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Immortal is a Young Adult novel by British author and teacher Gillian Shields. It is the first book in the Immortal series, introducing the character of Evie Johnson, a teenage girl shipped to an elite boarding school who soon finds that there are...

John Barth's cerebral novel Chimera (1972) is made up of three seperate but loosely connected novellas: Dunyazadiad, Perseid, and Bellerophoniad. The three novels mirror the way that the mythical Chimera is a hybrid creature composed of three...

The infamous My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War plays a significant role in Tim O’Brien’s novel, In the Lake of the Woods. Unlike the previous literary works which brought him fame, critical attention and, in 1979 the National Book Award, In the...

Bridget Sprouls is a well-regarded author of multiple poems that have appeared in prestigious publications. Some popular poems of hers are "Scout," "Mouth," and "Down the Shore," but she has more. Sprouls presents a very earthy and cultured tone...

The poetry of Li-Young Lee is charged with the influence of being an outsider and dealing assimilating within a different culture. Young’s father was a doctor who at one time treated a very famous patient: Chairman Mao. Later he was imprisoned for...

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man was composed in 1483, but not published until after his death in 1486. Considering the temper of the times, the amazing thing is that it got published at all. The oration itself...

Radiance of Tomorrow is a novel written by Ishmael Beah that was published recently in 2014. The novel was well received, being named one of the Christian Science Monitor’s best fiction books of 2014. Ishmael Beah had published A Long Way Gone in...

The 2007 version of I Am Legend directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Will Smith qualifies as an eccentric version of “third time’s the charm” appeal to the gods of Fate. In fact, the first two cinematic adaptations of Richard Matheson's...

In the Name of the Father is Jim Sheridan’s harrowing film that tells the true story of Gerry Conlon, a Northern Irishman in London who was falsely accused of taking part in a terrorist attack by the Irish Republican Army, sent to prison and...

Amnesia is a novel that was written by Australian author Peter Carey and published by Hamish Hamilton Publishing in late 2014. It was released in the English language and has since been translated into no others. It is preceded by the 2012 novel ...

Published in 1989 before such things had become commonplace, Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10 Chapters is a postmodernist anti-novel that may even be said to be anti-history, despite its title. Each of its ten chapters is actually an...

Ted Hughes was born rural North England in 1930. The Hughes were a family of modest means with Irish heritage. Hughes early life was filled with experiences of nature, and the young boy became an avid fisherman. In Grammar School he was encouraged...

Erasure, published in 2001 and winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award 2002, became Percival Everett’s most universally acclaimed novel to date. The story of an African-American writer named Thelonius Ellison who is a critical darling without...

The name Herodotus is almost invariably followed by the term “The Father of History.” That application is deemed deserving because prior to the collected volumes known as The Histories, most of what had passed for historical writing had been...

Published in 1669, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is the foundational text for modern philosophical empiricism. This essay set the standard for empirically-based arguments against the traditions of rationalism. Locke puts...

Andrew Motion ascended to that rarest of lofty spheres in English literature when he stepped into history alongside legendary names like Dryden, Wordsworth and Tennyson by being named England’s poet laureate in 1999. The accomplishment is all more...

The writings of Epicurus are primarily known to the modern world through the collection known as the Principal Doctrines, which was curated at some point in during the third century by Diogenes Laertius within his own work titled Lives and...

The Stories of Sui Sin Far is a compilation of short stories written by Sui Sin Far, the pen name of Edith Maude Eaton. Sui Sin Far is actually the Cantonese name for a popular flower in China, the narcissus. Far was born in England to an English...

Lantana is a 2001 Australian film based on the play Speaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell, who also adapted the screenplay. This thriller centering on the disappearance of Dr. Valerie Somers took viewers and critics along on a ride of twists and...

Joy Kogawa is one of the best known Japanese writers born in Canada. Joy Kogawa is known predominately for her novels but she started her career as a writer by writing and publishing poetry. The poems which are included in the collection entitled...

Claire Messud's novel The Emperor's Children (2006) focuses on the stories of three friends (Danielle, Marina, and Julius) in their early thirties living in Manhattan in New York in the months leading up to the devastating attacks on the United...

Published in 2006, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success posits the theory that success in all aspects of life—learning, business, competition, and even relationships—is not predetermined by inherent aptitude, intelligence or talent, but rather...

Six years before becoming a household name with his grand picaresque novel about how a man named Garp saw the world, John Irving published his sophomore novel about a man known as Trumper. The Water Method Man can accurately be situated among the...

Although written sometime in the early 1940's by Ella Cara Deloria, American author and anthropologist, Waterlily is a novel not published until 1988, eighteen years after her death. It is available in a condensed form from Deloria's original...