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This selection of bleak stories features some of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s most acclaimed short works. Although they were not published together during his lifetime, they hold together as a collection of his earlier and most corrosively modernist...

With its depictions of demonic rites and illicit sexuality, The Monk ignited a firestorm of controversy. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote an impassioned but very mixed review of the novel; though he thought that some elements (such the...

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague was written by author and journalist Geraldine Brooks. It was published in 2011 and was chosen as both a New York Times and a Washington Post Notable Book. This novel is based on the true story of the village...

The Trials of Brother Jero was first published in 1964. Its original performance was organized by Farris-Belgrave Productions and held at the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York City in 1967. Today it is known as one of Soyinka’s most popular...

Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms is one of the playwright’s most intriguing early works, and is exemplary of his desire to unite the modern and the ancient Greek. Written and first performed in 1924, it is influenced by the stories of...

The Moonstone was written in 1868, published in the middle of Wilkie Collins’s career as a writer. It was written after his first major success in The Woman in White (1860), yet, alongside with the 1860 sensation novel, The Moonstone is Collins’s...

Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play Arcadia has been hailed not only as the playwright’s best work but also one of the best works of drama of the 20th century. This comedic, ambitious, moving, and cerebral work spans both time (but not space) and multiple...

Published in 1862, Les Misérables is considered a classic of world literature. A sprawling epics that focuses on the social outcasts of early 19th century France, it is both an homage to the French culture and a compendium of timeless observations...

The French Lieutenant's Woman was John Fowles' third published novel, and it has achieved enduring commercial and critical success.

The novel attracted the attention of critics soon after it was published, and was better received in literary...

Often compared to John Steibeck's rural American masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath, Under the Feet of Jesus tells the story of a young migrant worker and her family. Set in the Western United States and spanning a single summer harvest, the novel...

Unlike many other works of dystopian science fiction, The Circle is set in a very near future, fitting neatly into the early 21st-century United States sociopolitical world of Google, Wikileaks, big data, and personalized advertisement.

The...

Published in 2009, The Help tells the story of three women who work together to challenge the racial status quo of their day. In Jackson Mississippi in the 1960s, aspiring writer Skeeter Phelan gets a dangerous idea: to write a book about what...

The Namesake is the first novel by author Jhumpa Lahiri, who was born in the UK to Bengali parents and then moved to the USA as a small child. Like her collection of short stories published in 1999, Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake focuses on...

Published in 1960, The Cricket in Times Square is a children's book that tells the story of a cricket from Connecticut who accidentally comes to New York City after getting stuck on a commuter train. It was written by George Selden and illustrated...

Around the World in Eighty Days is an adventure novel written by renowned French author Jules Verne, published in 1873. It tells the story of Phileas Fogg, a resident of London, who makes a bet with the members of his club that he can...

Allegiant, published in 2013, is the third book in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth. The first two books in the series are titled Divergent and Insurgent. The series has been highly acclaimed and is well-regarded in the Young Adult genre. It...

The Blithedale Romance is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s third novel, one that is sometimes overlooked by readers but is nonetheless considered one of his most critically important works. Hawthorne wrote the novel in 1851 while staying at Horace Mann’s...

Paper Towns is John Green's third novel, published in 2008. It deals with similar elements of his previous works, including the presence of a beautiful yet eccentric female and a gawky, uncertain male. It is compared to his 2005 novel Looking for...

The Watsons Go to Birmingham was the first of Curtis's novels, and is arguably the one he is most remembered for. It was published by Yearling in 1995 and was written primarily for middle-grade readers, typically ages 10 to 13. This novel tells...

Comparable to the Odyssey or the Bible, the Ramayana is a classic of world literature. The poem details the adventures of Prince Rama, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, along with his devoted wife Sita and his dear brother Lakshmana. Written in...

How To Read English Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, published by HarperCollins in 2003, was well-received by audiences, and continues to enjoy a place on the New York Times bestseller list for...

Cannery Row (1945) is one of John Steinbeck's most beloved novels. Its mixture of tones and themes, memorable characters, and ability to capture and convey the essence of a place in time has made it a favorite of both readers and critics alike.

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The Way of the World premiered in 1700 at London's theatre in Lincoln's Inn Field, performed by Majesty's Servants, an acting company of the time. Though it is now regarded as one of the best Restoration comedies in existence, it was not well...

Up from Slavery is the autobiography of Booker T. Washington, one of the most prominent black leaders of the post-civil War era. Originally published in Outlook magazine in serial form, it was translated into 18 languages and is one of the...