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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.