Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a "utopian" future—where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment.
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At 21, Emma Woodhouse is a young woman with every possible advantage: good looks, intelligence, wealth, rank, the respect of her neighbors, and the love of family and friends. Indeed, in her father's eyes, Emma can do no wrong. But Emma is far from perfect, and when her matchmaking efforts go awry, she must learn the hard way just how little she understands the ways of the human heart.
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Classic novel by a Nobel prize winner about a group of boys who, after a plane crash, set up a primitive society on an uninhabited island.
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Thought Police. Big Brother. Orwellian. These words have entered our vocabulary because of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel, 1984 . The story of one man's nightmare odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory, 1984 is a prophetic, haunting tale. More relevant than ever before, 1984 exposes the worst crimes imaginable-the destruction of truth, freedom, and individuality.
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On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago.
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The story of three days and nights spent in New York City by Holden Caulfield, a sensitive, intelligent 16-year-old, who confronts the ``phony'' values of the adult world.
Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is among the most enduring documents of the twentieth century. Since its publication in 1947, it has been a beloved and deeply admired monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit, read by millions of people and translated into more than fifty-five languages. Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation forces, hid in the back of an Amsterdam office building for two years. This is Anne's record of that time. She was thirteen when the family went into the "Secret Annex," and in these pages, she grows to be a young woman and proves to be an insightful observer of human nature as well. A timeless story discovered by each new generation, The Diary of a Young Girl stands without peer. For young readers and adults, it continues to bring to life this young woman, who for a time survived the worst horrors the modern world had seen -- and who remained triumphantly and heartbreakingly human throughout her ordeal.
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When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700--and everything has changed. In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings--unearth their secret and then retum to his own time--until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen. H.G. Well's famous novel of one man's astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895. It won him immediate recognition, and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is a luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern black woman in the 1930s whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to seventy years. This poetic, graceful love story, rooted in black folk traditions and steeped in mythic realism, celebrates, boldly and brilliantly, African-American culture and heritage. And in a powerful, mesmerizing narrative, it pays quiet tribute to a black woman, who, though constricted by the times, still demanded to be heard.
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Harper Lee's classic novel of a lawyer in the Deep South defending a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize, has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. Most recently, librarians across the country gave the book the highest of honors by voting it the best novel of the twentieth century.
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Henry David Thoreau was just a few days short of his twenty-eighth birthday when he built a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond and began one of the most famous experiments in living in American history. Originally he was not, apparently, intending to write a book about his life at the pond, but nine years later, in August of 1854, Houghton Mifflin's predecessor, Ticknor and Fields, published Walden; or, a Life in the Woods. At the time the book was largely ignored, and it took five years to sell out the first printing of two thousand copies. It was not until 1862, the year of Thoreau's death, that the book was brought back into print, and it has never been out of print since. Published in hundreds of editions and translated into virtually every modern language, it has become one of the most widely read and influential books ever written.
There are few more convincing, less sentimental accounts of love than Wuthering Heights. This is the story of a tormented foundling who falls in love with the daughter of his benefactor, and of the violence and misery that result from their thwarted longing for each other.
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