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James Agee, A Death in the Family.
In 1915 Tennessee, a family’s domestic happiness is shattered by the sudden death of the father.

Beowulf.
The 1,000-year-old Anglo-Saxon epic of the warrior Beowulf’s battle with the monstrous Grendel is rendered in gripping language by Seamus Heaney.

Willa Cather, My Antonia.
A boy comes to Nebraska to live with his grandparents and meets a spirited Bohemian immigrant on the neighboring farm.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening.
An unhappy wife and mother tries to establish a life and identity of her own but is shunned by society.

A. J. Cronin, The Citadel.
An idealistic young doctor succumbs to the lure of making money to the detriment of his patients but finally regains his ideals.

Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders.
Born in Newgate Prison, Moll Flanders embarks on a career of prostitution and thievery as she struggles to make her own way in 18th century England.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.
An orphaned boy grows up to discover love and happiness, heartbreak and sorrow amid a cast of eccentrics, innocents, and villains.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment.
An intellectual murders his pawnbroker, rationalizing that he is exempt from moral law, but is consumed with guilt afterwards.

Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers.
D’Artagnan and his three companions pit their wills and their swords against Cardinal Richelieu in their gallant defense of the Queen of France.

George Eliot, Middlemarch.
The story of an English town named Middlemarch and its inhabitants from all walks of life.

William Faulkner, Light in August.
A man of mixed blood who doesn’t know whether to consider himself black or white crosses paths with a pregnant woman seeking her lover and an evangelical preacher in a Mississippi town.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
A man from a poor Midwestern family builds his wealth and social standing in order to win the love of a woman who is married to another man.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.
The bored and unhappy wife of a country doctor revolts against her lot in life.

E. M. Forster, A Passage to India.
During the British colonial period in India, an Englishwoman accuses a respectable Indian doctor of assaulting her, leading to a trial that highlights the tension between the two races.

Gilgamesh.
The oldest book in the world—newly translated by Stephen Mitchell—tells the story of the tyrannical king of Uruk who is changed by his friendship with his soul mate Enkidu.

Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield.
A vicar happy with his family and lot in life undergoes a reversal of fortune.

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory.
As revolutionaries execute the clergy in Mexico, an alcoholic priest who has broken most of his vows goes on the run feeling unworthy and cowardly.

O. Henry, The Four Million.
One of the finest collections by the master of the short story, including his most famous work “The Gift of the Magi.”

James Hilton, Goodbye Mr. Chips.
A schoolmaster who began his career in 1870 helps shape the lives of generations of boys.

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady.
A romantic and independent American lady inherits a fortune and turns down two suitors in favor of a man who is not what he seems.

James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The coming-of-age story of a young Irishman, from his early school days to his college studies, where he challenges the conventions of his upbringing and his understanding of faith and intellectual freedom.

Franz Kafka, The Trial.
An ordinary man is arrested for an unspecified crime that he did not commit, sending his life into a downward spiral.

Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.
A young woman comes to Minnesota with dreams of transforming a small town into a place of beauty and culture, but she runs into a wall of bigotry, hypocrisy and complacency.

Jack London, The Call of the Wild.
A dog is stolen from his California home and trains as a sled dog in Alaska and later becomes the leader of a wild wolf pack.

Carson McCullers, Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
A deaf-mute man in a small Southern town receives the confidences of a variety of troubled people including a tomboy with a gift for music.

Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks.
Four generations of a German family cope with the loss of traditions and the changes that come with modernization.

Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party.
In the title story of this collection, preparations for a garden party are interrupted by tragedy.

Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge.
A young American embarks on a spiritual odyssey in search of enlightenment.

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front.
During World War I, an enthusiastic German schoolboy enlists in the army with his classmates and is confronted by the horrors of trench warfare.

Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood.
A physician arrested for treating wounded rebels escapes from the gallows and becomes a pirate.

Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe.
A knight disowned by his father allies himself with Richard the Lion-hearted against the scheming of the dastardly Prince John.

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
A young girl growing up in the slums of Brooklyn in the early 1900s survives despite the odds.

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men.
A simpleminded migrant worker named Lennie is dependent on his friend George, who must make a terrible choice when Lennie gets in trouble.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island.
While going through the possessions of a dead guest who owed them money, an innkeeper and her son find a treasure map leading to a pirate's fortune.

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.
Gulliver travels to four fantastic lands including Lilliput inhabited by tiny people in this satire on human society.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.
Trapped in a loveless marriage, Anna succumbs to her passion for the dashing Count Vronsky and must endure the hypocrisy of society.

Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers.
In the cathedral town of Barchester, two factions vie for control of the diocese.

Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Huck Finn runs away from his drunkard father and embarks on an adventure down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave named Jim.

Voltaire, Candide.
Bolstered by his tutor’s philosophical teachings, Candide continues to think he lives in the best of all possible worlds as disaster after disaster strikes.

Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust.
An aristocrat obsessed with his role as lord of the manor is oblivious when his wife moves to London and begins an affair.

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.
In turn-of-the century New York, a gentleman engaged to a proper lady develops an unsuitable passion for a disgraced woman.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
A vain young man commissions a portrait that grows ugly and corrupt while he descends into a life of vice yet continues to appear youthful.

Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
A priest tries to make sense of the deaths of five people when a bridge collapses.

P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves.
Bertie Wooster’s valet Jeeves extricates him from unwanted engagements, onerous aunts, and a variety of other unpleasant situations.

Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel.
A young man from rural North Carolina leaves the restrictiveness of his family and small town and goes to Harvard.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.
While preparing for a party, a woman reflects on her life and choices.

Richard Wright, Native Son.
An African-American youth who is the product of a Chicago slum is sentenced to death for murder.

Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers.
In 1920s New York, a Jewish girl works with her mother and sisters to support her father’s studies but wants more out of life for herself.