"Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, did more to change the style of fiction in English than any other writer of his time with his economical prose and terse, declarative sentences that conceal more than they reveal. In Our Time, published in 1925, was the collection that first drew the world's attention to Hemingway. Besides revealing his versatility as a writer and throwing fascinating light on the themes of his major...

A down-and-out writer recalls his childhood, schooling, and the years leading up to World War II.

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe is a powerful coming-of-age novel that explores the life, struggles, and inner world of Eugene Gant, a young man growing up in the fictional Southern town of Altamont, which closely resembles Wolfe's hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. Through Eugene's journey, Wolfe creates a vibrant portrait of family tensions, personal ambitions, and the unrelenting search for identity and meaning. The novel immerses readers...

A novel exploring war in an alternate post–9/11 America "is an undoubted pleasure to read. Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter" (Michael Dirda, The New York Review of Books)
From Paul Auster, a "literary original" (Wall Street Journal) comes a novel that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.
Seventy-two-year-old...

"A stream-of-consciousness story of a poverty-stricken young American, living in Paris." -- (Source of summary not specified). "Miller's groundbreaking first novel, banned in Britain for almost thirty years. A penniless and as yet unpublished writer, Henry Miller arrived in Paris in 1930. Leaving behind a disintegrating marriage and an unhappy career in America, he threw himself into the low-life of bohemian Paris with unwavering gusto. A fictional...

Miles Franklin's 1901 ground-breaking debut, and an instant sensation. Meet Sybylla Melvyn, the young girl hungering for life and love in outback New South Wales. First published in 1901, this Australian classic is the candid tale of the aspirations and frustrations of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvin, a headstrong country girl constrained by middle-class social arrangements, especially the pressure to marry. Trapped on her parents' outback farm, Sybylla...

In an illustrated memoir, the creator of the Bloggess blog shares humorous stories from her life, including her awkward upbringing in Texas and her relationship with her husband.

"In the wake of Hilary Mantel's brilliant conclusion to her award-winning Wolf Hall trilogy, this collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of a haunted childhood. Sharp and funny, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village "scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues." For the child narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out. In "King Billy Is a Gentleman,"...

"It's 1967, and for young Richard it's a time of heartbreak and turmoil. Over the span of a few months, his brother, Mark, is killed in Vietnam; his father loses his job and moves the family to Utah; and his parents separate. When Richard is run down by bullies at his new school, he meets Mr. Foster, an elderly neighbor who chases off the bullies. Richard becomes fast friends with the man who inspires Richard's love for books and whose dog becomes...

An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in...