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BLESS ME, ULTIMA
By Rudolfo Anaya
One of the most respected works of Chicano literature, Rudolfo Anaya tells the story of Antonio Luna Márez, a young boy who grapples with faith, identity, and death as he comes of age in New Mexico. Read more
FAHRENHEIT 451
By Ray Bradbury
In one of literature's most haunting denunciations of censorship, Ray Bradbury uses the materials of science fiction to tell the story of Guy Montag, a fireman forced to burn books. Read more
MY ÁNTONIA
By Willa Cather
The spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family plans to farm the untamed Nebraska land. Willa Cather's tale comes to us through the eyes of Ántonia's childhood friend, Jim Burden. Read more
THE GREAT GATSBY
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Told through the eyes of narrator Nick Carraway, F. Scott Fitzgerald's lyrical masterpiece recounts Jay Gatsby's desperate quest to win back his first love as he struggles to recapture the past. Read more
A LESSON BEFORE DYING
By Ernest J. Gaines
A frustrated schoolteacher in 1940s Louisiana tries to give a condemned man back his dignity before he dies. Vivid and compassionate, this novel asks: Knowing we're going to die, how should we live? Read more
THE MALTESE FALCON
By Dashiell Hammett
Detective Sam Spade becomes embroiled with a mysterious client, avenges the death of his partner, and chases a priceless treasure in this classic American private-eye novel. Read more
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
By Ernest Hemingway
A story of love and pain, loyalty and desertion, Ernest Hemingway's World War I novel features the tragedy of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful nurse. Read more
SUN, STONE, AND SHADOWS
By Jorge F. Hernández
This anthology presents a superb selection of the finest Mexican short stories ever written, and offers a glimpse into a diverse and fascinating culture. Authors include Juan Rulfo, Octavio Paz, Rosario Castellanos, and Carlos Fuentes. Read more
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
By Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston's vibrant novel presents Janie Mae Crawford's growth from a voiceless teenage girl into a woman who takes charge of her own destiny. Read more
WASHINGTON SQUARE
By Henry James
The timeless story of a young girl's desire to please both her disapproving father and the man she loves, this novel follows Catherine Sloper's remarkable transformation from a meek wallflower to a steadfast woman true to her convictions. Read more
A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA
By Ursula K. Le Guin
In the first book of Ursula K. Le Guin's widely admired fantasy series, only the power of language can restore balance to a dangerous world. Read more
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
By Harper Lee
As Harper Lee's narrator, Scout Finch, tries to draw out a reclusive neighbor, she bears witness to a racially charged trial that shapes the character of her Alabama community. Read more
THE CALL OF THE WILD
By Jack London
Abducted from his comfortable home and sold as a sled dog, Buck battles the elements to become leader of the pack. This story of a struggle for survival is an unforgettable adventure. Read more
THE THIEF AND THE DOGS
By Naguib Mahfouz
Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's psychological thriller follows a thief's quest for revenge down the boulevards and back alleys of Cairo. Read more
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
By Carson McCullers
A teenage outcast, a drunken socialist, a black doctor, and a sad café owner confess their secrets to a deaf-mute, in Carson McCullers's dramatic story of poverty and racism in a 1930s Georgia mill town. Read more
THE SHAWL
By Cynthia Ozick
Rosa Lublin is a Holocaust survivor whose memories of a Nazi death camp continue to traumatize her thirty years later. Cynthia Ozick's heartbreakingly empathic novella achieves one of fiction's loftiest goals, giving readers insight into a stranger's heart. Read more
HOUSEKEEPING
By Marilynne Robinson
When Ruth and her sister Lucille are abandoned in the isolated Idaho town of Fingerbone, their lives become intertwined with the legacy of loss that haunts the Foster family. Read more
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
By John Steinbeck
A Dust Bowl saga of the Joad family's rough passage to California and the rougher treatment they find there, John Steinbeck's novel is tragedy and comedy, story and allegory, editorial and epic. Read more
THE JOY LUCK CLUB
By Amy Tan
In sixteen interwoven stories, Amy Tan's characters—four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters—struggle to connect despite the ghosts and secrets of the past. Read more
THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH
By Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich is a Russian judge and middle-class everyman. Struck down by disease at forty-five, Ivan discovers a horrifying truth: He has not lived a meaningful life. Read more
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
By Mark Twain
Humor, trouble, and adventure follow Tom Sawyer everywhere—from the banks of the Mississippi to the brink of death and back in Mark Twain's first full novel. Read more
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
By Edith Wharton
In 1870s New York, Newland Archer and his fiancée seem the perfect match. But when the alluring Countess Ellen Olenska returns home from Europe, Newland must make the most important decision of his life. Read more
OLD SCHOOL
By Tobias Wolff
At a New England prep school where keeping up appearances is everything, Tobias Wolff's youthful narrator learns the painful difference between truth and fiction. Read more
Jonathan Lethem on themes in Old School
One of the things that's so terrific about this book is that it's so much about self invention, and it connects that problem, which first just seems to be this boy's personal issue, both to American identity and to the life of an artist. Because in both cases the possibility of self-invention from a blank slate is both terrifying and enormously promising. The American condition is one of claiming an identity out of a vacuum and always being afraid that someone might call your bluff on it.
Kevin Starr on Jack London
Even from the beginning there was two sides to his nature: the bookish side/the dreamy side, and then that hunger for experience. It is amazing how much life London packs into his early years before, say, he's even a freshman at Berkeley. He goes up with Coxey's army marching up to Sacramento; he takes to the railroads as a hobo under the name Sailor Jack....
