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Classics 50 fiction essentials
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1984 : a novel
by George Orwell
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.
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2001 : a space odyssey
by Arthur C. Clarke
Sent to unravel the mystery of an enigmatic monolith left on the moon by an unknown alien intelligence, two astronauts aboard the spacecraft Discovery find their journey into space and their very lives jeopardized by the jealousy of an extraordinary computer named Hal.
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The adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
A feisty young boy fakes his own death to escape his abusive father and heads off down the Mississippi River with his newfound friend Jim, a runaway slave.
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Around the world in 80 days
by Jules Verne
The action-packed adventure classic chronicles the adventures of English gentleman Phileas Fogg and his manservant, Passepartout, on their journey around the world in the late nineteenth century.
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The bell jar
by Sylvia Plath
Esther Greenwood, a talented and successful writer, finally succumbs to madness when the world around her begins to falter.
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Brave new world
by Aldous Huxley
First published 70 years ago, the classic, prophetic novel capturing the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia remarkably explores the now-timely themes of cloning, individual creativity and freedom, and the role of science, technology, and drugs in humankind's future.
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The bridge of San Luis Rey
by Thornton Wilder
A Franciscan monk's investigation into the early eighteenth-century collapse of a Peruvian bridge, killing five Peruvian travelers, probes the private lives of the victims, in a new edition of the author's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
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The call of the wild
by Jack London
Having been stolen away from his comfortable life with his loving family, Buck is forced to work on a dog sled team in the fierce conditions of the Klondike, where he must forget his happy past and turn to his animal instincts in order to survive in his new surroundings.
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Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
Presents the contemporary classic depicting the struggles of a United States airman attempting to survive the lunacy and depravity of a World War II airbase.
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Catcher in the Rye
by J. D. Salinger
In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City.
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A clockwork orange
by Anthony Burgess
Presents Burgess' satire of the present inhumanity of man to man through a futuristic culture where teenagers rule with violence.
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Crime and punishment
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammeled individual will, Raskolnikov, and impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world.
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Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
A definitive English translation of the sixteenth-century classic follows the adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through Spain and become subject to the noble knight-errant's fanciful imagination.
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Dracula
by Bram Stoker
The quintessential horror tale of the powerful, centuries-old vampire follows his bloodthirsty trail from the mountains of Central Europe to England, until the savvy Dr. Van Helsing comes up with a way to end his reign of terror.
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Dune
by Frank Herbert
This sci-fi classic follows the adventures of Paul Atreides, the son of a betrayed duke given up for dead on a treacherous desert planet and adopted by its fierce, nomadic people, who help him unravel his most unexpected destiny.
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Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
A New England farmer eking out a hardscrabble existence on an unproductive farm must choose between his duty to care for his difficult, invalid wife and his love for her vivacious young cousin.
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Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit, in a chilling novel of a frightening near-future world.
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Frankenstein
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.
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Gone with the wind
by Margaret Mitchell
The story of the tempestuous romance between Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara is set amid the drama of the Civil War.
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The good earth
by Pearl S. Buck
A Chinese peasant overcomes the forces of nature and the frailties of human nature to become a wealthy landowner.
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Great expectations
by Charles Dickens
Pip, a young orphan, receives a fortune from a mysterious benefactor and travels to London in order to become a gentleman.
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The great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jay Gatsby had once loved beautiful, spoiled Daisy Buchanan, then lost her to a rich boy. Now, mysteriously wealthy, he is ready to risk everything to woo her back.
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Heart of darkness
by Joseph Conrad
A group of white men journeys up the Congo River to invade the jungles of the Belgian Congo, in an effort to rob the natives of their ivory.
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Invisible man
by Ralph Ellison
An African-American man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility.
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Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
After a lonely childhood, young orphan Jane Eyre takes a post as a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets the enigmatic Mr. Rochester and uncovers a ghastly secret about the strange sounds that she hears.
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Les Misérables
by Victor Hugo
Imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread, Jean Valjean is finally released and struggles to build a new life, but the relentless police Inspector Javert is determined to put him back in jail, forcing Jean to go into hiding.
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Lord of the flies : a novel
by William Golding
The classic study of human nature which depicts the degeneration of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island.
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Metamorphosis and other stories
by Franz Kafka
A seemingly ordinary man, Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning only to discover that he has been transformed into a gigantic insect and must deal with the depression over his new physical alteration, as well as the rejection of his family.
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Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville
Presents the nineteenth-century tale of life aboard a New England whaling ship whose captain is obsessed with the pursuit of a large white whale.
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Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
A poignant portrayal of the thoughts and events that comprise one day in a woman's life.
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My Ántonia
by Willa Cather
The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly a young Bohemian girl named Antonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation immigrants.
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Of mice and men
by John Steinbeck
In depression-era California, two migrant workers dream of better days on a spread of their own until an act of unintentional violence leads to tragic consequences.
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The old man and the sea
by Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway's triumphant yet tragic story of an old Cuban fisherman and his relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream combines the simplicity of a fable, the significance of a parable, and the drama of an epic.
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On the road
by Jack Kerouac
This counterculture classic reveals the escapades of members of the beat generation as they seek pleasure and meaning while traveling coast to coast.
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One flew over the cuckoo's nest
by Ken Kesey
McMurphy, a criminal who feigns insanity, is admitted to a mental hospital where he challenges the autocratic authority of the head nurse.
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One hundred years of solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez
A celebration of the endless variety of life in the mythical village of Macondo chronicles the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of the small South American town.
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The picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
The author's classic novel about the Faust myth, in which a young dandy trades his soul for eternal youth, first appeared in 1890.
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Pride and prejudice
by Jane Austen
Human foibles and early nineteenth-century manners are satirized in this beloved romantic tale of English country family life.
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The Scarlet letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hester Prynne is ostracized from her seventeenth-century Puritan community for refusing to name the father of her child, the product of an adulterous relationship.
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A separate peace
by John Knowles
A conflict of loyalties between Gene and his fearless friend, Phineas, leads to tragedy.
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The sound and the fury : the corrected text
by William Faulkner
Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their Black servant.
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The Stranger
by Albert Camus
When a young Algerian named Meursault kills a man, his subsequent imprisonment and trial are puzzling and absurd. The apparently amoral Meursault--who puts little stock in ideas like love and God--seems to be on trial less for his murderous actions, and more for what the authorities believe is his deficient character.
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Their eyes were watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
When independent Janie Crawford returns home, her small African-American community begins to buzz with gossip about the outcome of her affair with a younger man, in a novel set in the 1930s South.
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The three musketeers
by Alexandre Dumas
A swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, it is set in France during the 1620s and richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines, kings, queens, cavaliers, and criminals in a whirl of adventure, espionage, conspiracy, murder, vengeance, love, scandal, and suspense. Dumas transforms major and minor historical figures into larger-than-life characters: the brave d'Artagnan, an impetuous young man in pursuit of glory; the beguilingly evil seductress 'Milady''; the powerful and devious Cardinal Richelieu; the weak King Louis XIII and his unhappy queen--and, of course, the three musketeers themselves, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, whose motto 'all for one, one for all' has come to epitmize the devoted friendship.
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To kill a mockingbird
by Harper Lee
The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a young girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.
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The time machine
by H. G. Wells
A Victorian scientist uses his remarkable invention, a time machine, to hurtle himself some eight hundred thousand years into the future and encounters a world populated by two distinct races, the childlike Eloi and the disgusting Morlocks who prey on the Eloi.
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War and peace
by Leo Tolstoy
The monumental Russian classic reflecting the life and times of Russian society during the Napoleonic Wars comes to life in a compelling new translation that is faithful to the original text and accompanied by an index of historical figures, textual annotations, a chapter summary, and an informative introduction.
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Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
The passionate love of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff mirrors the powerful moods of the Yorkshire moors.
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