They’ve been popular for this long for a reason…
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Morrison, Toni.
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened.
Check Availability1984 : A Novel
Orwell, George, 1903-1950.
Portrays a terrifying vision of life in the future when a totalitarian government, considered a "Negative Utopia," watches over all citizens and directs all activities, becoming more powerful as time goes by.
Check AvailabilityAnimal Farm;
Orwell, George
Animal Farm is the most famous by far of all twentieth-century political allegories. Its account of a group of barnyard animals who revolt against their vicious human master, only to submit to a tyranny erected by their own kind, can fairly be said to have become a universal drama. Orwell is one of the very few modern satirists comparable to Jonathan Swift in power, artistry, and moral authority; in animal farm his spare prose and the logic of his dark comedy brilliantly highlight his stark message. Taking as his starting point the betrayed promise of the Russian Revolution, Orwell lays out a vision that, in its bitter wisdom, gives us the clearest understanding we possess of the possible consequences of our social and political acts.
Check AvailabilityThe Catcher In The Rye
Salinger, J. D.
Animal Farm is the most famous by far of all twentieth-century political allegories. Its account of a group of barnyard animals who revolt against their vicious human master, only to submit to a tyranny erected by their own kind, can fairly be said to have become a universal drama. Orwell is one of the very few modern satirists comparable to Jonathan Swift in power, artistry, and moral authority; in animal farm his spare prose and the logic of his dark comedy brilliantly highlight his stark message. Taking as his starting point the betrayed promise of the Russian Revolution, Orwell lays out a vision that, in its bitter wisdom, gives us the clearest understanding we possess of the possible consequences of our social and political acts.
Check AvailabilityThe Grapes Of Wrath.
Steinbeck, John
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 yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
Check AvailabilityThe Hobbit, Or, There And Back Again
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.
Check AvailabilityLittle Women
Alcott, Louisa May
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England. By Louisa May Alcott ; with an introduction by Anna Quindlen.
Check AvailabilityPride And Prejudice
Austen, Jane
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England. By Louisa May Alcott ; with an introduction by Anna Quindlen.
Check AvailabilityJane Eyre
Bronte, Charlotte
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England. By Louisa May Alcott ; with an introduction by Anna Quindlen.
Check AvailabilityCollected Stories Of William Faulkner
Faulkner, William
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England. By Louisa May Alcott ; with an introduction by Anna Quindlen.
Check AvailabilityA Room With A View
Forster, E. M.
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England. By Louisa May Alcott ; with an introduction by Anna Quindlen.
Check AvailabilityA Room With A View
Forster, E. M.
Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England. By Louisa May Alcott ; with an introduction by Anna Quindlen.
Check AvailabilityThe Complete Fiction Of Nella Larsen
Larsen, Nella.
A light-skinned beauty who spends years passing for white finds herself dangerously drawn to an old friend's Harlem neighborhood. A restless young mulatto tries desperately to find a comfortable place in a world in which she sees herself as a perpetual outsider. A mother's confrontation with tragedy tests her loyalty to her race." "The gifted Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen wrote compelling dramas about the black middle class that featured sensitive, spirited heroines struggling to find a place where they belonged. Passing, Larsen's best known work, is a disturbing story about the unraveling lives of two childhood friends, one of whom turns her back on her past and marries a white bigot. Just as disquieting is the portrait in Quicksand of Helga Crane, half black and half white, who can't escape her loneliness no matter where and with whom she lives. Race and marriage offer few securities here or in the other stories in a collection that is compellingly readable, rich in psychological complexity, and imbued with a sense of place that brings Harlem vibrantly to life."--Jacket.
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