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The Idiot is a novel published by the man some consider the greatest literary figure in Russian history, Fyodor Dostoevsky. The title is ironic; titular Prince Myshkin is only thought to be an idiot by those around him who mistake his natural...

The Pine Barrens is a novel written by John McPhee, an American writer largely considered one of the leading influences of creative nonfiction. It was published in 1968, and is about the New Jersey Pine Barrens, a forested area spanning over...

So far, To Catch a Thief has not yet managed to become one of those films regarded as a rather lightweight addition to the canon of Alfred Hitchcock at the time of its original release that a later generation rediscovers and decides is high art....

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 suspense film Dial M for Murder presents a textbook case for why 3-D movies failed to catch fire in the 1950s and then again failed again to catch fire during a brief resurgence in the 1980s and has failed to become the...

The Family Under the Bridge is a beloved novel for children written by Natalie Savage Carlson and published in 1958. It tells the story of an old Parisian tramp named Armand whose gruff exterior hides a warm and caring personality. To his surprise...

Pippi Longstocking is the eponymous nine-year-old heroine of this book and of the series of Pippi books written by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. Pippi was created by Lindgren as a get-well bedtime story for her own nine year old daughter when...

The Borrowers is one of the foremost books in the genre of children's fantasy literature although the book's author, Mary Norton, never intended it to be a book for children but "for people". The Borrowers takes the reader into the...

Code Talker is a historical fiction novel first published in 2005. It follows the story of a young Navajo boy, Kii Yazhi a.k.a. Ned Begay who is sent to a church school and bullied for his cultural background. During World War II, he is recruited...

Paperboy is the first novel written by Vince Vawter and was inspired by his own difficulty with and shame of his own stuttering, which he remembers manifesting itself at the age of five. Although like the book's main character Victor Vollmer,...

The novel Wringer is a novel written by the American writer Jerry Spinelli and published in 1997. Just like other previous books written by Spinelli, Wringer is a young adult novel that focuses on pre-adolescent characters and the struggles they...

Jerry Spinelli is the author of Crash, which was first published during 1995 and was later published during 2004 by Laurel Leaf. This fictional novel tells the story of John "Crash" Coogan, an egotistical seventh grader who values brawn over...

Since Adam Bede is the product of George Eliot's first serious attempt to write a novel, it is a good source for identifying some features of her development as a novelist and for seeing signs of themes in her later novels. Moreover, despite its...

The Kite Rider is a novel written by Geraldine McCaughrean in 2001. The novel's plot mainly revolves around a boy called Gou Haoyou and the story is set in 13th century China. Gou's father Gou Pei is a seaman and is forced to fly on a wind-testing...

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a unique novel in that the text includes an account of its own writing. Like his protagonist Raoul Duke, Thompson was working as a freelance journalist when Sports Illustrated hired him to help cover the Mint 400...

Kokoro (こゝろ), written by the famous Japanese author Natsume Soseki, was published in serial form by the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, for which he worked, in 1914. That year, two years had passed since the death of Emperor Meiji, under whose...

Edmund Spenser wrote the Amoretti (Italian for "Cupids") ostensibly to woo Elizabeth Boyle, a young lady whom he met during his tenure in Ireland. Spenser shared these poems with Elizabeth for over a year before she consented to marry him. The...

A huge sweeping novel, which has never been out of print since its publication, Atlas Shrugged has become a part of the national dialogue about personal freedom, economic policy, and political philosophy in America. There have been several...

Tender is the Night (1934) is F. Scott Fitzgerald's last completed novel. The story, primarily about human deterioration, the disintegration of love and marriage, and the mental illness that both causes and results from these troubles, was...

I Will Marry When I Want is one of the famed Kenyan playwright Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s most revered plays. Set in post-independence Kenya, the play is a searing look at the legacies of colonialism and the myriad difficulties Kenyans faced in the...

Gennifer Albin's first novel, Crewel, explores one girl's experience navigating the dysfunctional social and political systems of a completely controlled dystopian society. Published in 2012, Crewel is the first book in the Crewel trilogy. It...

Published in 1993, Freak the Mighty is a YA novel written by American author Rodman Philbrick. The book is 160 pages in its original print, and follows the endeavors of a boy named Kevin who is nicknamed "Freak" by his classmates.

The protagonist,...

Aphra Behn’s 50-page novella The Fair Jilt details the rather bizarre incidents involved with an incredibly beautiful and seductively dangerous femme fatale named Miranda with a penchant for bringing about death and devastation upon her admirers....

Published in 1939, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was met with immediate critical and popular success when it first appeared. An American realist novel set during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, Steinbeck's work documents hard times...

What is the What is a 2006 novel written by Dave Eggers. While Eggars takes full authorship of the book, the story is the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. Deng is a Sudanese refugee and was a member of the Lost Boys of Sudan.

After...