To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, that tells a story similar to something the author experienced as a child.
The book follows three years in the life of Scout Finch, her brother Jem, their father Atticus, and their town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. The first half of the novel focuses on Scout and Jem's childhood, and the second part of the book is the ongoing trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman, whom Atticus has been called to defend, and the children's coming of age.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1961)
Margaret Mitchell only published one complete novel, but it was quite the book - Gone With the Wind earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and National Book Award for 1936. The epic romance tale set in and around Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War has remained a bestseller, even before the equally popular film starring Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh was made in 1939.
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen. First published on 28 January 1813, it was her second published novel. Its manuscript was initially written between 1796 and 1797 in Steventon, Hampshire, where Austen lived in the rectory. Originally called First Impressions, it was never published under that title, and in following revisions it was retitled Pride and Prejudice. The book is narrated in free indirect speech following the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with matters of upbringing, marriage, moral rightness and education in her aristocratic society. Though the book's setting is uniquely turn of the 19th century, it remains a fascination of modern readership, continuing to remain at the top of lists titled "most loved books of all time", and receiving considerable attention from literary critics. This modern interest has resulted in a number of dramatic adaptations and a plethora of books developing Austen's memorable characters further. To date, the book has sold some 20 million copies worldwide.
The Old Man and the Sea is a novella by Ernest Hemingway, written in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. It is noteworthy in twentieth century fiction, reaffirming Hemingway's worldwide literary prominence as well as being a significant factor in his selection for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has become a common part of high school and college curricula throughout the English-speaking world and has been translated into all major languages. Since its publication with a $3.00 sticker, it has reportedly sold more than 65 million copies. The novel's antihero, Holden Caulfield, has become a cultural icon for teenage rebellion. Due to its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst, it has frequently been met with censorship challenges in the United States making it one of the most challenged books of the 20th century.
John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
stands as a pivotal piece of American literature. The story follows
the Joad family (and thousands of others) as they are driven from the
Oklahoma farm where they are sharecroppers during the Great
Depression. The drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial
and agricultural industries send them searching for dignity and
honest work in the bountiful state of California.
The novel earned Steinbeck the Pulitzer
Prize for fiction in 1940, and inspired the classic film of the same
name the same year. The film starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, and
Steinbeck's words and ideas shine through that medium. In 1962,
Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for the body of
his work, and The Grapes of Wrath stands as his most
recognized and esteemed book. -
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective fiction novel written by American author Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon as he investigates a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discovers a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ of Nazareth having been married to and fathering a child with Mary Magdalene. The title of the novel refers to, among other things, the fact that the murder victim is found in the Denon Wing of the Louvre, naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a pentacle drawn on his stomach in his own blood. The novel has provoked a popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and Magdalene's role in the history of Christianity. The book has been extensively denounced by many Christian denominations as a dishonest attack on the Roman Catholic Church. It has also been criticized for its historical and scientific inaccuracy. The book is a worldwide bestseller that had sold 80 million copies as of 2009 and that has been translated into 44 languages. Combining the detective, thriller, and conspiracy fiction genres, it is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon, the first being his 2000 novel Angels & Demons. In November 2004 Random House published a Special Illustrated Edition with 160 illustrations. In 2006 a film adaptation was released by Sony's Columbia Pictures.
Jane Eyre is a famous and influential novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell". (Harper & Brothers of New York came out with the American edition in 1848.)
Many consider For Whom the Bell Tolls to be author Ernest Hemingway’s finest work. Inspired by Hemingway’s time as a war correspondent for The North American Newspaper Alliance during the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls is a stark and brutal commentary on the nature of war, sacrifice, and death. In fact, many believe his work is among the best depictions of the Spanish Civil War written. As with some of Hemingway’s other work, many of the characters, experiences, and events were based off real people and battles Hemingway saw. One of the most interesting qualities of For Whom the Bell Tolls is the use and restraint of profanity. Even though Hemingway had already written much about war and tribulations and had never seemed inclined to limit the use of vulgar language, For Whom the Bell Tolls is a clear exemption. When writing dialogue, Hemingway would insert the word “obscenity” instead of writing the exact word or phrase. There has been a lot of discussion about the reason for such omissions, and while some believe Hemingway was worried about the book being banned and thus wanted to make the book as reader-friendly as possible for a brutally violent war novel, others believe the omissions of profanity was due to transliteration problems and the author’s attempt to be as honest to the dialogue he heard as possible. There is no arguing with the legacy and influence Hemingway had not only on American culture, but also on generations of future writers. The Beatnik generation referred to Hemingway as “Papa” with a quite reverence, and Hemingway inspired countless journalists with his in-depth profiles and wartime articles. Even the cities where he wrote his books are now places for pilgrimage among his most devoted fans. Hemingway first started writing For Whom the Bell Tolls in Cuba and later finished it in Sun Valley, Idaho. In fact, both hotel rooms are now popular tourist destinations.
Ulysses is a modernist novel by James Joyce. It was first
serialized in The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and later
published by Shakespeare and Company in 1922. Originally, Joyce conceived of
Ulysses as a short story to be included in Dubliners, but decided instead to
publish it as a long novel, situated as a sort of sequel to A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man, picking up Stephen Dedalus’s life over a year later.
Ulysses takes place on a single day, June 16, 1904, in Dublin.
Within the massive text of 265,000 words (not so “short”
anymore, eh?), divided in 18 episodes, Joyce radically shifts narrative style
with each new episode, completely abandoning the previously accepted notions of
plot, setting, and characters. The presentation of a fragmented reality through
interior perception in Ulysses, often through stream-of-consciousness, is one
of many reasons it is a paramount of Modernist literature.
Ulysses presents a series of parellels with Homer’s epic
poem Odyssey (Ulysses is the Latinized name of Odysseus.) Not only can
correspondences be drawn between the main characters of each text — Stephen
Dedalus to Telemachus, Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, and Molly Bloom to Penelope,
but each of the 18 episodes of Ulysses reflects an adventure from the Odyssey.
In 1998, the
American publishing firm Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the
100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Written in 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is widely
considered to be one of the author’s greatest works. Set in New York City and
Long Island during the Roaring Twenties, the focus of the story is (of course)
its title character, Jay Gatsby, and his unswerving desire to be reunited with
Daisy Buchanan, the love he lost five years earlier. However, Nick Carraway,
who happens to be both Gatsby’s neighbor and Daisy’s cousin, narrates Gatsby's journey
from poverty to wealth, into the arms of his beloved, and eventually to death.
The Great Gatsby is undoubtedly one of the greatest American
literary documents of the 1920s, the decade for which Fitzgerald himself coined
the term “Jazz Age.” However, in writing the book, Fitzgerald was in fact
holding up a mirror to the society of which he was a part. In true Modernist
fashion, The Great Gatsby addresses the social issues of the period — namely materialism
and displaced spirituality — that ultimately led the decline of the era.
The novel’s initial sales situation was less than
impressive; fewer than 25,000 copies were sold by Fitzgerald’s death in 1940.
But The Great Gatsby gained great popularity during WWII as the critical
mainstream began to embrace the author’s work. The Armed Services Editions
circulated 150,000 copies to troops alone. Today, The Great Gatsby has sold over
25 million copies worldwide, sells an additional 500,000 copies annually, and
is Scribner's most popular title. Ranked #2 on the Modern Library’s list of the
100 Best Novels of the 20th Century, the novel is also listed on
their Top 100 Novels as well as The Observer’s All-Time 100 Best Novels and
Time Magazine’s 100 Best Modern Novels.
The Great Gatsby has resulted in a number of adaptations,
including Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 major motion picture starring
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, and Joel Edgerton.
The Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel by Ken Follett published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in Kingsbridge, England. It is set in the middle of the 12th century, primarily during the time known as The Anarchy, between the time of the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket. The book traces the development of Gothic Architecture out of the preceding Romanesque Architecture and the fortunes of the Kingsbridge priory against the backdrop of actual historical events of the time. Although Kingsbridge is the name of an actual English town, the Kingsbridge in the novel is actually a fictional location representative of a typical market town of the time. Until this novel was published, Follett had previously been known for writing in the thriller genre. The Pillars of the Earth became Follett's best-selling work. The book was listed at no. 33 on the BBC's Big Read, a 2003 survey with the goal of finding the "nation's best-loved book". The book was also selected for Oprah's Book Club in 2007. A sequel, entitled World Without End, was released in October 2007.
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. This was Rand's fourth, longest and last novel, and she considered it her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing. As indicated by its working title The Strike, the book explores a dystopian United States where leading innovators, ranging from industrialists to artists, refuse to be exploited by society. The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry, while society's most productive citizens, led by the mysterious John Galt, progressively disappear. Galt describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing the "minds" that drive society's growth and productivity; with their strike these creative minds hope to demonstrate that the economy and society would collapse without the profit motive and the efforts of the rational and productive. The novel's title is a reference to the mythical Titan, Atlas, who in the novel is said to hold the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. The character of Francisco d'Anconia at one point is asked what sort of advice someone would give to Atlas, and Francisco says he'd tell Atlas "to shrug" (with Atlas being a metaphor for the champions of industry who keep the world in place). The novel includes elements of mystery and science fiction, and it contains Rand's most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction, a lengthy monologue delivered by the strike's leader, John Galt. 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 that Rand would subsequently develop into the philosophy of Objectivism. It advocates the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and expresses her concept of human achievement. In doing so it expresses many facets of Rand's philosophy, such as the advocacy of reason, individualism, the market economy and the failure of government coercion. Atlas Shrugged received largely negative reviews after its 1957 publication, but achieved enduring popularity and consistent sales in the following decades. In the wake of the late 2000s recession sales of Atlas Shrugged have sharply increased, according to The Economist magazine and The New York Times. The Economist reported that the fifty-two-year-old novel ranked #33 among Amazon. com's top-selling books on 13 January, 2009.
Set during World War 1, Ernest Hemingway’s A
Farewell to Arms is the story of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving
as an ambulance driver in the Italian army, and his love affair with an English
nurse named Catherine Barkley. The novel is semi-autobiographical, based on
Hemingway's own experiences serving in the Italian campaigns during the war.
While some assume the title of the work to be taken from a poem by 16th century
English dramatist George Peele, others believe it to be a simple pun of the
A Farewell to Arms was first serialized in the
May-October issues Scribner's Magazine 1929. It was published in book form in
September of that year. As the work became available to the public just over
ten years after the November 1918 armistice, Hemingway assumed his audience
would recognize many of the references. In fact, certain basic information
isn't alluded to in the book at all, as it was common knowledge around the time
The result of this immediacy? Arguably one of
the best novels written about World War I… ever. A Farewell to Arms was
Hemingway's first bestseller, affording him financial independence and
cementing his stature as a modern American writer. More specifically, the novel
and its content helped to established the author as a key member of the “Lost
Generation,” a subset of Modernist artists namely defined by their post-war
disillusionment. A Farewell to Arms is ranked 74th on Modern
Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century.
Based on real events and acquaintances of Hemingway, Sun Also Rises is about American and English expats in Pamplona.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven... is a novel by the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom. It recounts the life and death of a simple yet dignified old man, Eddie. After dying in a freak accident, Eddie finds himself in heaven where he encounters five people who have significantly affected his life, whether he realized at the time or not. Mitch Albom dedicates the book to his uncle Edward Beitchman. He says that he wants people like his uncle who felt unimportant here on earth to realize, finally, how much they mattered and how they were loved. The Five People You Meet in Heaven was published in 2004 by Hyperion, and remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for 95 weeks.
Love in the Time of Cholera is a novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that was first published in Spanish in 1985, with an English translation released in 1988 by Alfred A. Knopf. An English-language film adaptation was released in 2007.
Catch-22 is Joseph Heller’s first novel and his most
acclaimed work. Set during World War II, the novel uses a distinctive non-chronological
third-person omniscient narration, mainly focusing on the life of Captain John
Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Occasionally, the narrator
also shows us how other characters, such as the chaplain or Hungry Joe,
experience the world around them. As the novel’s events are described from the
different points of view through separate out-of-sequence storylines, the
timeline of Catch-22 develops along with the plot.
The novel's title refers to a plot device that is repeatedly
invoked in the story. Catch-22 starts as a set of paradoxical requirements
whereby airmen mentally unfit to fly did not have to, but could not actually be
excused. By the end of the novel, the phrase is invoked as the explanation for many
unreasonable restrictions. “Catch-22” has since entered the English language and
can be understood as an unsolvable logic puzzle, a difficult situation from
which there is no escape.
Upon publication, the book was not a best seller in the
United States. It was merely a cult favorite until the publication of the
paperback edition in 1962, which set record sales — most likely benefitting from a
national debate about the pointlessness of the Vietnam War. Catch-22 has since
been ranked as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century
by the Modern Library, one of the 20th century's top 100 novels by the
Radcliffe Publishing Course, and one of the 100 greatest novels of all time by
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George
Orwell has become the definitive dystopian novel of the twentieth
century. Originally published in on June 8, 1949 by Secker and
Warburg in the United Kingdom, the book follows the main character,
Winston Smith, through his disillusionment with totalitarianism and a
doomed struggle of resistance. George Orwell is a pen-name, Orwell's
real name was Eric Blair.
An epic story of two retired
Texas Rangers on a cattle drive to Montana that is loosely basedon historic
events from the 19th century, the original Lonesome Dove story was written to
be a screenplay called "The Streets of Laredo.” The 1970s film was to be
directed by Peter Bogdanovich, starring John Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry
Fonda. However, due to casting issues, the movie was abandoned. Larry McMurtry
later turned the Lonesome Dove script into a full-length Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel. The novel was later re-adapted to a four-part television miniseries
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, and Robert Urich.
Animal Farm is a novella by George Orwell that was published in 1945, and was originally published as Animal Farm: A Fairy Story and was also published as Animal Farm: A Satire.
The tale reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II through the lens of animals on a farm in England rising up against the cruel farmer. They take over the farm, renaming it Animal Farm, but are quickly thwarted by the power-hungry pigs.
Hugo Award for Best Novella (1946)
The Hunt for Red October is a novel by Tom Clancy. The story follows the intertwined adventures of Soviet submarine captain Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius and CIA analyst Jack (John) Patrick Ryan. The novel was originally published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press—the first fictional work they ever published and still their most successful.
Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in1933 and spent most of his childhood near Knoxville, Tennessee. He served in the U.S. Air Force and later studied at the University of Tennessee. In 1976 he moved to El Paso, Texas, where he lives today. McCarthy's fiction parallels his movement from the Southeast to the West--the first four novels being set in Tennessee, the last three in the Southwest and Mexico. The Orchard Keeper (1965) won the Faulkner Award for a first novel; it was followed by Outer Dark (1968), Child of God (1973), Suttree (1979), Blood Meridian (1985), and All the Pretty Horses , which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award for fiction in 1992. The Crossing is his seventh novel and the second in McCarthy's Border Trilogy. From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Notebook is a 1996 American romantic novel by American novelist Nicholas Sparks. The novel was later adapted into a popular romance film by the same name in 2004. However, the movie and the book have very different endings. The novel was Nicholas Sparks' first published novel, and the third written after The Passing and The Royal Murders, which were never published. It was written over a period of six months in 1994. Literary agent Theresa Park discovered Sparks after picking the book out of her agency's slush pile. Park liked it and offered to represent him. In October 1995, Park secured a $1 million advance for it from Time Warner Book Group, and the novel was published in October 1996. It was on the New York Times best-seller list in its first week of release. The Notebook spent over a year as a hardcover best seller. The Notebook was inspired by the story of the grandparents of Sparks' wife, who had been married over sixty years when Sparks met them. Sparks marveled at how much the couple cared for each other, and wrote his novel as an attempt to describe such a love.
In this masterful tale set in Norway during World War II, Steinbeck explores the effects of invasion on both the conquered and the conquerors. As he delves into the emotions of the German commander and the Norwegian traitor, and depicts the spirited patriotism of the Norwegian underground, Steinbeck uncovers profound, often unsettling truths about warand about human nature. Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck’s self-described celebration of the durability of democracy” had an extraordinary impact as Allied propaganda in Nazi-occupied Europe. Despite Axis efforts to suppress it (in Fascist Italy, mere possession of the book was punishable by death), The Moon is Down was secretly translated into French, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian and Russian; hundreds of thousands of copies circulated throughout Europe, making it by far the most popular piece of propaganda under the occupation. Few literary works of our time have demonstrated so triumphantly the power of ideas in the face of cold steel and brute force. This edition features an introduction by Donald V. Coers.
The Poisonwood Bible (1998) by Barbara Kingsolver is a bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia to the fictional village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo. The Prices' story, which parallels their host country's tumultuous emergence into the post-colonial era, is narrated by the five women of the family: Orleanna, long-suffering wife of Baptist missionary Nathan Price, and their four daughters – Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May.
Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. This novel, The Corrections, is the winner of the National Book Awards for the year 2001. The book has been described as having substantial breadth and well worth reading. It is centered upon a wish by a wife and mother to have her family home again for one last Christmas. Enid lambert has been caring for her husband, Alfred, who is losing his mind to Parkinson’s disease and her children have scattered and are running their own catastrophic lives. The author is quoted as saying that his novel focuses on topics such as the multi-generational transmission of family dysfunction and the waste inherent in today's consumer economy, and each of the characters "embody the conflicting consciousness and the personal and social dramas of our era.” What emerges from the high drama is the wildly brilliant, hilarious feast of cultural analysis.
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Nominee (2003) , National Book Award for Fiction (2001) , James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction (2002) , Time Magazine 100 Best English Language Novels of the Twentieth Century
Michael Ondaatje, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet born in 1943. He is well-known for his Man Booker prizewinning novel, The English Patient. The story is set in Italy at the end of World War II, and in flashbacks to North Africa in the 1930's. This intricately woven novel tracks the convocation of four people at an Italian villa. The main theme concerns Count Laslo Almasy, a desert explorer, who had been burned beyond recognition in a mysterious airplane crash, and his relationship with - in the present - his nurse Hana, and in the past - his lover, Katharine. Katharine's husband of two years Geoffrey Clifton, who has known her since childhood is hiding a life full of secrets and passions. In the Villa, Ondaatje's four protagonists carry on an intensely personal existence, as they play out their interior drama and discover the secrets of their respective pasts. Ondaatje tells a compelling, tragic story in this mesmerizing work of fiction.
Also winner of Governor General's Literary Award for Literary Merit (1992)
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California. Based on Steinbeck's own experiences as a bindlestiff in the 1920s (before the arrival of the Okies he would vividly describe in The Grapes of Wrath), the title is taken from Robert Burns's poem, To a Mouse, which read: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley. " Required reading in many high schools, Of Mice and Men has been a frequent target of censors for what some consider offensive and vulgar language; consequently, it appears on the American Library Association's list of the Most Challenged Books of 21st Century.
A sumptuous new look for Tracy Chevalier's bestselling novel. Griet, the young daughter of a tilemaker in seventeeth century Holland, obtains her first job, as a servant in Vermeer's household. Tracy Chevalier shows us, through Griet's eyes, the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being drawn into his artistic life, and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may be high.
Beloved (1987) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison. The novel is based on the life and legal case of the slave Margaret Garner.
The slavery of the American south is bared in this transfixing tale. Sethe was born a slave, and escaped to Ohio, but the past follows where the authorities do not. She is haunted by the memories of the beautiful place where she experienced so many terrible things, and haunted by the ghost of her baby daughter - her Beloved.
Michael Ondaatje is the author of three previous novels, a memoir and eleven books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, he moved to Canada in 1962 and now lives in Toronto.
American Pastoral takes a look at the 1960's in America from the perspective of Philip Roth's alter-ego main character, Nathan Zuckerman. Zuckerman meets the brother of Seymour "Swede" Levov, recenly deceased. The brother shares the Swede's sad tale of the ruin of his conventional upper middle class life by the turmoil of the sixties.
The Remains Of The Day is one of the most highly-regarded post-war British novels, the work was awarded the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989. Set in the late 1930's, the book tells the story of an aging, proudly subservient, English butler working at Darlington Hall. At the beginning of the story he is encouraged to take a much needed vacation by his employer, Mr. Farraday, who believes the butler needs a break from his duties. The book spans his one week trip to visit Miss Kenton, who was his former colleague. The book involves a mainly stream-of-consciousness moral inventory of Stevens' life and examines Lord Darlington's connections to the Germans and how he helped them throughout the story. This large and stunningly brilliant tale captures an era that prized decorum above truth with hazardous results.
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has also written plays and screenplays. This novel, All The Pretty Horses , won the National Book Award in 1992. The story reads like a Western novel, but is set in 1949 and revolves around the life of a 16-year old Texan named John Grady Cole. After his parent’s marriage ends, he finds himself at the end of a long line of ranchers, without a family ranch to work. So he sets out for Mexico on horseback with two companions. By turns both comic and tragic, the elaborate character development and McCarthy’s superb descriptive style make this book a rare treat.
Sherman McCoy is a WASP, bond trader and self-appointed 'Master of the Universe'. He has a fashionable wife, a Park Avenue apartment and a Southern mistress. His spectacular fall begins the moment he is involved in a hit-and-run accident in the Bronx. Prosecutors, newspaper hacks, politicians and clergy close in on him, determined to bring him down. The Bonfire of the Vanities is a caustic satire on the money-feverish Eighties. This exuberant novel cemented Wolfe's reputation as the foremost chronicler of his age.
Richard Ford is the author of two story collections and five novels.
When The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand 's daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This edition contains a special Afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff which includes excerpts from Ayn Rand's own notes on the making of The Fountainhead . As fresh today as it was then, here is a novel about a hero—and about those who try to destroy him.