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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  is an American children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow, originally published by the George M. Hill Company in Chicago on May 17, 1900. It has since been reprinted on numerous occasions, most often under the title  The Wizard of Oz , which is the title of the popular 1902 Broadway musical as well as the iconic 1939 musical film adaptation. The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy in the magical Land of Oz, after she and her pet dog Totoare swept away from their Kansas home by a cyclone.   The novel is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated. The  Library of Congress  has declared it "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairytale." Its groundbreaking success and the success of the Broadway musical adapted from the novel led Ba...

Murder on the Orient Express  is a detective novel by Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934.   In the United States, it was published on 28 February 1934,  under the title of  Murder in the Calais Coach,  by  Dodd, Mead and Company .  The U.K. edition retailed at seven  shillings  and  sixpence  (7/6)   and the U.S. edition at $2.00. The U.S. title of  Murder in the Calais Coach  was used to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel  Stamboul Train  which had been published in the United States as  Orient Express .

The Picture of Dorian Gray  is a philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of  Lippincott's Monthly Magazine .   The magazine's editor feared the story was indecent, and without Wilde's knowledge, deleted roughly five hundred words before publication. Despite that censorship,  The Picture of Dorian Gray  offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers, some of whom said that Oscar Wilde merited prosecution for violating the laws guarding the public morality. In response, Wilde aggressively defended his novel and art in correspondence with the British press, although he personally made excisions of some of the most controversial material when revising and lengthening the story for book publication the following year. The longer and revised version of  The Picture of Dorian Gray  published in book form in 1891 featured an aphoristic preface—a defence of the arti...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  (commonly shortened to  Alice in Wonderland ) is an 1865  novel  written by English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym  Lewis Carroll . It tells of a girl named  Alice  falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar,  anthropomorphic  creatures. The tale plays with  logic , giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children.  It is considered to be one of the best examples of the  literary nonsense  genre.  Its  narrative  course and structure,  characters  and imagery have been enormously influential  in both popular culture and literature, especially in the  fantasy  genre. Dodgson's tale was published in 1865 as  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  by " Lewis Carroll " with illustrations by  John Tenniel . The first print run of 2,000 was held back becau...

The Bell Jar  is the only novel written by the American writer and poet  Sylvia Plath . Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a  roman à clef  since the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been  clinical depression . Plath died by suicide a month after its first UK publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of both Plath's husband, Ted Hughes , and her mother.   The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.   The novel, though dark, is often read in high school English classes.

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly , is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. Uncle Tom's Cabin  was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States;...

Bridget Jones's Diary  is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic relationships. By 2006, the book had sold over two million copies worldwide.   A sequel,  Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason , was published in 1999. Another sequel,  Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy , came out in 2013.

Heidi W. Durrow  (born June 21, 1969) is an American writer, author of best-seller   The Girl Who Fell From the Sky , and the winner of the 2008 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction. This novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and black father. When Rachel, her mother, and her younger brother fall nine stories from an apartment building, Rachel is the only survivor, and she’s taken in by her black grandmother in a predominantly white Portland neighborhood. With her brown skin and blue eyes (a white girl’s eyes in a Black girl’s face) Rachel faces the challenge of learning what it means to be biracial in a black-and-white world. Duro offers a masterful novel that interrogates the cultural construction of race in America and challenges us to confront our own prejudices.

The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format beginning in 1910, and was first published in its entirety in 1911. It is now one of Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of English children's literature. Several stage and film adaptations have been produced. A beloved children’s favorite about little Mary Lennox, who goes to live in the English manor house of her reclusive uncle after her parents die of Cholera, The Secret Garden is a timeless classic about the beauty of nature, the healing power of love, and a belief in magic. As the Yorkshire sunshine softens Mary’s hard little heart and she befriends the animal charmer Dicken, her invalid cousin Colin, and a host of gentle creatures, you’ll laugh with her and cry with her as she learns how to love, how to trust, and how to reach outside herself to nurture the world around her.

The End of the Affair  (1951) is a novel by British author Graham Greene, as well as the title of two feature films (released in 1955 and 1999) that were adapted from the novel. Set in London during and just after the Second World War, the novel examines the obsessions, jealousy and discernments within the relationships between three central characters: writer Maurice Bendrix; Sarah Miles; and her husband, civil servant Henry Miles. Graham Greene's own affair with Lady Catherine Walston played into the basis for  The End of the Affair . The British edition of the novel is dedicated to "C" while the American version is made out to "Catherine." Greene's own house at 14 Clapham Common Northside was bombed during the Blitz.

Jane Eyre  (originally published as  Jane Eyre: An Autobiography ) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published on 16 October 1847, by Smith, Elder & Co. of London, England, under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Primarily of the  Bildungsroman  genre,  Jane Eyre  follows the emotions and experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the  Byronic   master of fictitious Thornfield Hall. In its internalisation of the action—the focus is on the gradual unfolding of Jane's moral and spiritual sensibility, and all the events are coloured by a heightened intensity that was previously the domain of poetry— Jane Eyre  revolutionised the art of fiction. Charlotte Brontë has been called the 'first historian of the private cons...

The Reader  ( Der Vorleser ) is a novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink, published in Germany in 1995 and in the United States in 1997. The story is a parable, dealing with the difficulties post-war German generations have had comprehending the Holocaust; Ruth Franklin writes that it was aimed specifically at the generation Bertolt Brecht called the  Nachgeborenen , those who came after. Like other novels in the genre of  Vergangenheitsbewältigung , the struggle to come to terms with the past,  The Reader  explores how the post-war generations should approach the generation that took part in, or witnessed, the atrocities. These are the questions at the heart of Holocaust literature in the late 20th and early 21st century, as the victims and witnesses die and living memory fades. Schlink's book was well received in his native country and elsewhere, winning several awards.  Der Spiegel  wrote that it wa...

A Single Man  is a 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood.  Set in   Southern California   during 1962, it depicts one day in the life of George, a middle-aged Englishman who is a professor at a  Los Angeles   university. The university might reflect   CSULA , where Christopher Isherwood taught for some time. In 2009, fashion designer Tom Ford directed a film adaptation of the novel, with additions made to the original plot.   The film, starring  Colin Firth  as George, premiered at the 66th Venice International Film Festival. It was nominated for the  Golden Lion  and Firth won the  Volpi Cup  for Best Actor. It received three  Golden Globes  nominations and an  Academy Award  nomination.

Little Women  is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher.   The novel follows the lives of four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March—detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood, and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters. Little Women  was an immediate commercial and critical success, and readers demanded to know more about the characters. Alcott quickly completed a second volume (entitled  Good Wives  in the United Kingdom, although this name derived from the publisher and not from Alcott). It was also successful. The two volumes were issued in 1880 in a single work entitled  Little Women.  Alcott also wrote two sequels to her popular work, both of which also featured the March sisters:  Little Men  (1871) and  Jo's Boys  (18...

Pride and Prejudice  is a  novel of manners  by  Jane Austen , first published in 1813. The story follows the main character,  Elizabeth Bennet , as she deals with issues of  manners , upbringing,  morality ,  education , and  marriage  in the society of the  landed gentry  of the  British Regency . Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman, Mr. Bennet, living in Longbourn. Set in England in the late 18th century,  Pride and Prejudice  tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's five unmarried daughters after two gentlemen have moved into their neighbourhood: the rich and eligible Mr. Bingley, and his status-conscious friend, the even more rich and eligible Mr. Darcy. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Darcy is disdainful of local society and repeatedly clashes with the Bennets' lively second daughter, Elizabeth. Pride and Prejudice  ...

Number the Stars  (1989) is a work of historical fiction by American author Lois Lowry, about the escape of a Jewish family (the Rosens) from Copenhagen during World War II. The story centers on ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen, who lives with her family in Copenhagen in 1943. She becomes a part of the events related to the rescue of the Danish Jews, when thousands of Jews were helped to reach neutral ground in Sweden in order to avoid being relocated to concentration camps. She risked her life in order to help her best friend, Ellen Rosen, by pretending that Ellen is Annemarie's late older sister Lise, who had died earlier in the war. Lise had been killed by the Nazi military as a result of her work with the Danish Resistance. The story's title is taken from a reference to Psalm 147:4, in which the writer relates that God has numbered all the stars and has named each one of them. I...