American Literature

A Death in the Family - James Agee

Story of loss and heartbreak felt when a young father dies.

Winesburg, Ohio -Sherwood Anderson

A collection of short stories lays bare the life of a small town in the Midwest.

Go Tell It On the Mountain -James Baldwin

Semi-autobiographical novel about a 14-year-old black youth's religious conversion.

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 - Edward Bellamy

Written in 1887 about a young man who travels in time to a utopian year 2000, where economic security and a healthy moral environment have reduced crime.

Seize the Day -Saul Bellow

A son grapples with his love and hate for an unworthy father.

Fahrenheit 451 -Ray Bradbury

Reading is a crime and firemen burn books in this futuristic society.

My Antonia -Willa Cather

Immigrant pioneers strive to adapt to the Nebraska prairies.

The Awakening -Kate Chopin

The story of a New Orleans woman who abandons her husband and children to search for love and self-understanding.

The Ox-Bow Incident -Walter Van Tilburg

When a group of citizens discovers one of their members has been murdered by cattle rustlers, they form an illegal posse, pursue the murderers, and lynch them.

The Chocolate War -Robert Cormier

Jerry Renault challenges the power structure of his school when he refuses to sell chocolates for the annual fundraiser.

The Red Badge of Courage -Stephen Crane

During the Civil War, Henry Fleming joins the army full of romantic visions of battle which are shattered by combat.

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water -Michael Dorris

Three generations of Native American women recount their searches for identity and love.

Invisible Man -Ralph Ellison

A black man's search for himself as an individual and as a member of his race and his society.

As I Lay Dying -William Faulkner

The Bundren family takes the ripening corpse of Addie, wife and mother, on a gruesomely comic journey.

The Great Gatsby -F. Scott Fitzgerald

A young man corrupts himself and the American Dream to regain a lost love.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman -Ernest Gaines

In her 100 years, Miss Jane Pittman experiences it all, from slavery to the civil rights movement.

The Scarlet Letter -Nathaniel Hawthorne

An adulterous Puritan woman keeps secret the identity of the father of her illegitimate child.

Catch-22 -Joseph Heller

A broad comedy about a WWII bombardier based in Italy and his efforts to avoid bombing missions.

A Farewell to Arms -Ernest Hemingway

During World War I, an American lieutenant runs away with the woman who nurses him back to health.

Their Eyes Were Watching God -Zora Neale Hurston

Janie repudiates many roles in her quest for self-fulfillment.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -Ken Kesey

A novel about a power struggle between the head nurse and one of the male patients in a mental institution.

To Kill a Mockingbird -Harper Lee

At great peril to himself and his children, lawyer Atticus Finch defends an African-American man accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town.

Main Street -Sinclair Lewis

A young doctor's wife tries to change the ugliness, dullness and ignorance which prevail in Gopher Prairie, Minn.

Call of the Wild -Jack London

Buck is a loyal pet dog until cruel men make him a pawn in their search for Klondike gold.

The Member of the Wedding -Carson McCullers

A young southern girl is determined to be the third party on a honeymoon, despite all the advice against it from friends and family.

Moby-Dick -Herman Melville

A complex novel about a mad sea captain's pursuit of the White Whale.

Sula -Toni Morrison

The lifelong friendship of two women becomes strained when one causes the other's husband to abandon her.

A Good Man is Hard to Find -Flannery O’Connor

Social awareness, the grotesque, and the need for faith characterize these stories of the contemporary South.

The Learning Tree -Gordon Parks

A fictional study of a black family in a small Kansas town in the 1920s.

The Bell Jar -Sylvia Plath

The heartbreaking story of a talented young woman's descent into madness.

Great Tales and Poems -Edgar Allan Poe

Poe is considered the father of detective stories and a master of supernatural tales.

The Chosen -Chaim Potok

Friendship between two Jewish boys, one Hasidic and the other Orthodox, begins at a baseball game and flourishes despite their different backgrounds and beliefs.

The Catcher in the Rye -J.D. Salinger

A prep school dropout rejects the "phoniness" he sees all about him.

The Jungle -Upton Sinclair

The deplorable conditions of the Chicago stockyards are exposed in this turn-of-the-century novel.

The Grapes of Wrath -John Steinbeck

The desperate flight of tenant farmers from Oklahoma during the Depression.

Uncle Tom's Cabin -Harriet Beecher Stowe

The classic tale that awakened a nation about the slave system.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -Mark Twain

Huck and Jim, a runaway slave, travel down the Mississippi in search of freedom.

Slaughterhouse-Five -Kurt Vonnegut

Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist from Ilium, New York, shuttles between World War II Dresden and a luxurious zoo on the planet Tralfamadore.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

A young woman sees herself as property until another woman teaches her to value herself.

The Time Machine -H.G. Wells

A scientist invents a machine that transports him into the future.

Thirteen Stories -Eudora Welty

A collection of short stories about people and life in the deep South.

Look Homeward, Angel -Thomas Wolfe

A novel depicting the coming of age of Eugene Gant and his passion to experience life.

Native Son -Richard Wright

Bigger Thomas, a young man from the Chicago slums, lashes out against a hostile society by committing two murders.