Film and Literature

A little girl falls down a rabbit hole and discovers a world of nonsensical and amusing characters

A 36-year-old single mother finds a bottle containing a love letter written only three weeks earlier by a man declaring his love to his darling Catherine. She decides to try to make contact with the man in hopes of changing both their lives.

Bill Lee, an addict and hustler, travels to Mexico and then Tangier in order to find easy access to drugs, and ends up in the Interzone, a bizarre fantasy world, in an edition that features restored text, archival material, and an essay on psychoactive drugs.

First published in 1935, C.S. Forester's classic romantic adventure is a tale of opposites attracted. Allnut and Rose, a disreputable Cockney and an English spinster missionary, wend their way down a river in Central Africa in a rickety, asthmatic steam launch, and are gradually joined together in a mission of retaliation against the Germans. Fighting time, heat, malaria and bullets, the two have a dramatic rapprochement before the explosive ending of the book. This tale of unlikely love is thrilling and funny and ultimately satisfying.

The practices of Dr. Wilbur Larch--obstetrician, orphanage director, ether addict, and abortionist--are hindered, abetted, and continued, in turn, by his favorite orphan, Homer Wells.

Frodo the hobbit and his companions set out to deliver the One Ring of Power to the dark land of Mordor in order to destroy the ring in the forge of its creation.

Mitch McDeere, a Harvard Law School graduate, has a beautiful, loving wife and a sharp, ethical mind. He settles down to a career in a high-rolling Memphis law firm that gives him all the material and professional perks and sets him up finding tax shelters for wealthy Texans. But for some reason, the firm's associates keep dying. Now Mitch is caught between his need to provide for his family, his increasingly sinister employers, and an FBI agent who's trying to turn him into an informer--and the bait is a shorter prison sentence for Mitch's brother Ray.

Offers a fictional portrait of the characters, themes, and language of the Spokane Indian Reservation

A satirical glimpse into Manhattan's upper class follows Nanny, a struggling NYU student who takes a position caring for the son of the rich and glamorous X family, as she learns how to juggle a vast array of tasks so that a Park Avenue wife never has to lift a well-manicured finger

Interweaves the events of Tom Wingo's summer in New York and his relationship to Susan Lowenstein, his sister Savannah's beautiful psychiatrist and the complex history of the South Carolinian Wingo family, from World War II, through Vietnam.

In the concluding volume of the trilogy, Frodo and Sam make a terrible journey to the heart of the Land of the Shadow in a final reckoning with the power of Sauron.

Situated on a peaceful lake in Georgia, the quiet town of Sutherland harbors rumors of greed, incest, and savagery and buried deep within the lake's waters are hideous secrets waiting to be uncovered by an unsuspecting outsider.

Tells of the quest to destroy Sauron's mighty Ring of Power and the struggle against the Darkness of Mordor.

In 1978 Stephen King introduced the world to the last Gunslinger, Roland of Gilead.  Nothing has been the same since. Over twenty years later the quest for the Dark Tower continues to take readers on a wildly epic ride. Through parallel worlds and across time, Roland must brave desolate wastelands and endless deserts, drifting into the unimaginable and the familiar as the road to the Dark Tower extends beyond its own pages. A classic tale of colossal scope—crossing over terrain from The Stand, The Eyes of the Dragon, Insomnia, The Talisman, Black House, Hearts in Atlantis, ‘Salem’s Lot and other familiar King haunts—the adventure takes hold with the turn of each page. And the tower awaits…   The First Volume in the Epic DARK TOWER Series… The Gunslinger This heroic fantasy is set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own. A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations—The Gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages, from ancient myth to frontier western legend. The Gunslinger’s quest involves the pursuit of The Man in Black, a liaison with the sexually ravenous Alice, and a friendship with the kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, here is stunning proof of Stephen King’s storytelling sorcery.

Presents Burgess' satire of the present inhumanity of man to man through a futuristic culture where teenagers rule with violence.

Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world. A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles's crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.

A new translation of the classic nineteenth-century Russian novel in which a young woman is destroyed when she attempts to live outside the moral law of her society.

A repressed teenager uses her telekinetic powers to avenge the cruel jokes of her classmates.

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.

By winning the annual Hunger Games, District 12 tributes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have secured a life of safety and plenty for themselves and their families, but because they won by defying the rules, they unwittingly become the faces of an impending rebellion.

A scarlet-and-white, 1958 Plymouth fury--salvaged over every rational dissent and objection, from decay--possesses its new owner and brings hellish terror to him, his friends, and his classmates.

Financial journalist Rebecca Bloomwood seeks solace from the boredom and pressures in life with her shopping, a solution that brings her close to financial disaster, until she encounters a story that will change her life.

Believing he can commit the perfect crime, Roderick Raskolnikov robs and murders an elderly pawnbroker. He eventually finds himself engaged in a battle of wits with inspector Porfiry, a policeman who is determined to wring a confession from the once confident Raskolnikov, a killer whose conscience is slowly beginning to destroy him.

Four suburban businessmen take a canoe trip along a Georgia river, an odyssey that pits their courage against the river's raging rapids and the most primitive human impulses of fear, lust, and murder.

An unfaithful and unscrupulous wife exploits a morally inert insurance salesman in a scheme to murder her husband and collect his insurance.

First published in 1897, this classic horror tale has become the standard against which all other vampire stories are compared.

Bella must choose between her friendship with Jacob, a werewolf, and her relationship with Edward, a vampire, but when Seattle is ravaged by a mysterious string of killings, the three of them need to decide whether their personal lives are more important than the well-being of an entire city.

Emma is young, rich and independent. She has decided not to get married and instead spends her time organising her acquaintances' love affairs. Her plans for the matrimonial success of her new friend Harriet, however, lead her into complications that ultimately test her own detachment from the world of romance.

A Jesuit priest, unable to find plausible explanations for an eleven-year-old's strange behavior, begins to suspect demonic possession.

A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit.

Victor Frankenstein creates life in a monstrous being, and then must cope with the havoc his Creature causes.

Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life.

Scarlett O'Hara faces and survives the Civil War and Reconstruction and marries Rhett Butler for his money because her true love has married someone else.

Pip, a blacksmith's young nephew, falls deeply in love with the haughty and mysterious Estella, who does not reciprocate his feelings, but their lives remain intertwined through the rise and fall of his fortunes.

Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches.

Presents a humorous novel about a woman who unexpectedly finds love but who just might be losing her mind.

Chronicles the three-year battle of a mentally ill, but perceptive, teenage girl against a world of her own creation, emphasizing her relationship with the doctor who gave her the ammunition of self-understanding with which to destroy that world of fantasy.

Story of Valjean, the ex-convict who rises against all odds from galley slave to mayor, and the fanatical police inspector who dedicates his life to recapturing Valjean.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Tita, the youngest of three daughters, is expected to serve her mother for the rest of her life, but in order to show her love to Pedro, who is engaged to her sister, Tita cooks for him.

Encyclopedia with a list of novels that have been adapted for the screen.

McMurphy, a criminal who feigns insanity, is admitted to a mental hospital where he challenges the autocratic authority of the head nurse.

Human foibles and early nineteenth-century manners are satirized in this romantic tale of English country family life as Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters are encouraged to marry well in order to keep the Bennet estate in their family.

In 1659, after becoming the sole survivor of a shipwreck, Englishman Robinson Crusoe lives on a deserted island for more than twenty-eight years

Shakespeare in the movies, from the silent era up to Shakespeare In Love (1998).

The adventures of a boy and a runaway slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.

he Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan begins to rise as soon as the Civil War ends, in the sequel to The Leopard's Spots.

Adapted as the film: Birth of a Nation

Critical interpretations of The Grapes of Wrath

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. This is the definitive, textually accurate edition of a classic of twentieth-century literature, The Great Gatsby. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan has been acclaimed by generations of readers. But the first edition contained a number of errors resulting from Fitzgerald's extensive revisions and a rushed production schedule.

An 80-year-old mansion harboring dark secrets comes to menacing life in this classic spine-tingling tale from Shirley Jackson. Anthropologist and ghost hunter Dr. John Montague invites four strangers to stay in haunted Hill House for the summer. One of the guests is 32-year-old Eleanor, for whom three months in a haunted house is preferable to caring for her invalid mother. Soon, Eleanor begins to see and hear things that the other guests cannot. Is it all in her imagination, or is she the only one who can perceive the evil that lurks in Hill House?

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another

The archdeacon of Notre Dame, Claude Frollo, falls in lust with Esmerelda, a gypsy dancer who is much admired in Paris and convinces Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bell-ringer of Notre Dame, to kidnap her. Esmerelda is rescued by the Captain of the Royal Archers and falls mistakenly in love with his bravery when he is in reality, something of a rogue and a braggart.

Brothers emigrate to New York City in 1949 and form a band with their popularity peaking in 1956 when they get to perform on I Love Lucy.

Now in paperback comes the intoxicating debut novel of "one motherless daughter's discover of ... the strange and wondrous places we find love" ("The Washington Post"). Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing work is set in South Carolina in 1964.

Witnessing the injustices against Native Americans by European settlers from childhood, Diego de la Vega, the son of an aristocratic Spanish landowner and a Shoshone mother, returns to California from school in Spain to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised to seek justice for the weak and helpless. A swashbuckling adventure story that reveals for the first time how Diego de la Vega became the masked man we all know so well Born in southern California late in the eighteenth century, Diego de la Vega is a child of two worlds. His father is an aristocratic Spanish military man turned landowner; his mother, a Shoshone warrior. At the age of sixteen, Diego is sent to Spain, a country chafing under the corruption of Napoleonic rule. He soon joins La Justicia, a secret underground resistance movement devoted to helping the powerless and the poor. Between the New World and the Old, the persona of Zorro is formed, a great hero is born, and the legend begins. After many adventures -- duels at dawn, fierce battles with pirates at sea, and impossible rescues -- Diego de la Vega, a.k.a. Zorro, returns to America to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised and to seek justice for all who cannot fight for it themselves.

Haywood Floyd, director of the original Discovery mission, sets out to discover what happened to HAL 9000 and comes face to face with something claiming to be Dave Bowman.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, this is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib, avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family, and bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

Chevalier transports readers to a bygone time and place in this richly imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings. "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is the story of 16-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius, even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil. An Independent Bestseller Winner of the 2000 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award! Tracy Chevalier transports readers to a bygone time and place in this richly-imagined portrait of the young woman who inspired one of Vermeer's most celebrated paintings. History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. Girl with a Pearl Earring tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.

The most controversial classic novel of the 20th century, Lolita tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is aroused to erotic desire only by a young girl. Awe and exhilaration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation

Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza consummate their passion at the beginning of the 20th century after having waited over 50 years

"When the Cullens, including her beloved Edward, leave Forks rather than risk revealing that they are vampires, it is almost too much for eighteen-year-old Bella to bear, but she finds solace in her friend Jacob until he is drawn into a "cult" and changes in terrible ways"--T.p. verso

Faced with an uncertain future, Homer Hickam nurtured a dream: to send rockets into outer space. The introspective son of the mine’s superintendent and a mother determined to get him out of Coalwood forever, Homer fell in with a group of misfits who learned not only how to turn scraps of metal into sophisticated rockets but how to sustain their hope in a town that swallowed its men alive.

An abridged version of the adventures of the orphan boy who is forced to practice thievery and live a life of crime in nineteenth-century London

The devastating effects of work, adultery, rebellion, and self-deception slowly destroy the once successful marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, a suburban American couple.

At the end of World War II the Joseph family arrives in London from Jamaica and Queenie, their white landlady, befriends them, until her racist husband, Bernard, arrives home from the front.

Two African American sisters, one a missionary in Africa and the other a child-wife living in the South, support each other through their correspondence, beginning in the 1920s

This is the tale of family, memory, love, and living told by 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is already in heaven. Through the voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and builds out of her family's grief a hopeful and joyful story.

Scout's father defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town during the 1930s.

Four African-American women console and support one another in a complex friendship that helps each of them face the middle of their lives as single women.

When we first meet Michael Oher is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write. He takes up football, and school, after a rich, white, Evangelical family plucks him from the streets. Then two great forces alter Oher: the family's love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game in which the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.

Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa--the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, H. G. Bissinger chronicles a season in the life of Odessa and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires--and sometimes shatters--the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms.

The Basis for the Movie Mean Girls PARENTS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN GIRL WORLD Do you feel as though your adolescent daughter exists in a different world, speaking a different language and living by different laws? She does. This groundbreaking book takes you inside the secret world of girls' friendships, translating and decoding them, so parents can better understand and help their daughters navigate through these crucial years. Rosalind Wiseman has spent more than a decade listening to thousands of girls talk about the powerful role cliques play in shaping what they wear and say, how they feel about school, how they respond to boys, and how they feel about themselves. In this candid and insightful book, Wiseman discusses: - Queen Bees, Wannabes, Targets, Torn Bystanders, and others: how to tell what role your daughter plays and help her be herself - Girls' power plays, from birthday invitations to cafeteria seating arrangements and illicit parties, and how to handle them - Good popularity and bad popularity: how cliques bear on every situation - Hip Parents, Best-Friend Parents, Pushover Parents, and others: examine your own parenting style, Check Your Baggage, and identify how your own background and biases affect how you relate to your daughter - Related movies, books, websites, and organizations: a carefully annotated resources section provides opportunities to follow up on your own and with your daughter Enlivened with the voices of dozens of girls and parents and a welcome sense of humor, Queen Bees and Wannabes is compelling reading for parents and daughters alike. A conversation piece and a reference guide, it offers the tools you need to help your daughter feel empowered and make smarter choices.

The Circle is the exhilarating new novel from Dave Eggers, best-selling author of A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award.   When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users' personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company's modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can't believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world--even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public. What begins as the captivating story of one woman's ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY "The Washington Post - Kansas City Star - BookPage - Bookish" Who is A. N. Dyer? "& Sons" is a literary masterwork for readers of "The Art of Fielding, The Emperor's Children, "and "Wonder Boys"--the panoramic, deeply affecting story of an iconic novelist, two interconnected families, and the heartbreaking truths that fiction can hide. The funeral of Charles Henry Topping on Manhattan's Upper East Side would have been a minor affair (his two-hundred-word obit in "The New York Times "notwithstanding) but for the presence of one particular mourner: the notoriously reclusive author A. N. Dyer, whose novel "Ampersand" stands as a classic of American teenage angst. But as Andrew Newbold Dyer delivers the eulogy for his oldest friend, ""he suffers a breakdown over the life he's led and the people he's hurt and the novel that will forever endure as his legacy. He must gather his three sons for the first time in many years--before it's too late. So begins a wild, transformative, heartbreaking week, as witnessed by Philip Topping, who, like his late father, finds himself caught up in the swirl of the Dyer family. First there's son Richard, a struggling screenwriter and father, returning from self-imposed exile in California. In the middle lingers Jamie, settled in Brooklyn after his twenty-year mission of making documentaries about human suffering. And last is Andy, the half brother whose mysterious birth tore the Dyers apart seventeen years ago, now in New York on spring break, determined to lose his virginity before returning to the prestigious New England boarding school that inspired "Ampersand." But only when the real purpose of this reunion comes to light do these sons realize just how much is at stake, not only for their father but for themselves and three generations of their family. In this daring feat of fiction, David Gilbert establishes himself as one of our most original, entertaining, and insightful authors. "& Sons" is that rarest of treasures: a startlingly imaginative novel about families and how they define us, and the choices we make when faced with our own mortality. NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A "NEW YORK TIMES "EDITORS' CHOICE "Big, brilliant, and terrifically funny."--Jess Walter, author of "Beautiful Ruins" "Extraordinary."--"Time" "Smart and savage . . . Seductive and ripe with both comedy and heartbreak, "& Sons"] made me reconsider my stance on . . . the term 'instant classic.'"--NPR "A big, ambitious book about fathers and sons, Oedipal envy and sibling rivalry, and the dynamics between art and life . . . "& Sons"] does a wonderful job of conjuring up its characters' memories . . . in layered, almost Proustian detail."--Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times" " " " A] smart, engrossing saga . . . Perfect for fans of Jonathan Franzen or Claire Messud.""--Entertainment Weekly" "This great big novel is . . . infused with warmth and wisdom about what it means to be a family."--"The Boston Globe" "Audacious . . . one of the year's] most dazzlingly smart, fully realized works of fiction."--"The Washington Post"

Fresh from his foray into Hollywood stardom, Babe gets a new cover for theKnopf Paperbacksline. An ALA Notable Book ABoston Globe-Horn BookHonor Book AHorn BookFanfare Honor Book An IRA/CBC Children's Choice An NCTE Teachers' Choice  

The #1 New York Times Best Seller is now a major motion picture from visionary director Tim Burton, starring Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Ella Purnell, Samuel L. Jackson, and Judi Dench.    A mysterious island.   An abandoned orphanage.   A strange collection of very curious photographs.   It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow--impossible though it seems--they may still be alive. 

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.   "A tense, moving, and wondrously strange first novel. The photographs and text work together brilliantly to create an unforgettable story."--John Green, New York Times best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars   "With its X-Men: First Class-meets-time-travel story line, David Lynchian imagery, and rich, eerie detail, it's no wonder Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children has been snapped up by Twentieth Century Fox. B+"--Entertainment Weekly   "'Peculiar' doesn't even begin to cover it. Riggs' chilling, wondrous novel is already headed to the movies."--People   "You'll love it if you want a good thriller for the summer. It's a mystery, and you'll race to solve it before Jacob figures it out for himself."--Seventeen

"Remarkable, not-to-be-missed-under-any-circumstances."—Entertainment Weekly (Grade A) The Passage meets Ender's Game in an epic new series from award-winning author Rick Yancey. After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one. Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up. "Wildly entertaining . . . I couldn't turn the pages fast enough."—Justin Cronin, The New York Times Book Review "A modern sci-fi masterpiece . . . should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires."—USAToday.com

Set against the turbulent years of the Napoleonic  era, Alexandre Dumas's thrilling adventure story  is one of the most widely read romantic novels of  all time. In it the dashing young hero, Edmond  Dant#65533;s, is betrayed by his enemies and thrown  into a secret dungeon in the Chateau d'If -- doomed  to spend his life in a dank prison cell. The story  of his long, intolerable years in captivity, his  miraculous escape, and his carefully wrought  revenge creates a dramatic tale of mystery and intrigue  and paints a vision of France -- a dazzling,  dueling, exuberant France -- that has become immortal.