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1984
by George Orwell
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities
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The age of innocence by Edith WhartonNewland Archer begins to question the values of high society in Victorian New York when he finds himself torn between two very different women--his proper young fiancee and her exotic cousin.
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The awakening : a novel
by Kate Chopin
Over one long, languid summer Edna Pontellier, fettered by marriage and motherhood, becomes acquainted with Robert Lebrun. As the days shorten and the temperature begins to drop Edna succumbs to Robert's devotion. But in the thrall of this ever-strengthening desire Edna begins to realise the true extent of her psychological, social and sexual confinement and its devastating consequences for her future. This tender, brilliant, and seductive novel is as beautifully written as it is politically engaging. The Awakening is widely regarded as one of the forerunners of feminist literature alongside Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Flaubert's Madame Bovary. First published in the United States in 1899, this radical novel sent shockwaves through American society and continues to speak to readers today
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Cane by Jean Toomer"The Harlem Renaissance writer's innovative and groundbreaking novel depicting African American life in the South and North, with a foreword by National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree Zinzi Clemmons Jean Toomer's Cane is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, and is considered to be a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinct structure and style. First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettes, Cane uses poetry, prose, and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. While critically acclaimed and known today as a pioneering text of the Harlem Renaissance, the book did not gain as much popularity as other works written during the period. Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed Cane's lack of a wider readership was because it didn't reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature.
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Emma
by Jane Austen
Content with her life and not interested in marriage, Emma Woodhouse, a rich and beautiful heiress, causes complications with her matchmaking schemes
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Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyA monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator
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Go tell it on the mountain
by James Baldwin
While his family struggles with guilt, bitterness, and spiritual issues, John Grimes experiences a religious conversion in the Temple of the Fire Baptised
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The golden notebook : a novel by Doris LessingThe experiences of two women provide the framework for an intense literary study of liberated womanhood, in a new edition--which includes an author biography and publication history--of a novel originally published in 1962.
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Gone with the wind
by Margaret Mitchell
The story of the tempestuous romance between Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara is set amid the drama of the Civil War
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The great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott Fitzgerald's classic tale set in the Roaring Twenties was even banned at the college level, due to language and sexual references.
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I capture the castle by Dodie SmithA classic, romantic novel from earlier this century is now available in paperback and tells the enduring story of Cassandra, a young woman who lives in poverty with her family in England and who strives to become loved as a writer and a woman.
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Invisible man by Ralph EllisonAn African-American man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility.
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte BronteGrowing up in the home of a cruel aunt and a harsh charity school, Jane Eyre, an orphaned young woman, accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall and soon finds herself in love with her employer, the enigmatic Rochester.
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Jubilee
by Margaret Walker
A novel based on the life of the author's great-grandmother follows the story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and one of his slaves, through the years of the Civil War and Reconstruction
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Little women
by Louisa May Alcott
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in mid-nineteenth-century New England
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Middlemarch
by George Eliot
In nineteenth-century England, Dorthea Brooke's wishes to defy social conventions are inhibited by the strict nature of her surroundings
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Native son
by Richard Wright
Traces the fall of a young black man in 1930s Chicago as his life loses all hope of redemption after he kills a white woman
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North and South;
by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Mrs. Gaskell portrays industrial conditions in various regions of England in this nineteenth-century psychological novel
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Passing
by Nella Larsen
Clare Kendry, a beautiful light-skinned African American woman married to a white man who is unaware of her heritage, long ago cut all ties to her past, but a reunion with a childhood friend forces her to confront her lies
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Part of Alma Classics Evergreen series at GBP4.99. Oscar Wilde's only full-length novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a lasting gem of sophisticated wit and playfulness, which brings together all the best elements of his talent in a reinterpretation of the Faustian myth. This edition contains photographs and a wealth of extra material.
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Rebecca by Daphne Du MaurierA classic novel of romantic suspense finds the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter entering the home of her mysterious and enigmatic new husband and learning the story of the house's first mistress, to whom the sinister housekeeper is unnaturally devoted.
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The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Emmuska Orczy Orczy
In 1792, during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, an English aristocrat known to be an ineffectual fop is actually a master of disguises who, with a small band of dedicated friends, undertakes dangerous missions to save members of the French nobility from the guillotine
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The sound and the fury : the corrected text
by William Faulkner
Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their Black servant
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Their eyes were watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
When Janie Starks returns to her rural Florida home, her small black community is overwhelmed with curiosity about her relationship with a younger man
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Things fall apart by Chinua AchebeA classic novel about the confrontation of African tribal life with colonial rule tells the tragic story of a warrior whose manly, fearless exterior conceals bewilderment, fear, and anger at the breakdown of his society.
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To kill a mockingbird
by Harper Lee
The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a young girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape
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To the lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
An English family's complex lives are followed and picked up again after a ten year hiatus in order to explore the effects of time
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A tree grows in Brooklyn by Betty SmithA new edition of the classic novel, featuring a new foreword by best-selling author Anna Quindlen, follows young Francie Nolan, who is armed with her idealism and determination, as she struggles to escape from the poverty of life in a Brooklyn tenement during the early 1900s.
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Ulysses
by James Joyce
This account of several lower class citizens of Dublin describes their activities and tells what some of them were thinking one day in 1904
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Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean RhysBeautiful and wealthy Antoinette Cosway's passionate love for an English aristocrat threatens to destroy her idyllic West Indian island existence and her very life.
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Wuthering Heights
by Emily Bront
The passionate love of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff mirrors the powerful moods of the Yorkshire moors
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