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Kindred is science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s most famous work. A genre-bending novel, it includes explorations time travel, antebellum slavery, and feminism, told in gripping and immediate prose. It has been referred to as a work of...

Go Set a Watchman is Harper Lee's second published novel, after her award-winning To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. Although there are some striking differences between Lee's two novels in terms of style and content, the continuity...

Published in 1995, Krik? Krak! is a collection of 9 short stories written by Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat. Though they have differing topics and central characters, the stories are linked together because of one central concept: the...

Let the Circle be Unbroken is one of Mildred Taylor’s most famous books for young readers, and a cherished work of African American fiction. It is a sequel to Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, which was published in 1976.

Let the Circle was published...

Dombey and Son was initially published as "Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation." The novel is typically seen as marking a transition in Dickens's career. His seventh novel, it is notable for showing...

Published in 2011 to immense acclaim, The Tiger's Wife earned Tea Obreht forms of recognition that few writers will see in their lifetimes--let alone at the age of 25. Yet Obreht was exactly that old when her politically conscious, symbolically...

Published in 1993, Parable of the Sower is a classic of Black feminist science fiction. Characterized by classic sci-fi conventions such as a post-apocalyptic earth, a character with strange psionic powers, and a belief that it is the destiny of...

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s acclaimed letter to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to be a black person in America. It spans the personal, such as growing up in Baltimore and his cultivation of an intellectual and...

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 1999 historical novel by Tracy Chevalier. The novel is inspired by the famous painting of the same name, which was painted by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. The precise date of the painting is unknown, but it is...

Citizen: An American Lyric was published in 2014 by American poet Claudia Rankine, and remains a timely, even urgent meditation on race, violence, racism, art, and mediation. The book has been described as both criticism and poetry; critic Michael...

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi is a national best-seller and a global phenomenon. Chronicling Nafisi's time as a female professor of Western Literature at the University of Tehran in the 1970s, her expulsion from the...

The Lion and the Jewel is one of Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka’s most famous works. While it is a light and amusing comedy, it is also renowned for its complex themes and allegorical structure; it is also notable for its insights into Yoruba...

Dead Poets Society is a 1989 movie starring Robin Williams and directed by Peter Weir. It is set in the ultra-conservative and highly prestigious Welton Academy, an aristocratic public school in the Northeastern United States, and tells the story...

C.S. Lewis is an author of children’s literature. He is most widely known for The Chronicles of Narnia series; he also has written scholarly books and fictional works about Christianity. The Chronicles of Narnia series consists of seven books in...

The Second Sex was published in 1949, at a time when feminism was not yet widely discussed as a pressing social issue. It is widely considered to be a formative text of second-wave feminism. This strain of feminism shifted focus from gaining...

The biggest grossing movie released in June 1974 was Chinatown. That very dark update of film noir featuring one of the most intricate plots in Hollywood grossed 23 million dollars, which was a good 12 million dollars less than the biggest...

Though published and widely known as The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt's work was originally conceived under the name The Burden of Our Time. This alternate title reveals the purpose of the work: to interrogate the terrible burden...

A Child Called “It,” published in 1995, was Dave Pelzer's first book. It is a nonfiction memoir, telling the story of his abuse as a child from the ages of 4 to 12 at the hands of his mother. It follows his childhood until a teacher at school at...

In 1957, mystery novelist Robert Bloch was inspired to write Psycho after studying the grisly details of the crimes committed by serial killer Ed Gein, who notoriously slaughtered nearly 40 women over 10 years. Simon and Schuster published Bloch's...

A Grain of Wheat is considered one of Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s greatest literacy achievements. The title derives from 1 Corinthians 15:36: "How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies"; the verse John 12:24 also...

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book by American writer Nathaniel Philbrick about the loss of the whaleship Essex in the Pacific Ocean in 1820. The book was published by Viking Press on May 8, 2000, and won the...

Paradise was published in 1997, the seventh of Morrison’s novels and her first after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. It completes a trilogy that begins with Beloved and follows with Jazz, each probing themes of memory, violence,...

Maniac Magee is the sixth book written by American children's author Jerry Spinelli. Due to its careful, bittersweet rendering of racism in 1980s and 1990s in the United States, the book, published in 1990, won an incredible number of awards...

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, published in 2011, is the first YA novel published by author Ransom Riggs. The story's premise of a boy using photos to investigate the mystery surrounding his grandfather's death echoes the author's...