender novel of friendship, love, life, and
death that will continue to be enjoyed by generations to come. This edition
contains color illustrations by Garth Williams, the acclaimed illustrator of E.B.
White's Stuart Little and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, among many
other books.

A Christmas carol

Charles Dickens

In October 1843, Charles Dickens ― heavily
in debt and obligated to his publisher ―
began work on a book to help supplement
his family's meagre income. That volume, A
Christmas Carol, has long since become
one of the most beloved stories in the
English language. As much a part of the
holiday season as holly, mistletoe, and
evergreen wreaths, this perennial favourite
continues to delight new readers and
rekindle thoughts of charity and goodwill.

With its characters exhibiting many qualities
― as well as failures ― often ascribed to Dickens himself, the imaginative and
entertaining tale relates Ebenezer Scrooge's eerie encounters with a series of
spectral visitors. Journeying with them through Christmases past, present, and
future, he is ultimately transformed from an arrogant, obstinate, and insensitive
miser to a generous, warm-hearted, and caring human being. Written by one
of England's greatest and most popular novelists, A Christmas Carol has come
to epitomize the true meaning of Christmas.

The chronicles of
Narnia

Books 1-7

C. S. Lewis

Journeys to the end of the world, fantastic
creatures, and epic battles between good
and evil—what more could any reader ask
for in one book? The book that has it all is
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
written in 1949 by Clive Stables Lewis. But
Lewis did not stop there. Six more books
followed, and together they became
known as The Chronicles of Narnia.

A clockwork
orange

Anthony Burgess

A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the
central character of this 1963 classic, whose
stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's
magnificent film of the same title.

In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the
future, where criminals take over after dark,
the story is told by the central character,
Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that
brilliantly renders his and his friends' social
pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a
frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom.
When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks,
"At what cost?"

Cloud atlas

David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing,
an American notary voyaging from the
Chatham Isles to his home in California.
Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a
physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him
for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .
Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in
1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited
bisexual composer, contrives his way into the
household of an infirm maestro who has a
beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . .
From there we jump to the West Coast in the
1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa
Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens
to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious
present-day England; to a Korean super-state of the near future where neo-
capitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a post-apocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in
the last days of history.

But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back
through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its
starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters
connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like
clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an
unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended
its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

Cold comfort farm

Stella Gibbons

Winner of the 1933 Femina Vie Heureuse
Prize, COLD COMFORT FARM is a wickedly
funny portrait of British rural life in the 1930s.
Flora Poste, a recently orphaned socialite,
moves in with her country relatives, the
gloomy Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm,
and becomes enmeshed in a web of violent
emotions, despair, and scheming, until Flora
manages to set things right.

The color purple

Alice Walker

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel
by American author Alice Walker which
won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and
the National Book Award for Fiction. It was
later adapted into a film and musical of the
same name.

Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the
story focuses on the life of women of color in
the southern United States in the 1930s,
addressing numerous issues including their
exceedingly low position in American social
culture. The novel has been the frequent
target of censors and appears on the
American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books
of 2000-2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content,
particularly in terms of violence.

Count of
Monte Cristo

Alexander Dumas

'On what slender threads do life and fortune
hang'

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not
committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to
the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a
great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of
Monte Cristo and he becomes determined
not only to escape, but also to unearth the
treasure and use it to plot the destruction of
the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering
and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a
huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.

Crime &

Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Through the story of the brilliant but
conflicted young Raskolnikov and the
murder he commits, Fyodor Dostoevsky
explores the theme of redemption through
suffering. Crime and Punishment put
Dostoevsky at the forefront of Russian writers
when it appeared in 1866 and is now one of
the most famous and influential novels in
world literature.

The poverty-stricken Raskolnikov, a talented student, devises a theory about
extraordinary men being above the law, since in their brilliance they think “new
thoughts” and so contribute to society. He then sets out to prove his theory by
murdering a vile, cynical old pawnbroker and her sister. The act brings
Raskolnikov into contact with his own buried conscience and with two
characters — the deeply religious Sonia, who has endured great suffering, and
Porfiry, the intelligent and discerning official who is charged with investigating
the murder — both of whom compel Raskolnikov to feel the split in his nature.
Dostoevsky provides readers with a suspenseful, penetrating psychological
analysis that goes beyond the crime — which in the course of the novel
demands drastic punishment — to reveal something about the human
condition: The more we intellectualize, the more imprisoned we become

The curious
incident of the dog
in the Night-time

Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the
countries of the world and their capitals and
every prime number up to 7,057. He relates
well to animals but has no understanding of
human emotions. He cannot stand to be
touched. And he detests the color yellow.

Although gifted with a superbly logical brain,
for fifteen-year-old Christopher everyday interactions and admonishments
have little meaning. He lives on patterns, rules, and a diagram kept in his
pocket. Then one day, a neighbor's dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully
constructive universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in
the style of his favorite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes. What follows makes
for a novel that is funny, poignant and fascinating in its portrayal of a person
whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literal?

DaVID copperfield

Charles Dickens

David Copperfield is the story of a young
man’s adventures on his journey from an
unhappy & impoverished childhood to the
discovery of his vocation as a successful
novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of
characters he encounters are his
tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his
formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the
eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah
Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; & the
magnificently impecunious Micawber, one
of literature’s great comic creations.
In David Copperfield—the novel he
described as his “favorite child”—Dickens
drew revealingly on his own experiences to create one of his most exuberant &
enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy & comedy in equal measure.

The da vinci
code

Dan Brown

An ingenious code hidden in the works of
Leonardo da Vinci. A desperate race
through the cathedrals and castles of
Europe. An astonishing truth concealed for
centuries . . . unveiled at last.

While in Paris, Harvard symbologist Robert
Langdon is awakened by a phone call in
the dead of the night. The elderly curator
of the Louvre has been murdered inside
the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. As Langdon and gifted
French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are
stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci—
clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—a secret
society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Da
Vinci—and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Langdon and
Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle—while avoiding the faceless
adversary who shadows their every move—the explosive, ancient truth will be
lost forever.

Don quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote has become so entranced by
reading chivalric romances, that he
determines to become a knight-errant
himself. In the company of his faithful squire,
Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts
of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy
often leads him astray – he tilts at windmills,
imagining them to be giants – Sancho
acquires cunning and a certain sagacity.
Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the
world together, and together they have
haunted readers' imaginations for nearly four
hundred years.

With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote generally has
been recognized as the first modern novel. The book has had enormous
influence on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens,
Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read
the Bible.

Dracula

Brams Stoker

During a business visit to Count Dracula's
castle in Transylvania, a young English
solicitor finds himself at the center of a series
of horrifying incidents. Jonathan Harker is
attacked by three phantom women,
observes the Count's transformation from
human to bat form, and discovers puncture
wounds on his own neck that seem to have
been made by teeth. Harker returns home
upon his escape from Dracula's grim fortress,
but a friend's strange malady — involving
sleepwalking, inexplicable blood loss, and
mysterious throat wounds — initiates a
frantic vampire hunt. The popularity of Bram Stoker's 1897 horror romance is as
deathless as any vampire. Its supernatural appeal has spawned a host of film
and stage adaptations, and more than a century after its initial publication, it
continues to hold readers spellbound.

dune

Frank Herbert

Set in the far future amidst a sprawling
feudal interstellar empire where planetary
dynasties are controlled by noble houses
that owe an allegiance to the imperial
House Corrino, Dune tells the story of young
Paul Atreides (the heir apparent to Duke
Leto Atreides and heir of House Atreides) as
he and his family accept control of the
desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the
'spice' melange, the most important and
valuable substance in the cosmos. The
story explores the complex, multi-layered
interactions of politics, religion, ecology,
technology, and human emotion as the
forces of the empire confront each other for control of Arrakis.

Published in 1965, it won the Hugo Award in 1966 and the inaugural Nebula
Award for Best Novel. Dune is frequently cited as the world's best-selling sf
novel.

emma

Jane Austen

'I never have been in love; it is not my way,
or my nature; and I do not think I ever
shall.'

Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma
Woodhouse is perfectly content with her
life and sees no need for either love or
marriage. Nothing, however, delights her
more than interfering in the romantic lives
of others. But when she ignores the
warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley
and attempts to arrange a suitable match
for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully
laid plans soon unravel and have
consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming
heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen
as Jane Austen's most flawless work.

Far from the
madding crowd

Thomas Hardy

Independent and spirited Bathsheba
Everdene has come to Weatherbury to
take up her position as a farmer on the
largest estate in the area. Her bold
presence draws three very different suitors:
the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-
seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted
shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting
ways, unsettles her decisions and
complicates her life, and tragedy ensues,
threatening the stability of the whole
community. The first of his works set in Wessex, Hardy's novel of swift passion and
slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life and
landscapes, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships.

Farenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

Sixty years after its publication, Ray
Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel
Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world
literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.
Today its message has grown more relevant
than ever before.

"Fahrenheit 451- The temperature at which
book paper catches fire and burns."

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy
the most illegal of commodities, the printed
book, along with the houses in which they
are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions
produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all
day with her television "family." But when he meets an eccentric young
neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear
and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead
of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he
has ever known.

The bell jar

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and
intensely emotional novel about a woman
falling into the grip of insanity.

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful,
enormously talented, and successful, but
slowly going under—maybe for the last time.
In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork,
Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into
Esther's breakdown with such intensity that
her insanity becomes palpably real, even
rational—as accessible an experience as
going to the movies. A deep penetration
into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar
is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

The five people you
want to meet in
heaven

Mitch Albom

Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old
man who has lived, in his mind, an
uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a
seaside amusement park. On his 83rd
birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he
tries to save a little girl from a falling cart.
He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns
that heaven is not a destination, but an
answer.

In heaven, five people explain your life to you. Some you knew, others may
have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's
five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries
of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal
question: "Why was I here?"

Gone with the
wind

Margaret Mitchell

Gone with the Wind is a novel written by
Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936.
The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia,
and Atlanta during the American Civil War
and Reconstruction era. It depicts the
struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the
spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation
owner, who must use every means at her
disposal to claw her way out of the poverty
she finds herself in after Sherman's March to
the Sea. A historical novel, the story is a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story,
with the title taken from a poem written by Ernest Dowson.

Gone with the Wind was popular with American readers from the onset and
was the top American fiction bestseller in the year it was published and in 1937.
As of 2014, a Harris poll found it to be the second favorite book of American
readers, just behind the Bible. More than 30 million copies have been printed
worldwide.

Grapes of

wrath

John Steinbeck

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression
chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the
1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma
farm family, the Joads—driven from their
homestead and forced to travel west to the
promised land of California. Out of their
trials and their repeated collisions against
the hard realities of an America divided into
Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that
is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet
plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the
conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction
to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors
of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice
in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and
transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the
most American of American Classics.

Great
expectations

Charles Dickens

In what may be Dickens's best novel,
humble, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the
dirty work of the forge but dares to dream
of becoming a gentleman — and one day,
under sudden and enigmatic
circumstances, he finds himself in possession
of "great expectations." In this gripping tale
of crime and guilt, revenge and reward, the
compelling characters include Magwitch,
the fearful and fearsome convict; Estella,
whose beauty is excelled only by her haughtiness; and the embittered Miss
Havisham, an eccentric jilted bride.

Great gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

THE GREAT GATSBY, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third
book, stands as the supreme achievement
of his career. This exemplary novel of the
Jazz Age has been acclaimed by
generations of readers. The story of the
fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love
for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish
parties on Long Island at a time when The
New York Times noted “gin was the national
drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an
exquisitely crafted tale of America in the
1920s.

The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.

hamlet

William Shakespeare

One of the greatest plays of all time, the
compelling tragedy of the tormented young
prince of Denmark continues to capture the
imaginations of modern audiences
worldwide. Confronted with evidence that
his uncle murdered his father, and with his
mother’s infidelity, Hamlet must find a means
of reconciling his longing for oblivion with his
duty as avenger. The ghost, Hamlet’s feigned
madness, Ophelia’s death and burial, the
play within a play, the “closet scene” in
which Hamlet accuses his mother of
complicity in murder, and breathtaking swordplay are just some of the
elements that make Hamlet an enduring masterpiece of the theater.

The
handmaid’s

tale

Margaret Atwood

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of
Gilead. She may leave the home of the
Commander and his wife once a day to
walk to food markets whose signs are now
pictures instead of words because women
are no longer allowed to read. She must lie
on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her
pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other
Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember
the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when
she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of
her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...

Harry potter & the
sorcerer’s stone

J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter's life is miserable. His parents
are dead and he's stuck with his heartless
relatives, who force him to live in a tiny
closet under the stairs. But his fortune
changes when he receives a letter that
tells him the truth about himself: he's a
wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him
from his relatives and takes him to his new
home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry.

After a lifetime of bottling up his magical
powers, Harry finally feels like a normal kid. But even within the Wizarding
community, he is special. He is the boy who lived: the only person to have ever
survived a killing curse inflicted by the evil Lord Voldemort, who launched a
brutal takeover of the Wizarding world, only to vanish after failing to kill Harry.

Though Harry's first year at Hogwarts is the best of his life, not everything is
perfect. There is a dangerous secret object hidden within the castle walls, and
Harry believes it's his responsibility to prevent it from falling into evil hands. But
doing so will bring him into contact with forces more terrifying than he ever
could have imagined.

Full of sympathetic characters, wildly imaginative situations, and countless
exciting details, the first installment in the series assembles an unforgettable
magical world and sets the stage for many high-stakes adventures to come.

Heart of

darkness

Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a short novel by
Polish novelist Joseph Conrad, written as a
frame narrative, about Charles Marlow's
experience as an ivory transporter down the
Congo River in Central Africa. The river is "a
mighty big river, that you could see on the
map, resembling an immense snake
uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body
at rest curving afar over a vast country, and
its tail lost in the depths of the land". In the course of his travel in central Africa,
Marlow becomes obsessed with Mr. Kurtz. The story is a complex exploration of
the attitudes people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized
society and the attitudes on colonialism and racism that were part and parcel
of European imperialism. Originally published as a three-part serial story, in
Blackwood's Magazine, the novella Heart of Darkness has been variously
published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library
ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh of the hundred best novels in
English of the twentieth century.