Catalog Search Results
1) The bell jar
Author
Series
Summary
[This book] chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under-- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche...
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Summary
Here is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman, " Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about...
5) The reef
Author
Series
Everyman's library volume 201
Summary
American lady in France discovers that the man she is about to marry has had an affair with her daughter's governess.
Author
Summary
Four-year-old John Butler is captured by the Delaware Indians and is adopted by one of the tribes leaders. Suddenly, after 11 years among the Delaware people, he is forced to return to his original home and parents by the Boquet military expedition of 1765. But his deep love for and loyalty to his Indian parents and his cousin Half Arrow, is his reason for rejecting the white man's civilization.
7) Snow
Author
Series
Everyman's Library volume 338
Summary
"Returning to Turkey from exile in the West, Ka is driven by curiosity to investigate a surprising wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head scarves in school. But the epicenter of the suicides, the eastern border city of Kars, is also home to the radiant and newly divorced Ipek, a friend of Ka's youth, whom he has never forgotten and whose spirited younger sister is a leader of the rebellious schoolgirls. As a fierce snowstorm...
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Regarded by Charles Dickens as his best novel upon publication, "Martin Chuzzlewit" relates a tale of familial selfishness and eventual moral redemption. First published serially from 1842 to 1844, it is the story of young Martin Chuzzlewit, who has been raised by his grandfather. He has fallen in love with his grandfather's ward and caretaker, the young orphan Mary Graham. Martin's grandfather does not approve and young Martin alienates himself from...
10) Typee
Author
Series
Everyman's library volume no. 180
Summary
Based on Melville's real-life experiences after having jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands, his first novel was extremely popular, provoking public skepticism until the events within were corroborated by a fellow castaway. Typee is properly considered a work of fiction, as the three week stay on which the author based his story is here extended to four months, and the book is supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and adaptation of material...
11) Salammbo
Author
Series
Everyman's library volume no. 869
Summary
French novelist and short story writer, Gustave Flaubert, was considered to be a master of style, obsessively devoted to finding the right word in every piece of literature he produced. As a child he expressed great imagination and took in all the stories he could from his nurse and neighbors, and in doing so, he prepared himself for a life consumed by literature and history. In addition to his "Madame Bovary", his first published novel and the one...
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In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While...
13) Song of Solomon
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Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world.
14) Lolita
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The most controversial classic novel of the 20th century, Lolita tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is aroused to erotic desire only by a young girl. Awe and exhilaration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of...
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Everyman's library volume 207
Summary
Every family lives in an evolving story, told by all its members, inside a landscape of portentous events and characters. Their view of themselves is not shared by people looking from outside in--visitors, and particularly not relatives--for they have to see something pretty humdrum, even if, as in this case, the fecklessness them complain of is extreme.
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Series
Everyman's library volume 123
Summary
A chilling tale of espionage and terrorism by a literary master. On the surface, Adolf Verloc is a bookstore owner in London. Beneath his carefully crafted persona dwells a spy for a foreign government. When his handlers decide it is time for action, Verloc is tasked with blowing up the Royal Observatory. This modern novel is still as fresh and relevant as ever and makes an exciting and thought-provoking read.
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Series
Everyman's library volume no. 235
Multiple titles for book club discussion groups
Everyman's library volume 235
Multiple titles for book club discussion groups
Everyman's library volume 235
Summary
"For fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights, the unprepossessing and saturnine Florentino Ariza, one of the three central characters of this incomparable novel, waits to possess Fermina Daza, the young woman who once promised him her love and then, in a moment of blinding but ambiguous insight, refused him. To while away the long years of his vigil, he enters into six hundred and twenty-two liaisons and "countless fleeting adventures."...
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Series
Everyman's library volume 355
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Summary
Winner of England's Booker Prize, a coast-to-coast bestseller, and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is a novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. Revolving around a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets, Byatt creates a haunting counterpoint of passion and ideas.
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Harcourt library of English and American classics
Everyman's library volume no. 325
Everyman's library volume no. 326
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Everyman's library volume no. 325
Everyman's library volume no. 326
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Summary
Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother,...
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In this trilogy of autobiographical novels Leo Tolstoy's first published works are gathered together. An instant success, one which would launch Tolstoy's distinguished career, "Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth", was first published from 1852 to 1856. In these works, the early life of Nikolai, the son of wealthy landowner in Russia, is fully explored, slowly revealing this young boy's inner mind, relationships, and social standing. As he describes his...