NCW Libraries

A man returns to his native China to find upheaval in both his homeland and his family in this novel by a New York Times–bestselling author.
On the eve of a popular rebellion, the Chinese government starts to crack down in cities across the country. Fleeing the turmoil, Wang Yuan, the son of a famous general and grandson of the patriarch of The Good Earth, leaves for America to study agriculture. When he returns to...

When published in 1890, Oscar Wilde's version of the Faust myth, wherein a fashionable young man sells his soul for eternal youth while his portrait grows old, was attacked for its "mawkish and nauseous" tone. However, the novel has fascinated readers for over a century. This Paperback Classic edition includes an Introduction by Quentin Crisp.

"Middlemarch" is writer George Eliot's crowning literary achievement and the novel is considered by many critics to be one of the finest pieces of fiction ever written. Written in the style of "realism" popular at the time, it is a study of the class and social structure of the fictional town of Middlemarch in central England and the story touches on all segments of life within the village, from the landed gentry to the working class and everyone...

In Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim an orphan boy of poor Irish parents makes his living on the streets of Lahore running errands. After befriending a Tibetan monk, Kim undertakes several adventures which ultimately put him at the heart of The Great Game the geopolitical struggle between Britain and Russia for the control of India and Afghanistan. Notable for its vivid descriptions of the people, culture and landscape of India.

Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) is nothing less than what the title holds it to be; it is the story of a weak-willed young man who is both villain and victim (the victim of a valueless, materialistic society) and someone who ultimately destroys himself. Dreiser modeled the story of Clyde Griffiths on a real-life murder that took place in 1906; a young social climber of considerable charm murdered his pregnant girlfriend to get her out...

A realistic and emotional look at a woman battling mental illness and societal pressures written by iconic American writer Sylvia Plath.

"It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." — USA Today

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented,

...

The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sailor Song is a wild-spirited and hugely powerful tale of an Oregon logging clan.
A bitter strike is raging in a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers: Henry, the fiercely vital and overpowering patriarch; Hank, the son who has spent his life trying to live up to his...

After his ill-fated pursuit of the American dream, Bob Dubois finds employment on a fishing boat off the Florida Keys where he becomes involved in a plot to smuggle two Haitians into Florida.

The most celebrated story collection from “one of the true American masters” (The New York Review of Books)—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark that includes the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman. 

"Raymond Carver's America is ... clouded by pain and the loss of dreams, but it is not as...

Doctor Doolittle is an eminent character of the English literature. It has been developed in the numerous books by Hugh Lofting and gained much fame thanks to their related cinematographic adaptations. Although The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle (1922) comes as a continuation of the series of adventures, it can be read independently as it provides the readers with sufficient introductory information about Doctor Doolittle and all his companions. The

...