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God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is the story of Eliot Rosewater, a millionaire who develops a social conscience, abandons New York City, and establishes the Rosewater Foundation in Rosewater, Indiana, where he attempts to dispense unlimited amounts of love and limited sums of money to anyone who will come to his office.

In this series of essays, Rand asks why man needs morality in the first place, and arrives at an answer that redefines a new code of ethics based on the virtue of selfishness.

The Two Towers is the second volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. It is preceded by The Fellowship of the Ring and followed by The Return of the King.

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction.

Charlie struggles to cope with complex world of high school as he deals with the confusions of sex and love, the temptations of drugs, and the pain of losing a close friend and a favorite aunt.

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat", which takes its name from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to '-teen' in English. According to Burgess, it was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.

This classic 1971 novel—the one that catapulted its author to national fame—is the perfect introduction to the grimly hysterical world of legendary writer, poet, and Dirty Old Man Charles Bukowski and his fictional alter ego, Chinaski.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity is a non-fiction book written by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo in 2012. It won the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize among many others

Breakfast Of Champions is vintage Vonnegut. One of his favorite characters, aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. The result is murderously funny satire as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city has become a modern classic.

The Return of the King is the third and final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. It was published in 1955. The story begins in the kingdom of Gondor, which is soon to be attacked by the Dark Lord Sauron.

One of the most groundbreaking and timeless bestsellers of all time, How to Win Friends & Influence People will teach you: Six ways to make people like you, Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking and Nine ways to change people.

The adventure that began with The Celestine Prophecy continues as the action shifts to a wilderness in the American Southeast where the narrator's friend has disappeared.

This collection of 73 short stories and 48 poems includes many masterpieces by American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

On the moon, an enigma is uncovered. So great are the implications that, for the first time, men are sent deep into our solar system. But before they can reach their destination, things begin to go very wrong.

From F. Paul Wilson, the best-selling and acclaimed author of the Repairman Jack series, comes a lightning-paced, whip-smart thriller sure to please both die-hard fans and newcomers to Wilson's spellbinding world.

Paterson is an epic poem by American poet William Carlos Williams published, in five volumes, from 1946 to 1958. The origin of the poem was an eighty-five line long poem written in 1926, after Williams had read and been influenced by James Joyce's novel Ulysses.

Falconer is a 1977 novel by American short story writer and novelist John Cheever. It tells the story of Ezekiel Farragut, a university professor and drug addict who is serving time in Falconer State Prison for the murder of his brother. Farragut struggles to retain his humanity in the prison environment, and begins an affair with a fellow prisoner.

The Windup Girl is a biopunk science fiction novel by American writer Paolo Bacigalupi. It was his debut novel and was published by Night Shade Books on September 1, 2009. The novel is set in a future Thailand and covers a number of contemporary issues such as global warming and biotechnology.

South of No North is a collection of short stories written by Charles Bukowski that explore loneliness and struggles on the fringes of society.

After Earth is demolished to make way for a new hyperspatial expressway, Arthur Dent begins to hitch-hike through space.

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Often regarded as one of his best works, the novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found.

The Celestine Prophecy discusses various psychological and spiritual ideas rooted in multiple ancient Eastern traditions and New Age spirituality.

1984 is a dystopian social science fiction novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centers on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviors within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modeled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated.

Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own.

A popular collection of some of the best short fiction and short stories ever written.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell, in which the author discusses his theory of the mythological structure of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world myths.

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.

When he relocates to New Delhi to take a new job, Balram Halwai is disillusioned by the city's materialism and technology-spawned violence, a circumstance that forces him to question his loyalties, ambitions, and past.

In this best-selling memoir, award-winning Japanese writer Haruki Murakami recalls his preparation for the 2005 New York City marathon, interweaving his reflections on the meaning of running in his life, his thoughts on the writing process and career.

Purgatorio, Italian for "Purgatory", is the second part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno and preceding the Paradiso. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of Dante up the Mount of Purgatory, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, except for the last four cantos at which point Beatrice takes over as Dante's guide.

Nine Stories is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor".

The great philosopher's major work on ethics, along with Ecce Homo, Nietzche's remarkable review of his life and works.

The Sheltering Sky is a 1949 novel of alienation and existential despair by American writer and composer Paul Bowles.

Tom Wolfe's much-discussed kaleidoscopic non-fiction novel chronicles the tale of novelist Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. In the 1960s, Kesey led a group of psychedelic sympathizers around the country in a painted bus, presiding over LSD-induced "acid tests" all along the way.

Stunning and elegiac, Norwegian Wood first propelled Haruki Murakami into the forefront of the literary scene.

I Married a Communist is a Philip Roth novel concerning the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, known as "Iron Rinn." The story is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, and is one of a trio of Zuckerman novels Roth wrote in the 1990s depicting the postwar history of Newark, New Jersey and its residents.

Sissy Hankshaw, the novel's protagonist, is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift. This novel covers various topics, including free love, feminism, drug use, birds, political rebellion, animal rights, body odor, religion, and yams.

The Merchant of Venice is a 16th-century play written by William Shakespeare in which a merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599.

Scott Cunningham was a greatly respected teacher and one of the most influential members of the modern Craft movement.

Still Life With Woodpecker is the third novel by Tom Robbins, concerning the love affair between an environmentalist princess and an outlaw. The novel encompasses a broad range of topics, from aliens and redheads to consumerism, the building of bombs, romance, royalty, the Moon, and a pack of Camel cigarettes.

Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.

Extraordinarily influential treatise on fine art contains seminal ideas on nature of drama, tragedy, poetry, music and more. Catharsis, tragic flaw, unities of time and place, other concepts.

Bullet Park is a 1969 novel by American Novelist John Cheever about an earnest yet pensive father Eliot Nailles and his troubled son Tony, and their predestined fate with a psychotic man Hammer, who moves to Bullet Park to sacrifice one of them.

All these experiences provide clues to past lives. With How To Uncover Your Past Lives, you'll learn how knowledge of past lives can help you gain clear insight into your spiritual purpose for this lifetime.

Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers. Here we meet a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who is on the run, and Nakata, an aging simpleton who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey.

Bertolt Brecht was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill and began a lifelong collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the so-called V-effect.

An Outline of American History is one of the oldest continuing publications of the United States Information Agency (USIA). The first edition (1949-50) was produced under the editorship of Francis Whitney, first of the State Department Office of International Information and later of the U.S. Information Agency.

Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found? is the crucial question with which renowned literary critic Harold Bloom begins this impassioned book on the pleasures and benefits of reading well. For more than forty years, Bloom has transformed college students into lifelong readers with his unrivaled love for literature. Now, at a time when faster and easier electronic media threatens to eclipse the practice of reading, Bloom draws on his experience as critic, teacher, and prolific reader to plumb the great books for their sustaining wisdom. Shedding all polemic, Bloom addresses the solitary reader, who, he urges, should read for the purest of all reasons: to discover and augment the self. His ultimate faith in the restorative power of literature resonates on every page of this infinitely rewarding and important book.

The six stories in this collection come from the deep and mysterious place where the human meets the inhuman—and are further proof that Murakami is one of the most visionary writers at work today.

Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand. The story takes place at an unspecified future date when mankind has entered another Dark Age.

The Elephant Vanishes is a collection of 17 short stories by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1980 and 1991, and published in Japan in various magazines, then collections.

The Basketball Diaries is a 1978 memoir written by author and musician Jim Carroll. It is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen.

Imajica is a fantasy novel by British author Clive Barker. Barker names it as his favourite of all his writings. The work, 824 pages at its first printing in 1991, chronicles the events surrounding the reconciliation of Earth, called the Fifth Dominion, with the other four Dominions, parallel worlds unknown to all but a select few of Earth's inhabitants. Considered wide in scope, elaborate in its imagery, and meticulous in its detail, the novel covers themes such as God, sex, love, gender and death.

These two novellas, set seventeen years apart, are both concerned with Seymour Glass, the eldest son of J. D. Salinger's fictional Glass family, as recalled by his closest brother, Buddy.

These twelve stories mark a turning point in Carver’s work and “overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life. . .

An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.

A personal account of a woman's emotional and financial struggle to survive after the death of her husband.

A tree full of monkeys is the last thing fourteen-year-old Jay Berry Lee thought he'd find on one of his treks through Oklahoma's Cherokee Ozarks. Jay learns from his grandfather that the monkeys have escaped from a circus and there is a big reward for anyone who finds them. He knows how much his family needs the money. Jay is determined to catch the monkeys. It's a summer of thrills and dangers no one will ever forget.

In this haunting work of journalistic investigation, Haruki Murakami tells the story of the horrific terrorist attack on Japanese soil that shook the entire world.

The Things They Carried is a collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O'Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. His third book about the war, it is based upon his experiences as a soldier in the 23rd Infantry Division.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by American-British author Bill Bryson is a popular science book that explains some areas of science, using easily accessible language that appeals more to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales is a 1985 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks describing the case histories of some of his patients. Sacks chose the title of the book from the case study of one of his patients who has visual agnosia, a neurological condition that leaves him unable to recognize faces and objects. The book became the basis of an opera of the same name by Michael Nyman, which premiered in 1986.

Pride and Prejudice 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.

"This book absolutely crucifies the argument for a benevolent creator. What's more, it uses the creationist's most-cited source to do it."

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of the King. It takes place in the fictional universe of Middle-earth.

In the 1970s, Calvin Trillin informed America that its most glorious food was not to be found at the pretentious restaurants he referred to generically as La Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine.

Honoring the rhythms and alliterative music of the original, Armitage's virtuosic translation describes a man mourning the loss of his Pearl―something that has “slipped away.” What follows is a tense, fascinating, and tender dialogue weaving through the throes of grief toward divine redemption.

Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

This remarkable, imaginative tale is here accompanied by a story of the desperate measures required by limitless wealth, and another about the lengths (and cuts) a girl is willing to go to for popularity.

Inferno is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno describes Dante's journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil.

The Jungle is a 1906 novel by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair. The novel portrays the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge was published by the University of California Press in 1968 as a work of anthropology, though many critics contend that it is a work of fiction. It was written by Carlos Castaneda and submitted as his Master's thesis in the school of Anthropology.

Tuesdays with Morrie is a memoir by American author Mitch Albom about a series of visits Albom made to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, as Schwartz gradually dies of ALS. The book topped the New York Times Non-Fiction Best-Sellers List for 23 combined weeks in 2000, and remained on the New York Times best-selling list for more than four years after. In 2006, Tuesdays with Morrie was the bestselling memoir of all time.

In the spring of 1863, as he faces battle for the first time at Chancellorsville, Virginia, a young Union soldier matures to manhood and finds peace of mind as he comes to grips with his conflicting emotions about war.

1Q84 covers a fictionalized year of 1984 in parallel with a "real" one. The novel is a story of how a woman named Aomame begins to notice strange changes occurring in the world.

The Secret of Shambhala takes you to the snow-covered Himalayas, in search of the legendary Tibetan utopia of Shambhala. As you follow a child's instructions, are pursued by hostile Chinese agents, and look for a lost friend, you will experience a new awareness of synchronicity and discover, hidden among the world's highest mountains, the secrets that affect all humanity.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven is a 2003 novel by Mitch Albom. It follows the life and death of a ride mechanic named Eddie who is killed in an amusement park accident and sent to heaven, where he encounters five people who had a significant impact on him while he was alive. It was published by Hyperion and remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for 95 weeks.

A fifteen-year-old drug user chronicles her daily struggle to escape the pull of the drug world.

With his inimitable tragicomic mastery Saul Bellow delves once again, and the reader with him, into a contemporary and chaotic universe in which the most profound reflections on the meaning of life mingle with the absurd, histrionic, ...

The Magus is a postmodern novel that tells the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young British graduate who is teaching English on a small Greek island. Urfe becomes embroiled in the psychological illusions of a master trickster, which become increasingly dark and serious.

Prozac Nation describes the author's experiences with atypical depression, her own character failings and how she managed to live through particularly difficult periods while completing college and working as a writer.

This brief work shares the style, humor, and underlying cultural commentary of Robbins' better-known novels. It is recognized as a response to 9/11 and as a commentary on the Vietnam War.

The Martian Chronicles is a science fiction fix-up novel, published in 1950, by American writer Ray Bradbury that chronicles the settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous Martians, by Americans leaving a troubled Earth that is eventually devastated by nuclear war. The book is a work of science fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, dystopian fiction, and horror that projects American society immediately after World War II into a technologically advanced future where the amplification of humanity's potentials to create and destroy have both miraculous and devastating consequences.

With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, Camus's masterpiece gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach.

The Catcher in the Rye details two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, Holden searches for truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world.

Hope for the Flowers is an allegorical novel by Trina Paulus. It was first published in 1972 and reflects the idealism of the counterculture of the period.

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' A worldwide bestseller and the first part of Achebe's African Trilogy, Things Fall Apart is the compelling story of one man's battle to protect his community against the forces of change.

Set in 1990s America, where conflicting moralities and ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciation and rituals of purification, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives that so ineradicably marks human nature. This harrowing, deeply compassionate, and completely absorbing novel is a magnificent successor to his Vietnam-era novel, American Pastoral, and his McCarthy-era novel, I Married a Communist.

After falling through the ice of a frozen lake Seth Warner finds himself in a strange new world where he must face challenging new adventures.

For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home—and not at home—in America. Julia Alvarez’s new novel, Afterlife, is available now.

A thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist’s home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors

In this bestselling compilation of essays, written in the clear-eyed, uncompromising language for which he is famous, Orwell discusses with vigor such diverse subjects as his boyhood schooling, the Spanish Civil War, Henry Miller, British imperialism, and the profession of writing.

Douglas Coupland, the author whom Tom Wolfe calls “one of the freshest, most exciting voices of the novel today,” delivers his tenth book in ten years of writing, with All Families Are Psychotic.

Acclaimed, best-selling Haruki Murakami's debut short novels, the novellas "Pinball" and "Hear the Wind Sing". Centering around two young men, an unnamed narrator and his friend and former roommate, the Rat, these short works are powerful, at times surreal, stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism. Filled with all the hallmarks of Murakami's later books, they are a fascinating insight into a great author's beginnings, and remarkable works of fiction in their own right. These early novellas are essential reading for Murakami lovers and contemporary fiction lovers, alike.

My Sister's Keeper tells the story of thirteen-year-old Anna Fitzgerald, who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she discovers she is supposed to donate a kidney to her elder sister Kate, who is gradually dying from acute leukemia.

South of the Border, West of the Sun is the beguiling story of a past rekindled, and one of Haruki Murakami’s most touching novels.

In this celebrated work, his only novel, Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England.

The Fountainhead is Ayn Rand's first major literary success. The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an intransigent young architect, who battles against conventional standards and refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment unwilling to accept innovation.

The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence". The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism. In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, and capitalism, and depicts what Rand saw to be the failures of governmental coercion.

For here is the young Camus himself, in love with the sea and sun, enraptured by women yet disdainful of romantic love, and already formulating the philosophy of action and moral responsibility that would make him central to the thought of ...

The tale of two gentlemen who adopt fictitious identities in order to woo the objects of their affections is Wilde’s most beloved work, considered to be one of the wittiest plays ever written in English.

Bring Me Your Love, is a 1983 short story by Charles Bukowski, illustrated by Robert Crumb. A filmed version by David Morrissey stars Ian Hart as the journalist bringing flowers to his wife in a mental hospital. The 2008 album of the same title by City and Colour is named after the story.

First published by the legendary Black Sparrow Press in 1984, There's No Business is another short story by Charles Bukowski published in a stapled, matte card-stock volume with amazing illustrations by R. Crumb. Bukowski's short story (barely 7 pages not including illustrations) tells the brief tale of over the hill comic Manny Hyman and his failure of an act. Like the majority of Bukowski's characters, Manny is an aging and depressed drunken mess, and this story highlights the travails of less than mediocre show business as Manny receives heckle upon heckle. Eventually a fracas breaks out, and, surprisingly though, a new star is born. Bukowski's short stories never disappoint and There's No Business is no exception, not to mention being part of a great illustrated volume.

The Floating Opera and The End of The Road are John Barth's first two novels repackaged in one volume. Both novels are about a love triangle and the contemplation of suicide. The Floating Opera is set in the early 1930s and is a novel-length explanation of why the narrator decided to kill himself one day in 1937 and the events that changed his mind. The End of the Road is contemporary to the time it was written (1954) and also considers the question of suicide.

Nine Stories is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor"

The Paradiso is a luminous poem of love and light, of optics, angelology, polemics, prayer, prophecy, and transcendent experience.

Here is a simple and practical guide to interpreting the symbolic language of the tarot. How To Read the Tarot provides an interpretive structure that applies to the card numbers of both the Major and Minor Arcana. Readers will learn five common tarot spreads designed to answer common questions about love, money, health, and more. For more insight, there's a handy symbol dictionary for interpreting hundreds of tarot symbols.

In his debut novel, Junky, Burroughs fictionalized his experiences using and peddling heroin and other drugs in the 1950s into a work that reads like a field report from the underworld of post-war America.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection From one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature, the story that launched a thousand homages, in word and film—a haunting meditation on love and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is included here with its unedited version, “Beginners,” which was originally submitted to Carver’s editor, Gordon Lish. In this eShort, readers can compare both versions of this iconic work of fiction, gaining insight into Carver’s aesthetic and the foundations of the contemporary American short story.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs, the beheading game and the exchange of winnings

George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel—a scathing satire on a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism.

The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it.

Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. The novel examines the hidden cultural biases driving modern civilization and explores themes of ethics, sustainability, and global catastrophe

A compilation of Charles Bukowski's underground articles from his column "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" appears here in book form. Bukowski's reasoning for self-describing himself as a 'dirty old man' rings true in this book.

A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

Summer Sisters is a 1998 novel by Judy Blume. It focuses on the life of two fictional characters, the girls Victoria Leonard (Vix) and Caitlin Somers. Because of its heavy sexual content, this Blume novel is aimed squarely at an adult audience, not her tween audience for which she gained popularity.

The Thief of Always is a novel by Clive Barker that was published in 1992. The book is a fable written for children, but intended to be read by adults as well. The book's cover was created by Barker and the book contains several black and white illustrations by the author.

One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect, subsequently struggling to adjust to this new condition. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, with differing interpretations being offered.

Banding together in a decrepit warehouse, a group of disenfranchised twentysomethings explore the ultimate frontier: cyberspace. Part techie heaven, part 24-hour rave, the Ecstasy Club is an electronic playground where young hackers and esoteric spiritualists strive to create a new utopia.

Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Celine, this novel demonstrates Bukowski's own brand of humour and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles.

It is here he meets and falls in love with Shelly, a future American Gladiator, whose passion for physical challenge more than matches his. Ironman is a funny, sometimes heartbreaking story about growing up in the heart of struggle.

The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons

Arguably Philip Roth’s best-known novel, Portnoy's Complaint tells the tale of young Jewish lawyer Alexander Portnoy and his scandalous sexual confessions to his psychiatrist.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself.

Shakespeare’s account of the Roman general Julius Caesar’s murder by his friend Brutus is a meditation on duty. First performed around 1599, when the English royal succession was uncertain, Julius Caesar confronts the dangers of political turmoil.

Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws readers into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect.

Botchan is one of the most popular novels in Japan, read by many Japanese during their school years. The central theme of the story is morality, but the narrator serves up this theme with generous sides of humor and sarcasm.

J.D. Salinger was one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was also one of its most elusive. After making his mark on the American literary scene, Salinger retreated to a small town in New Hampshire where he hoped to hide his life away from the world. With dogged determination, however, journalist and biographer Paul Alexander captured Salinger's story in this, the only complete biography of Holden Caulfield's creator published to date. Using the archives at Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, NYU and the New York Public Library as well as research in New York and New Hampshire, Alexander has created a great biography of Salinger that's further enriched by interviews with some of the greatest literary figures of our time: George Plimpton, Gay Talese, Ian Hamilton, Harold Bloom, Roger Angell, A. Scott Berg, Robert Giroux, Ved Mehta, Gordon Lish and Tom Wolfe.

The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel.

Election is a black comedy about a high school history teacher who attempts to sabotage a manipulative, ambitious girl's campaign to become school president. The novel was adapted into a film by the same name in 1998.

From the acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes comes Secret Rendezvous, the bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present.

One day you come home from school and find two CIA agents waiting for you. They want you to go to Korea to pose as a student of tae kwon do. Your mission as an undercover agent will be to locate your friend Ling, the girl who taught you kung fu in China last year. She's one of the CIA's top agents in the Far East - and she's missing. It's an assignment you can't refuse!

The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American Civil War soldier, journalist, and writer Ambrose Bierce consisting of common words followed by humorous and satirical definitions. The lexicon was written over three decades as a series of installments for magazines and newspapers. Bierce's witty definitions were imitated and plagiarized for years before he gathered them into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 and then in a more complete version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911.

Tomcat in Love is a novel about the misadventures of a womanizing linguistics Professor, Thomas H. Chippering. Chippering is obsessive about the proper use of the English language and employs many examples of wordplay.

Men Without Women is a collection of short stories about men who have lost women in their lives, usually to other men or death. The collection shares its title with Ernest Hemingway's second short story collection.

A novel in two halves, Franny and Zooey brilliantly captures the emotional strains and traumas of entering adulthood. It is a gleaming example of the wit, precision, and poignancy that have made J. D. Salinger one of America's most beloved writers.

David Pepin has loved his wife since the moment they met and, after 13 years of marriage, he still can't imagine living without her--yet he obsessively contemplates her demise. Soon she is dead, and he's both deeply distraught and the prime suspect.

This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids.

July, July is a novel by National Book Award Winner Tim O'Brien, about the 30th reunion of a graduating college class of 1969 that happened a year too late. It's filled with characters bent up by society's pliers, and it constantly flashes back to moments that shaped their lives.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases: a few first copies were printed and illuminated by Blake himself in 1789.

Practical quotations drawn from the speech and literature of all nations, ancient and modern, classic and popular, in English and foreign text. With the names, dates, and nationality of quoted authors, and copious indexes

Nineteen-year-old Mari is waiting out the night in an anonymous Denny’s when she meets a young man who insists he knows her older sister, thus setting her on an odyssey through the sleeping city. In the space of a single night, the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents—models, prostitutes, mobsters, and musicians—collide in a world suspended between fantasy and reality. Utterly enchanting and infused with surrealism, After Dark is a thrilling account of the magical hours separating midnight from dawn.

Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works and Vonnegut at his very best.

A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world.

A little girl ventures down a rabbit hole and embarks on a fantastic journey through Wonderland.

War and Peace is regarded as one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements and remains an internationally praised classic of world literature.

In this propulsive novel, featuring a shabby but oracular Sheep Man, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work today fuses together science fiction, the hardboiled thriller, and white-hot satire.