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Mikhail Bulgakov's devastating satire of Soviet life was written during the darkest period of Stalin's regime. Combining two distinct yet interwoven parts-one set in ancient Jerusalem, one in contemporary Moscow-the novel veers from moods of wild theatricality with violent storms, vampire attacks, and a Satanic ball; to such somber scenes as the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, and the murder of Judas in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane; to the substanceless,...
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"'...not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle'- Leo Tolstoy. Striking a balance between philosophical discussion and compelling story-telling, War and Peace transcends the restrictions that Tolstoy perceived in the conventional novel. Set in Russia during the Napoleonic era, this epic novel follows the fortunes of five aristocratic Russian families over the course of the French invasion. Tolstoy's timeless portrayal...
3) Bleak House
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Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...
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"First published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads-- driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human...
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Willa Cather’s story of the missionary priest Father Jean Marie Latour and his work of faith in the wilderness of the Southwest is told with a spare but sensuous directness and profound artistry—with an Introduction by A. S. Byatt. When Latour arrives in 1851 in the territory of New Mexico, newly acquired by the United States, what he finds is a vast desert region of red hills and tortured arroyos that is American by law but Mexican and Indian...
6) The castle
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In THE CASTLE, a protagonist, known only as K., struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village where he wants to work as a land surveyor. Kafka died before finishing the work, but suggested it would end with the Land Surveyor dying in the village; the castle notifying him on his death bed that his legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he...
7) The stranger
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A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. In the story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched...
8) Adam Bede
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Arthur's seduction of an innocent, young country girl results in remorse, suffering, and regret.
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Classics - St. Charles Public Library
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
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In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While...
10) A thousand acres
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Everyman's library volume 382
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"The only hardcover edition of Jane Smiley's most famous novel--King Lear on an Iowa farm--which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. With a new introduction. This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm among his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will, which sets in motion a chain of events that brings dark truths to light. Ambitiously...
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"Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable,...
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From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, author Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles.
At their second home on the Isle of Skye, the Ramsay family surrounds itself with friends and colleagues. They contend with World War I, family deaths, and hardships both spoken and unspoken. All the...
13) Mrs. Dalloway
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English
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Classics - St. Charles Public Library
FPPL 2023 - Elizabeth Wetmore's Recs
OBD Patron Picks Summer Reading 2023 - Adult
Women's History Month Fiction 2024
FPPL 2023 - Elizabeth Wetmore's Recs
OBD Patron Picks Summer Reading 2023 - Adult
Women's History Month Fiction 2024
Description
""Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." It's one of the most famous opening lines in literature, that of Virginia Woolf's beloved masterpiece of time, memory, and the city. In the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell- shock and on the brink of madness....
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Raised by a wealthy, idiosyncratic and alcoholic mother, Amory Blaine is arrogant and lacking in proper social etiquette which he eventually has to learn. En route from the Midwest to Princeton University, he experiences flirtations with some predatory young women and a chance at friendship with some intellectual young men. His romantic relationship ended when his soul-mate rejected him to marry a wealthier young man.
15) The trial
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One morning Josef K. is arrested for a crime he did not commit. In fact, he is never even told the nature of the offense. His life is thrown into turmoil as he becomes enmeshed in a struggle to prove his innocence. As the confounding case unfolds, K. is ultimately powerless - battling against a remote and uncaring bureaucracy. This striking hardback edition features a new translation by Isabel Tucker. Due to its posthumous publication, The Trial...
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Nostromo, a Tale of the Seaboard - Joseph Conrad - Joseph Conrad, who knew the human nature inside out, telling the story of Nostromo and portraying his personages is ironic and even slightly derisive...⍾Every man, somewhere deep inside, has his own share of rascality... And every human doing has two sides...⍾⍾Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find...
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce and is a key work of twentieth century literature that remains as fresh, challenging and relevant as the day it was first published. It is a autobiographical novel and describes the early life and development of its central character, Stephen Dedalus (representing Joyce). Stephan, an intelligent but frail child, struggles toward maturity in Ireland at the turn of...
18) O pioneers!
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"The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman, writes Willa Cather in O Pioneers! The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father's farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her father's patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business. A gripping saga...
19) Brave new world
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Towering classic of dystopian satire, BRAVE NEW WORLD is a brilliant and terrifying vision of a soulless society--and of one man who discovers the human costs of mindless conformity. Hundreds of years in the future, the World Controllers have created an ideal civilization. Its members, shaped by genetic engineering and behavioral conditioning, are productive and content in roles they have been assigned at conception. Government-sanctioned drugs and...
20) Anna Karenina
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Classics - St. Charles Public Library
Green Hills All Staff Favorites
Green Hills Staff Favorites Adult Books
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Green Hills All Staff Favorites
Green Hills Staff Favorites Adult Books
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"Tolstoy produced many drafts of Anna Karenina. Crafting and recrafting each sentence with careful intent, he was anything but casual in his use of language. His project, translator Marian Schwartz observes, "was to bend language to his will, as an instrument of his aesthetic and moral convictions." In her magnificent new translation, Schwartz embraces Tolstoy's unusual style - she is the first English language translator ever to do so. Previous translations...
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