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In 1935, T.S. Eliot, famed poet of modernist despair and convert to the Anglican Church, was commissioned to write a play for Kent's annual Canterbury Festival. There were few explicit restrictions on subject matter.

That Eliot chose to dramatize...

The Moon Tiger, written by Penelope Lively, was published in 1987. It is about Claudia Hampton, who is very ill from cancer, and is thinking about her life.

Claudia's first thought is about her father who died during WWI. Claudia has a competitive...

A Northern Light, also known as A Gathering Light in the U.K., is a young adult historical novel written by Jennifer Donnelly. Harcourt Children’s Books released the novel on April 1st, 2003.

The novel takes place in Herkimer Country and explores...

Midaq Alley (Zuqaq al-Midaq) was published in Egypt, in Arabic, in 1947. The novel takes place in the Gamaliya neighborhood of Cairo, which is where Naguib Mahfouz and his family lived for the early years of his life. It has remained one of...

Alive is a novel written by Piers Paul Read in 1974. The book documents the events of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash in the Andes which led to many deaths. The book, the story deals with factual occurrences and tells the story of the...

Iris Chang is an American novelist born on March 28, 1968 in Princeton, New Jersey. She attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study journalism and subsequently enrolled at Johns Hopkins University to earn her masters in...

Born into a middle class family in Pittsburgh in 1945, Dillard describes her childhood as primarily internal. She primarily related to the world as it concerned her, but in college she discovered an entirely new perspective on life. At Hollins...

Theological-Political Treatise is a work by the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza knew that his work would attract unwanted criticism and censorship, so he published it anonymously in 1670 and the publisher also used an alias. In addition,...

Barrio Boy, written by Ernesto Galarza, is an extraordinary novel that tells the story about his childhood. This book was originally published during 1971 and was later published during 1991 by the University of Notre Dame Press. It starts in...

In July, 1979 Nadine Godimer’s novel Burger’s Daughter was judged to be indecent and capable of endangering the state of the Republican of South Africa, on the grounds that its story depicted white characters as bad guys and black characters as...

Ysabel is a fiction novel published in 2007 by Penguin Group. The novel was written by the Canadian author Guy Gavrill Kay and it is his tenth novel. The novel is critically acclaimed and has won the award for the World Fantasy Award for Best...

Summer Of My German Soldier is a novel for young adults written by Newberry Honor author Bette Greene. First published in 1973, it evokes a strong emotional response from the reader and was awarded the Outstanding New Book of the Year in 1973 as...

Caroline B. Cooney wrote Both Sides of Time, which was first published during 1995, and later published during 2001 by Delacorte Books for Young Readers. This fictional novel tells the story of Annie Lockwood, a fifteen-year-old girl who is a...

Sirena is a book written by Donna Jo Napoli that was published in 1998. Sirena is one of the Sirens, the mermaid beings in Greek mythology that sing songs that are impossible for mortals to ignore. When they sing to the Greeks that are sailing to...

Go Ask Alice is a popular young adult novel written by Beatrice Sparks (January 15, 1917- May 25, 2012), an American therapist and Mormon youth counselor. Sparks' modus operandi was writing "real diaries" from the accounts of "troubled teens." The...

Nervous Conditions is a partially autobiographical novel by Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga that takes place in Rhodesia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It focuses on the themes of race, class, and gender through the eyes of Tambu, the...

Mario Puzo's The Godfather was published in 1969. Robert Evans, the head of production at Paramount Pictures, had expressed interest in optioning the book before Puzo had even finished writing it (although Peter Bart, then Evans' vice president in...

First published in 1992, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael has remained in print since its publication and has been translated into over 25 languages. Mostly a Socratic dialogue exploring the the world's impending disaster and the human responsibility...

Blade Runner is the 1981 film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, directed by Ridley Scott and produced by Michael Deeley. Hampton Fancher and David Peoples wrote the screenplay. The film stars...

Tell Me a Riddle is a collection of four short stories written by Tillie Olsen, and first published in 1961. The four short stories, "I Stand Here Ironing," "Hey Sailor, What Ship?," "O Yes," and "Tell Me a Riddle," touch on issues of...

Chinua Achebe's college work sharpened his interest in indigenous Nigerian cultures. He had grown up in Ogidi, a large village in Nigeria. His father taught at the missionary school, and Achebe witnessed firsthand the complex mix of benefit and...

The novel Lost Horizon was written in 1933. It was the first book published in “pocket-book” forma and was regarded to be one of the most popular books of the early 20th century. Even the American president F. D. Roosevelt named the Presidential...

Walden Two is a book written by the American writer Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Walden Two was his second published book and it was first published in 1948. A few years later, in 1976, the book was revised and republished, this time with an...

Spellbound is a romance novel that was published recently in 2005. Nora Roberts, the author of this work, is a number one New York Times bestselling author. This novel tells a love story that weaves in and out of reality and fantasy.

Calin Farrell...