Books and Authors

Dune

Frank Herbert series that tells the story of young Paul Atreides, whose noble family accepts the stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis.

Middlemarch

George Eliot novel. It is a work of realism that refers to many historical events: the 1832 Reform Act, the death of King George IV, and the succession of his brother, the Duke of Clarence (the future King William IV). Features Dorothea Brooke, Tertius Lydgate, and Rev. Edward Casaubon.

Animal Farm

George Orwell allegorical novel. Old Major, the old boar, is the leader on the Manor Farm. When Major dies, two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, assume command and consider it a duty to prepare for the Rebellion. Features Boxer and Clover

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert novel. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's novel that features the narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers;

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

He is the mastermind behind the characters Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Inspector Lestrade

Agatha Christie

Her works revolve around the investigative work of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Parker Pyne, Harley Quin/Mr Satterthwaite and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford

Moby Dick

Herman Melville novel; A sailor called Ishmael narrates the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on the white whale Moby Dick, which on a previous voyage destroyed his ship and severed his leg at the knee; also includes Queequeg

Atonement

Ian McEwan novel. Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a talent for writing, lives with her parents. Her older sister Cecilia attends the University of Cambridge with Robbie Turner, Cecilia's friend

Rumer Godden

Indian author; wrote Black Narcissus and In This House of Brede

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende novel. The story details the life of the Trueba family in Chile

Naked in Death

J.D. Robb series. New York Police detective Eve Dallas investigates Irish businessman, Roarke in his involvement in the death of a prostitute

The Catcher in the Rye

J.D. Salinger novel whose protagonist Holden Caulfield has become an icon for teenage rebellion

Harry Potter series

J.K. Rowling series including Harry Potter, ALbus Dumbledore, and Hagrid

The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkien novel set in a time "Between the Dawn of Færie and the Dominion of Men". It follows the quest of home-loving hobbit Bilbo Baggins to win a share of the treasure guarded by the dragon, Smaug.

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen novel. It tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's five unmarried daughters including Elizabeth after the rich Mr. Bingley and friend, Mr. Darcy have moved into their neighbourhood.

Stephanie Plum series

Janet Evanovich series. Features Stephanie Plum, Grandma Mazur, Joseph Morelli, and Ranger

Clan of the Cave Bear

Jean Auel's first book in the Earth's Children series

The Virgin Suicides

Jeffrey Eugenides novel. Set in 1970s Michigan, the story centers on the 5 Lisbon sisters.

The World According to Garp

John Irving novel. The story deals with the life of T. S. Garp. His mother, Jenny Fields, is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband.

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole novel. The protagonist is Ignatius J. Reilly, a 30-year-old man living with his mother in early-1960s New Orleans

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck novel. Focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home. They set out for California;

Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift satire featuring Lemuel Gulliver and Glumdalclitch

Catch-22

Joseph Heller novel. The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier.

The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame novel that focuses on four anthropomorphised animals: Mole, Ratty, Mr. Toad, and Mr. Badger in a pastoral version of England

Slaughterhouse Five

Kurt Vonnegut novel about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a chaplain's assistant named Billy Pilgrim.

Lonesome Dove

Larry McMurtry novel. Captain Augustus "Gus" McCrae and Captain Woodrow F. Call, two ex-Texas Rangers, run a livery, a stable where people pay fees to keep their horses.

Little House on the Prairie series

Laura Ingalls Wilder series including Laura, Mary, Ma, Pa, and Mr. French

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy novel of the titular married aristocrat and her affair with Count Vronsky

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll novel that tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures such as The Cheshire Cat, The White Rabbit, and The Mad Hatter

Vorkosigan series

Lois McMaster Bujold series. Features Miles Vorkosigan, Elli Quinn, Taura, and Cordelia Naismith

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott novel that follows the lives of four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March; also includes Marmee

Anne of Green Gables

Lucy Maud Montgomery that recounts the adventures of Anne Shirley, an 11-year-old orphan girl who is mistakenly sent to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a middle-aged brother and sister who had intended to adopt a boy to help them on their farm in Prince Edward Island.

A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle novel. The story revolves around a young girl named Meg Murry whose father, a government scientist, has gone missing after working on a mysterious project

The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood novel that features Offred, The Commander, and Serena Joy

The Diviners

Margaret Laurence novel. The protagonist of the novel is Morag Gunn, an independent writer who grew up in Manitoba.

Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell novel set in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner; includes Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes

World War Z

Max Brooks novel. The novel is a collection of individual accounts narrated by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, following the devastating global conflict against the zombie plague.

Paddington Bear series

Michael Bond series including Paddington Bear, Aunt Lucy, and Mr. Gruber

The Crimson Petal and the White

Michael Faber novel. The novel details lives of two Victorian women: Agnes and Sugar. The man stuck in this love triangle is William Rackham.

The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje book. The book follows four dissimilar people brought together at an Italian villa during World War II

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Muriel Spark novel; It tells the story of the titular Scottish teacher

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. Features Hester Prynne, Pearl, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth

Sandman series

Neil Gaiman comic book series; It tells the story of Dream of the Endless, who rules over the world of dreams. Created Death, Destiny, Despair, Delirium, Desire, and Destruction

A Town Like Alice

Nevil Shute novel. Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman, becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II. She later goes to Australia to be with him.

High Fidelity

Nick Hornby novel. Rob Fleming is the owner of a London record shop. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him.

Robert A. Heinlein

Often called the "dean of science fiction writers". Created Valentine Michael Smith, Juan 'Johnnie' Rico, and Podkayne 'Poddy' Fries

Ender's Game series

Orson Scott Card series. Set in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperiled mankind after two conflicts with the "buggers", an insectoid alien species.

Jeeves series

P.G. Wodehouse series that includes the Englishman Bertie Wooster and the titular valet

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Philip K. Dick novel. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who is faced with killing ("retiring") six escaped Nexus-6 model androids, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-par IQ who aids the fugitive androids.

Watership Down

Richard Adams novel. In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. He and his brother Hazel set out on their own with a small band of eleven rabbits to search for a new home.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Roald Dahl novel that features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka.

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson novel. Features Jim Hawkins, Squire Trelawney, and Long John Silver

The Jungle Book

Rudyard Kipling's story collection. The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of Mowgli, an abandoned "man cub" who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The most famous of the other four stories are probably "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the story of a heroic mongoose, and "Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young elephant-handler. Features Shere Khan and Bagheera

Tevye the Dairyman

Sholem Aleichem novel. It is about a pious Jewish milkman in Tsarist Russia with six troublesome daughters.

The Shining

Stephen King novel that centers on the life of Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Stieg Larsson's first book in Millennium series. Features Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist

Discworld series

Terry Pratchett series about a flat disc balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin;

Tess of the d'Ubervilles

Thomas Hardy novel; The novel is set in impoverished rural England, Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex, during the Long Depression of the 1870s. Tess is the oldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield, uneducated peasants.

Silence of the Lambs

Thomas Harris novel where Clarice Starling is to present a questionnaire to the brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter.

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison novel. Set in Ohio during the Great Depression, the story is about a young black girl named Pecola who develops an inferiority complex due to her eye color and skin appearance.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Tracy Chevalier novel. Set in 17th century Delft, Holland, the novel was inspired by Delft school painter Johannes Vermeer's painting. Features Griet, Johannes Vermeer, van Ruijven, Pieter.

Catwings

Ursula K. Le Guin novel. It follows the adventures of kittens who were born with wings.

Les Miserables

Victor Hugo novel. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption. Features Inspector Javert, Fantine, and Cosette

Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf novel that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post-First World War England;

The Lord of the Flies

William Golding novel starring Ralph, Piggy, and Jack Merridew

Sophie's Choice

William Styron novel. It concerns the relationships between three people sharing a boarding house in Brooklyn: Stingo, a young aspiring writer from the South who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his lover Sophie, a Polish, Catholic survivor of the German Nazi concentration camps.

Poldark series

Winston Graham series. The main character, Ross Poldark, is a British Army officer, who returns to his home in Cornwall from the American Revolutionary War only to find that his fiancée Elizabeth Chynoweth, having believed him dead, is about to marry his cousin Francis Poldark.

Life of Pi

Yann Martel novel. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston novel. The novel narrates main character Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny.

Beatrix Potter

best known for her Peter Rabbit novels; also created Jemima Puddle-Duck and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle

Frances Hodgson Burnett

best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (published in 1885-1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). Created Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox

C.S. Forester

known for writing tales of naval warfare such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic wars.

Shogun

part of James Clavell's Asian Saga; gives an account of the rise of the daimyo "Toranaga". Toranaga's rise to the Shogunate is seen through the eyes of the English sailor John Blackthorne.

The Thorn Birds

Colleen McCullough novel; Set primarily on Drogheda, a fictional sheep station in the Australian Outback, the story focuses on the Cleary family

The Red Tent

Anita Diamant novel. It tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister of Joseph.

The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupery novella. Features pilot, Prince, snake the Lamplighter, the Tippler, fox

The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver bestselling novel about the Price family moving from Georgia to the Belgian Congo.

Sharpe series

Bernard Cornwell series; charts the titular character's progress in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars.

John Mortimer

British author who wrote A Voyage Round My Father and Rumpole of the Bailey

Georgette Heyer

British novelist; wrote The Black Moth, The Conqueror, and The House of Lancaster trilogy

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

Christopher Moore novel. Pine Cove's town psychiatrist Val Riordan feels guilty and substitutes all of her patients' anti-depressants with placebos.

Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk novel. It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.

Winnie-the-Pooh series

A.A. Milne series starring Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Eeyore

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Alexander McCall Smith series of novels. The series stars protagonist and main detective Mma Precious Ramotswe, a Motswana woman who founded the titular Gaborone agency

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold novel; In 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon takes her usual shortcut home from her school through a cornfield in Pennsylvania. George Harvey, a 36-year-old neighbor who lives alone and builds doll houses for a living, persuades her to have a look at an underground den he has recently dug in the field.

The Color Purple

Alice Walker story taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of African-American women in the southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. Features Celie, Sofia, Shug Avery

Annie Barrows and Mary Anne Shaffer

American authors who wrote The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Rex Stout

American writer noted for his detective fiction about detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin

Robert B. Parker

American writer; His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the private detective Spenser.

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan novel. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco who start a club known as The Joy Luck Club, playing the Chinese game of mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods. Features Jing-Mei Woo, Lindo Jong, Waverly Jong

Narnia series

C.S. Lewis series that include Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, Mr. Tumnus, White Witch

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens novella tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a nicer man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come;

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte novel that follows the titular character and her love for Edward Fairfax Rochester, the master of Thornfield Hall;

The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown novel that follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris

Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier novel remembered for the character Mrs. Danvers and the fictional estate Manderley;

Outlander

Diana Gabaldon series. Published in 1991, it focuses on 20th century nurse Claire Randall, who time travels to 18th century Scotland and finds adventure and romance with the dashing James Fraser.

Charlotte's Web

E.B. White novel that tells the story of a pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte.

Dorothy Sayers

English author; best known for her mysteries that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. She also translated Dante's The Divine Comedy.

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway novel about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights;