How to Be Well-Read in No Time:
40 Short Novels
1. Slaughterhouse-Five
By Kurt VonnegutSlaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. More »
2. The Metamorphosis
By Franz Kafka | It is one of the most memorable first lines in all of literature: "When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin." So begins Kafka's famous short story, The Metamorphosis. Kafka considered publishing it with two of the ... More »
3. Animal Farm
By George Orwell | This is a classic tale of humanity awash in totalitarianism. A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. First published during the epoch of Stalinist Russia, today ... More »
4. Of Mice And Men
By John SteinbeckOf Mice and Men is a novel 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, who move from place to place in search of new job opportunities during the Great ... More »
5. The Old Man and the Sea
By Ernest Hemingway | The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far ... More »
6. Waiting for the Barbarians
By J. M. Coetzee | A modern classic, this early novel by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee centers on the crisis of conscience and morality of the Magistrate-a loyal servant of the Empire working in a tiny frontier town, doing his best to ignore an inevitable war with the "barbarians." More »
7. A Christmas Carol
By Charles Dickens | This new selection of Dickens's Christmas writings confirms his lasting influence upon our idea of the Christmas spirit: that Christmas is a time for celebration, charity, and memory. In addition to the beloved A Christmas Carol, this volume includes such festive works as ... More »
8. Things Fall Apart
By Chinua Achebe | Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as ... More »
9. The Stranger
By Albert Camus | (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Albert Camus’s spare, laconic masterpiece about a Frenchman who murders an Arab in Algeria is famous for having diagnosed, with a clarity almost scientific, that condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. Possessing both the force of a ... More »
10. Notes from the Underground
By Fyodor Dostoevsky | In 1864, just prior to the years in which he wrote his greatest novels — Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose ... More »
11. Invisible Cities
By Italo Calvino | Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant” (Gore Vidal). Translated ... More »
12. Heart of Darkness
By Joseph Conrad |Although Polish by birth, Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) is regarded as one of the greatest writers in English, and Heart of Darkness, first published in 1902, is considered by many his "most famous, finest, and most enigmatic story." — Encyclopaedia Britannica. The tale concerns the journey of the narrator ... More »
13. The Day of the Owl
By Leonardo Sciascia | A man is shot dead as he runs to catch the bus in the piazza of a small Sicilian town. Captain Bellodi, the detective on the case, is new to his job and determined to prove himself. Bellodi suspects the Mafia, and his suspicions grow when he finds ... More »
14. The Quiet American
By Graham Greene | Graham Greene's classic exploration of love, innocence, and morality in Vietnam "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, ... More »
15. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
By Leo Tolstoy | Tolstoy’s most famous novella is an intense and moving examination of death and the possibilities of redemption, here in a powerful translation by the award-winning Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.Ivan Ilyich is a middle-aged man who has spent his life focused on his career as a bureaucrat and ... More »
16. The Time Machine
By H. G. Wells | When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year a.d. 802,701, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realizes that these beautiful people are simply ... More »
17. Darkness at Noon
By Arthur Koestler | Originally published in 1941, Arthur Koestler's modern masterpiece, Darkness At Noon, is a powerful and haunting portrait of a Communist revolutionary caught in the vicious fray of the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. During Stalin's purges, Nicholas Rubashov, an aging revolutionary, is imprisoned and ... More »
18. The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald | The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish ... More »
19. As I Lay Dying
By William FaulknerLong been recognized not only as one of William Faulkner’s greatest works, but also as the most accessible of his major novels. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. “Backgrounds and Contexts” is divided into ... More »
20. The Picture of Dorian Gray
By Oscar Wilde | Since its first publication in 1890, Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has been denounced by others for its implicit immorality. After having his ... More »
21. The Red Badge of Courage
By Stephen Crane | Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work.The Red Badge of Courage ... More »
22. The Catcher in the Rye
By J. D. Salinger | Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories--particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme With Love and Squalor--will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children. The hero-narrator of The Catcher in ... More »
23. Fathers and Sons
By Ivan Turgenev | When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith." Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when ... More »
24. Siddhartha
By Herman Hesse | This classic novel of self-discovery has inspired generations of seekers. With parallels to the enlightenment of the Buddha, Hesse's Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin's quest for the ultimate reality. His quest takes him from the extremes of indulgent sensuality to the rigors of ascetism and ... More »
25. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
By Robert Louis Stevenson | Robert Louis Stevenson's short novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, first published in 1886, became an instant classic, a Gothic horror originating in a feverish nightmare whose hallucinatory setting in the back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. Its revelatory ending ... More »
26. The Turn of the Screw
By Henry James | This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition brings together one of literature's most famous ghost stories and one of Henry James's most unusual novellas. In The Turn of the Screw, a governess is haunted by ghosts from her young charges past; Virginia Woolf said of this masterpiece of psychological ... More »
27. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
By Lewis CarrollSince childhood, Kusama has been afflicted with a condition that makes her see spots, which means she sees the world in a surreal, almost hallucinogenic way that sits very well with the 'Wonderland of Alice'. She is fascinated by childhood and the way adults have the ability, at ... More »
28. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
By Mark Twain | Referring to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, H. L. Mencken noted that his discovery of this classic American novel was "the most stupendous event of my whole life"; Ernest Hemingway declared that "all modern American literature stems from this one book," while T. S. Eliot called Huck "one of ... More »
29. The Sorrows of Young Werther
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Celebrated as a leading figure of the German literary movement known as Sturm und Drang ("storm and stress"), Goethe made his reputation with this short novel, originally published in 1774. Its tale of a sensitive young man's self-destructive passion for a lover who ultimately rejects him was based ... More »
30. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
By Muriel Spark | At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with ... More »
31. Candide
By Voltaire | Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's "philosophical tales," in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. ... More »
32. Lord of the Flies
By William Golding | The classic novel by William Golding With a new Introduction by Stephen King "To me Lord of the Flies has always represented what novels are for, what makes them indispensable." -Stephen King ...More »
33. Silas Marner
By George Eliot | Falsely accused, cut off from his past, Silas the weaver is reduced to a spider-like existence, endlessly weaving his web and hoarding his gold. Meanwhile, Godfrey Cass, son of the squire, contracts a secret marriage. While the village celebrates Christmas and New Year, two apparently inexplicable events occur. ... More »
34. The Immoralist
By Andre Gide | 'To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom' - Andre Gide. Michel had been a blindfold scholar until, newly married, he contracted tuberculosis. His will to recover brings self-discovery and the growing desire to rebel against ... More »
35. Therese Raquin
By Emile Zola | In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Thérèse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband’s earthy friend Laurent, but their ... More »
36. Cain
By Jose Saramago | “Suitably disturbing—and a pleasure to read.” — The ScotsmanIn this, his last novel, José Saramago daringly reimagines the characters and narratives of the Old Testament, recalling his provocative The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. His tale runs from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten ... More »
37. Jamilia
By Chinghiz Aitmatov |“The most beautiful love story in the world.”—Louis AragonThe Second World War is raging, and Jamilia’s husband is off fighting at the front. Accompanied by Daniyar, a sullen newcomer who was wounded on the battlefield, Jamilia spends her days hauling sacks of grain from the threshing floor to ... More »
38. All Quiet on the Western Front
By Erich Maria Remarque | Considered by many the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is Erich Maria Remarque’s masterpiece of the German experience during World War I.I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous ... More »
39. Death in Venice
By Thomas Mann |Thomas Mann is widely acknowledged as the greatest German novelist of this century. His 1912 novella Death in Venice is the most frequently read example of Mann's early work. Clayton Koelb's masterful translation improves upon its predecessors in two ways: it renders Mann into American (not British) English, ... More »
40. The Call of the Wild
By Jack London | Used Price: 60% OffSavage struggles and timeless bonds between man, dog, and wilderness are played to their heart-rending extremes. 2 cassettes.More »
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