NCW Libraries

A vibrant novel of a young Cossack's experiences as the Russian Revolution interrupts his half-barbarian life of hunting, fishing, carnality, and drink.

A self-satisfied couple intent on raising a happy family is shocked by the birth of an abnormal and brutal fifth child.

Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is a tireless lover who writes to his treacherous Liza: "A genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do." Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever.

A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. In the story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched...

At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member--including Addie--and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life. As I Lay Dying is the harrowing, darkly comic tale of the Bundren family's trek across Mississippi to bury Addie, their wife and mother, as told by each of the family members--including Addie herself.

Naipaul brings his unique intellect and insight to bear on the complex, often hidden life and culture of the South. His is a break-out book that speaks directly to the American audience.

Tells the story of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy living in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed John's father.

A story of the beautiful but love-starve Kitty Fane who is forced to accompany her husband to the heart of a cholera epidemic. She is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.

"Finally back in print -- Gore Vidal's outrageous and immortal, gender-bending and polymorphously perverse, over-the-top, and utterly on-target comic masterpiece. "I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess." So begins the irresistible testimony of the luscious instructor of Empathy and Posture at Buck Loner's Academy of Drama and Modeling. Myra has a secret that only her surgeon shares; a passion for classic Hollywood films, which she...