Howl and Other Poems

Naked Lunch

William S. Burroughs · 304 pages

Paradise Lost

John Milton · 336 pages

John Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny. The struggle rages across three worlds - heaven, hell, and earth - as Satan and his ban

Crank

Ellen Hopkins · 537 pages

Kristina is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. Then she meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ride turns into a struggle for her mind, her soul---her life.

Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk · 208 pages

A man who struggles with insomnia meets a colorful extremist, and they create a secret organization together. Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the base

Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited

Aldous Huxley · 384 pages

Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury · 184 pages

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Often regarded as one of his best works, the novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The book's tagline explains the title as "'the temperature at which book paper catches fire, and burns": the autoignition temperature of paper. The lead character, Guy Montag,

The Hours

Michael Cunningham

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess · 188 pages

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Na

A Season in Hell

Arthur Rimbaud · 64 pages

The Dharma Bums

Jack Kerouac · 204 pages

The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac. The basis for the novel's semi-fictional accounts are events occurring years after the events of On the Road. The main characters are the narrator Ray Smith, based on Kerouac, and Japhy Ryder, based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, who was instrumental in Kerouac's introduction to Buddhism in the mid-1950s. The book co

We

Yevgeny Zamyatin · 224 pages

In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier -- and whatever

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams · 158 pages

Members of a neurotic Southern family gather to face the impending death of their patriarch, Big Daddy, and battle over the inheritance of his vast estate.

Anthem

Ayn Rand · 93 pages

Anthem is a tale of a future dark age of the great “we” – a world that deprives individuals of name, independence, and values. He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world he dared to love the woman of his choice. In an age that had lost all traces of science and civilization he had the courage to seek and find knowledge. But these were not the crimes for which he would be hunte

Delirium

Lauren Oliver · 441 pages

The first book in Lauren Oliver’s New York Times bestselling trilogy about forbidden love, revolution, and the power to choose. In an alternate United States, love has been declared a dangerous disease, and the government forces everyone who reaches eighteen to have a procedure called the Cure. Living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Portland, Maine, Lena Haloway is very much looking forwar

Blindness

Jose Saramago · 327 pages

A city is struck by an epidemic of "white blindness." The first man to succumb sits in his car, waiting for the light to change. He is taken to an eye doctor, who does not know what to make of the phenomenon - and soon goes blind himself. The blindness spreads, sparing no one. Authorities confine the blind to a vacant mental hospital secured by armed guards under instructions to shoot anyone tryi

The Spear Cuts Through Water

Simon Jimenez · 525 pages

Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys · 189 pages

Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of citsion's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". A sensual and protected young woman, the narrator grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the cold-hearted and prideful R

Tropic of Cancer

Henry Miller · 321 pages

A stream-of-consciousness story of a poverty-stricken young American, living in Paris.

Tipping the Velvet

Sarah Waters · 480 pages

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-h

The Giver

Lois Lowry · 180 pages

At the age of twelve, Jonas, a young boy from a seemingly utopian, futuristic world, is singled out to receive special training from The Giver, who alone holds the memories of the true joys and pain of life.

Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman · 415 pages

**Leaves of Grass** is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. First published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting *Leaves of Grass*, revising it multiple times until his death. There have been held to be either six or nine individual editions of Leaves of Grass, the count varying depending on how they are distinguished.[2] This resulted in vastly

The Jungle

Upton Sinclair · 342 pages

Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, the book was c

The Complete Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi · 352 pages

From inside front cover: The story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a ... loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a coutnry plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trails of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming -- both sweet and terrible; and, fina