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Toole's lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, whom Walker Percy dubs "slob extraordinaire, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one." Set in New Orleans, A Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift, one of whose essays gives the book its title. As its characters burst into life, they leave the region and literature forever changed by their...
2) The sea
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English
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BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory" (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife.
In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his...
In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his...
3) Native son
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English
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Description
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...
4) The namesake
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English
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[Lasell] Arab American Heritage/AAPI Heritage Month
Medfield - Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Regis: Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Medfield - Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Regis: Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Description
"With a new afterword from Jhumpa Lahiri, a new edition of the contemporary classic. Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. In The Namesake,...
5) Babbitt
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English
Description
Prosperous and socially prominent, George Babbitt appears to have everything a man could wish. But when a personal crisis forces the middle-aged real estate agent to reexamine his life, Babbitt mounts a rebellion that jeopardizes everything he values. Widely considered Sinclair Lewis' greatest novel, this satire of the American social landscape created a sensation upon its 1922 publication. Babbitt's name became an instant and enduring synonym for...
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Coleman Silk is a respected professor at a New England college who suddenly finds his life unraveling after a comment he makes about some African-American students is misinterpreted as a racial slur. As the scandal heats up, Nathan Zuckerman, a writer researching a biography of Silk, begins to dig deeply into Silk's life. Eventually, matters are made worse when Coleman's affair with a young married janitor named Faunia Farley is exposed. But amid...
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"Nicholas Nickleby" combines comedy and tragedy in a tale of triumph over adversity, where Nickleby succeeds despite poverty, the indifference of his wealthy uncle, the tyranny of wicked schoolmaster Wackford Squeers and the social injustice that he encounters throughout the institutional system, meeting such eccentric characters as the Crummles, the Kenwigs, Newman Noggs and businessmen, the Cheeryble brothers along the way. Here, Dickens uses his...
Author
Series
Visit from the Goon Squad volume 1
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English
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Description
Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. (Bestseller)
9) The wedding
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English
Description
After more than twenty years of marriage, Wilson Lewis, son-in-law of Allie and Noah Calhoun is forced to admit that the romance has gone out of his marriage. Desperate to win back his wife Jane's heart, he must figure out how to make her fall in love with him again.
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The beautiful and damned tells the story of Anthony Patch, a 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon's fortune, and his wife, Gloria. Young, gorgeous and rich, they dedicate their lives to the reckless pursuit of happiness. But this intimate story turns tragic, as their marriage disintegrates under the weight of their expectations, dissipation and jealousy. Fitzgerald skillfully portrays the east-coast elite as the Jazz Age begins its ascent....
11) Martin Eden
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English
Description
Martin Eden (1909) is a novel by American writer Jack London. The book follows the tradition of the Künstlerroman, a narrative that traces the life and development of an artist, to tell the story of a young man not unlike London himself. Part fiction, part autobiography, Martin Eden examines the consequences of dreams and achievements, successes and failures, for a young artist struggling with fame. The novel is heavily influenced by London's socialist...
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"Clyde Griffiths was born poor and is poorly educated, but his prospects begin to improve when he is offered a job by a wealthy uncle who owns a shirt factory. Soon he achieves a managerial position, and despite being warned to stay away from the women he manages, he becomes involved with Roberta, a poor factory worker who falls in love with him. At the same time, he catches the eye of Sondra, the glamorous socialite daughter of another factory owner,...
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From the author of, A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. Grant Wiggins, a college-educated man returns to 1940s Cajun, he visits and forms an unlikely bond with Jefferson, a young Black man convicted of murder and sentenced to death, for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting. Best Books for Young Teen Readers. In the 1940s in rural Louisiana,...
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F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise, made him instantly famous, and prefigured the themes and characters in later works such as The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night . A thinly disguised account of Fitzgerald's own Princeton years, the novel's frank description of the main character's love affairs shocked and delighted its first readers, and the book was an immediate success. The book recounts the story of Amory Blaine as he...
15) At fault
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At Fault (1890) is a novel by American author Kate Chopin. Published at the author's expense, At Fault is the undervalued debut of a pioneering feminist and gifted writer who sought to portray the experiences of Southern women struggling to survive in an era decimated by war and economic hardship.
Thérèse Lafirme is a Creole widow whose husband's death has made the Place-du-Bois plantation on the Cane River in northwestern Louisiana her sole responsibility....
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English
Description
Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn't bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.
17) Solar: a novel
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English
Description
Michael Beard is a Nobel prize winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions, and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. While he coasts along in his professional life, Michael's personal life is another matter entirely. His fifth marriage is crumbling under the weight of his infidelities....
18) Rabbit at rest
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English
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PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • One of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century brings back ex-basketball player Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, the late middle-aged hero of Rabbit, Run, who has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild, and is looking for reasons to live.
“Brilliant . . . the best novel about America to come out of America for a very, very long time.”—The...
“Brilliant . . . the best novel about America to come out of America for a very, very long time.”—The...
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English
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Winner of the Man Booker Prize and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the NBCC award
A New York Times Bestseller (Extended)
An LA Times Bestseller
A Northern California Bestseller
A Sunday Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
From Alan Hollinghurst, the acclaimed author of The Sparsholt Affair, The Line of Beauty is a sweeping novel...
A New York Times Bestseller (Extended)
An LA Times Bestseller
A Northern California Bestseller
A Sunday Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
From Alan Hollinghurst, the acclaimed author of The Sparsholt Affair, The Line of Beauty is a sweeping novel...
20) Ulysses
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English
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Description
"Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through the streets of Dublin. Each episode has its own literary style, and the epic journey of Odysseus is only one of many correspondencies that add layers of meaning to the text. Today critical...
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