Alleman High School - Fiction Book List
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FICTION

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Nineteen eighty-four

Author: Orwell, George, 1903-1950

Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities

A Farewell to Arms

Author: Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961

Story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front during World War I and his love for an English nurse.

A Passage to India

Author: Forster, E. M., 1879-1970

Two women come to Chandrapore, India, and their lack of understanding of the culture causes one of them to make an unjust accusation.

 

A Separate Peace: a novel

Author: Knowles, John, 1926-

Gene Forrester remembers a World War II year in prep school and the unexpected events of that year.

A Tale of Two Cities

Author: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870

Two men who look alike love Lucie Manette, and during the French Revolution one of them goes to the guillotine in place of the other for Lucie's happiness.

 

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The

Author: Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

Huckleberry Finn, an abused outcast, rafts with Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River, where they have a variety of experiences.
 

Age of Innocence, The

Author: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937

Wealthy New Yorkers in the 1870s have difficulties breaking free from social codes they hate.

All the King's Men

Author: Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-1989

Jack Burden, a young journalist, becomes involved with Willie Stark's quest for power while serving as a Southern governor

When the marriage of American millionaire Christopher Newman and French aristocrat Claire de Bellegarde is opposed by her poor but proud family, Christopher uncovers a terrible secret and must discover what is truly important.

 

All the Pretty Horses

Author: McCarthy, Cormac, 1933-

John Grady Cole, 16, leaves Texas for Mexico in 1950 and becomes an essential vaquero in a hacienda's program.

America is in the Heart

Author:  Bulosan, Carlos

 

First published in 1946, this autobiography of the well-known Filipino poet describes his boyhood in the Philippines, his voyage to America, and his years of hardship and despair as an itinerant laborer following the harvest trail in the rural West. Bulosan does not spare the reader any of the horrors that accompanied the migrant's life; but his quiet, stoic voice is the most convincing witness to those terrible events.

American Tragedy, An

Author: Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945

Clyde Griffiths falls in love with and impregnates Roberta, but realizing that another girl will help him succeed, he drowns Roberta.

Angel, The

Author: Laurence, Margaret

In Hagar Shipley, Margaret Laurence has created one of the boldest, most memorable characters in Canadian fiction. This is a study of old age and uncompromising pride. Hagar is almost 90, living with her elderly son, Marvin and his wife, Doris, both of whom she despises. The story is told in a series of flashbacks from Hagar's early childhood through her stormy marriage and loss of her favorite son. This novel is a keystone in Laurence's career

 

Anna Karenina

Author: Tolstoy, Leo, 1828-1910

A new translation of the classic nineteenth-century Russian novel in which a young woman is destroyed when she attempts to live outside the moral law of her society.

Another Country                                     Author: Baldwin, James, 1924-1987

Eight people become entangled in a web of interpersonal relationships, doomed to become as savage and destructive as the society which oppresses them

As I Lay Dying

Author: Faulkner, William, 1897-1962

The members of a Southern family contribute their individual tribulations to this encompassing impression of rural poverty.

 

Bear, The: a novel
 Author: Curwood, James Oliver, 1878-1927

Muskwa, an orphaned bear cub, is befriended by Thor, an old grizzly, in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia

 

Billy Budd, foretopman
 Author: Melville, Herman, 1819-1891

A young sailor is sentenced to be hanged for inadvertently striking and killing an officer. He faces death with a blessing for the benevolent captain who is forced to carry out his execution.

 

Bleak House

Author:  Dickens, Charles

Esther Summerson is the ward of Mr. Jarndyce whose case in Chancery Court seems to have no end.

Bless me, Ultima

Author: Anaya, Rudolfo A.

A young New Mexico boy comes of age.

 

Candide

Author: Voltaire, 1694-1778

The story of Candide, a naive youth who is conscripted, shipwrecked, robbed, and tortured by the Inquisition without losing his will to live, is accompanied by four other stories

 

Catch-22: a novel

Author: Heller, Joseph, 1923-1999

Captain Yossarian and other pilots on a small Mediterranean island in World War II face inconsistencies in military rules.

 

Cat’s Eye

Author:  Atwood, Margaret

 

Atwood writes in an autobiographical vein about Elaine Risley, a middle-aged Canadian painter (and daughter of a forest entomologist) who is thrust into an extended reconsideration of her past while attending a retrospective show of her work in Toronto, a city she had fled years earlier in order to leave behind painful memories. Most pointedly, Risley reflects on the strangeness of her long relations with Cordelia, a childhood friend whose cruelties, dealt lavishly to Risley, helped hone her awareness of our inveterate appetite for destruction even while we love, and are understood as characteristically femininea betrayal of other women that masks a ferocious betrayal of oneself

 

Centaur, The

Author: Updike, John

A novel that retells the ancient myth of Chiron in modern terms within a contemporary setting

 

Ceremony

Author: Silko, Leslie Marmon, 1948-

 

A young Native American fights to defeat the demons that have followed him since his return from WWII. They intensify the estrangement he feels over his mixed parentage and his people's alienation.

 

Color Purple, The: a novel

Author: Walker, Alice, 1944-

Two African American sisters, one a missionary in Africa and the other a child-wife living in the South, support each other through their correspondence, beginning in the 1920s.

 

Crime and Punishment

Author: Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881

Raskolnikoff murders an old moneylender and her sister, and after a lengthy investigation a saintly prostitute Sonya convinces him to confess.

 

 

Cry, the Beloved Country

Author: Paton, Alan, 1903-1988

A Zulu country parson arrives in Johannesburg and finds that his sister has become a prostitute and his son a murderer.


Daisy Miller

Author: James, Henry, 1843-1916

Daisy Miller, a naive young American woman traveling in Europe with her family, finds it difficult to understand Europen society

Delta Wedding

Author: Welty, Eudora, 1909-

The Fairchild family, living on their Mississippi delta plantation, plans for the wedding of Dabney, a favorite child.

 

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Author: Tyler, Anne

Eighty-five-year-old Pearl Tull recalls the desertion of her husband and her attempts to raise three children, who must come to terms with themselves and their father after their mother's death.


 

Don Quixote

Author: Cervantes, Miguel de, 1547-1616

Don Quixote of 16th-century Spain decides to become a knight with a horse and squire who honors a lady, but his horse is a nag, his squire a peasant, and his lady a prostitute.

 

 


Emma

Author: Austen, Jane, 1775-1817

Emma tries to impose her match making ideas on everyone and finds that sometimes she
should desist.

Ethan Frome

Author: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937

A New England farmer must choose between his duty to care for his invalid wife and his love for his cousin

Fall, The

Author: Camus, Albert, 1913-1960

A man's confessions reveal his perception of justice and his own downfall

 

French Lieutenant's Woman, The

Author: Fowles, John, 1926-

Charles Smithson of Lyme Regis is engaged to the wealthy but shallow Ernestina while independent Sarah Woodruff, ostracized for her affair with a French sailor, fascinates him.

 

Grapes of Wrath, The                               Author: Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968

The Joad family, Okie farmers forced from their dustbowl home during the Depression, try to find work as migrant fruitpickers in California.

 

Great Expectations

Author: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870

The orphan, Pip, and the convict, Magwitch, the beautiful Estella, and her guardian, the embittered and vengeful Miss Havisham, the ambitious lawyer, Mr. Jaggers -- all have a part to play in the mystery.

 

Gulliver's Travels

Author: Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745

The voyages of an Englishman carry him to such strange places as Lilliput, where people are six inches tall; Brobdingnag, a land of giants; and a country ruled by horses.

 

Heart of the Matter, The

Author: Greene, Graham, 1904-

An assistant police commissioner in a West African coastal town lets passion overrule his honor

 

 

Heart of Darkness

Author: Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924

Two short novels of human savagery in Africa and the conflicting loyalties of a ship's officer depict man's potential for good and evil

 

 

House Made of Dawn

Author: Momaday, N. Scott, 1934-

After Abel returns from the army and World War II to San Ysidro, he has difficulty re-adapting to the reservation or accepting the white ways.

 

 

Jane Eyre

Author: Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855

Jane Eyre becomes a governess in Mr. Rochester's home of Thornfield and falls in love with him before she finds that he has a tragic secret.

 

Joseph Andrews

Author: Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754

Joseph Andrews resists the advances of his employer, Lady Booby, leaves London, and is eventually rescued from thieves by Parson Adams.

 

Joy Luck Club, The

Author: Tan, Amy

Encompassing two generations and a rich blend of Chinese and American history, the story of four struggling, strong women also reveals their daughters' memories and feelings

 

 

Jude the Obscure

Author: Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928

Marriage, the Church of England, and the British university system all come under criticism in a story about two cousins who love each other and want to improve their lot in life.

 

Light in August

Author: Faulkner, William, 1897-1962

In a novel about hopeless perseverance in the face of mortality, guileless Lena Grove searches for the father of her unborn child, Reverend Hightower is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen, and drifter Joe Christmas is consumed by his mixed ancestry

 

Lord Jim

Author: Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924

A young Englishman branded as a coward seeks personal redemption for an act of selfishness

 

 

Lord of the Flies: a novel

Author: Golding, William, 1911-1993

The classic study of human nature which depicts the degeneration of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island

 

 

Love medicine: a novel

Author: Erdrich, Louise

The members of the Chippewa Kaspaw and Lamartine families describe their simple existence as they both deny and discover their native heritages

 

 

Madame Bovary: Patterns of Provincial Life

Author: Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880

Emma Bovary becomes bored with her life and embarks on an affair.

Mayor of Casterbridge, The

Author: Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928

After Michael Henchard becomes the mayor of Casterbridge, the wife and children he sold at a fair 18 years previously reappear.

 

Member of the Wedding, The

Author: McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967

Her brother's wedding intensifies a twelve-year-old's need to be recognized as an important person

 

 

Moby Dick: or, The white whale

Author: Melville, Herman, 1819-1891

The story of Captain Ahab's obssession with the great white whale that crippled him

 

 

Native Son

Author: Wright, Richard, 1908-1960

Traces the fall of a young Black man in 1930s Chicago as his life loses all hope of redemption after he kills a white woman

 

 

Natural, The                                                      Author: Malamud, Bernard, 1914-1986

 

 

 

No-no Boy

Author: Okada, John

Ichiro, a Japanese-American, returns to Seattle, Washington after spending two years in an internment camp, and another two years in prison. -- Multnomah County Library, Portland, Oregon.

 

Obasan

Author: Kogawa, Joy, 1935-

Pearl Harbor changes life in Vancouver for Naomi Nakane when the government takes property from her relatives and interns them.


Optimist's Daughter, The

Author: Welty, Eudora, 1909-

Laurel Hand is forced to face her Southern past when she returns to Mississippi for her father's funeral

Our Mutual Friend                                                      

Author: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 

John Harmon will inherit a fortune if he marries a girl whose personality has been affected by her wealth, and friends and events conspire to prove her true worth.

   

Pere Goriot                                                         

Author: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850

Goriot spends his money on dowries for his two ungrateful daughters and then suffers humiliation at the hands of their husbands.

Phedre

Author:  Racine, Jean

Racine's drama is one of passion overpowering reason. Phedre lusts for her stepson Hippolytus, misogynist Hippolytus yearns for the royal captive Aricia, Oenone will do anything to protect her mistress Phedre's reputation, and Theseus will believe Oenone and exile his son Hippolytus rather than question Phedre. These are all errors of judgment that the gods will punish, regardless of the culprits' good intentions or previous good works.

Pnin

Author: Nabokov, Vladimir, 1899-1977

Pnin is a Russian instructor at a college, and, due to his solitary existence and his failure to grasp the subtleties of English, he has become a running joke to most of his colleagues. He is fussy, awkward, and usually clueless. The novel reads as episodes in Pnin's life: losing his lecture notes on a train he should never have been on; his weekend with other Russian immigrants; the crushing love and hope he experiences when his ex-wife visits him; a party he gives for his colleagues.

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

Author:  James Joyce

Masterpiece of semiautobiographical fiction reveals a powerful portrait of the coming of age of a young man of unusual intelligence, sensitivity and character. Telling portrayals of an Irish upbringing and schooling, the Catholic Church and its priesthood, Parnell and Irish politics, sexual experimentation and its aftermath, and problems with art and morality

 

Portrait of a Lady, The

Author: James, Henry, 1843-1916

Tells of the psychological impact of European culture upon an American girl, Isabel Archer, and of her unfortunate marriage

 

Power and the Glory, The                         Author: Greene, Graham, 1904-

The time is 1938 and the place is one of Mexico's southern states. They are undergoing a religious purge, arresting every Catholic priest they can find, charging them with treason and then killing them in a firing squad. Those that aren't caught get married or go into hiding. One such priest has tried to escape through the jungles, villages, and plantations. A policeman is after him and shooting a hostage in each village until someone turns in the priest.

Praisesong for the Widow                           Author: Marshall, Paule, 1929- 

While on her annual Caribbean cruise, Avey Johnson, a Black, middle-aged widow, finds her comfortable life unraveling and embarks on another voyage, an odyssey in search of spiritual and cultural regeneration  

Pride and Prejudice

Author: Austen, Jane, 1775-1817

Wealthy Mr. Darcy and spirited Elizabeth Bennett dislike each other at first sight, and each must contend with their pride and prejudices while Elizabeth's mother plots economically advantageous marriages for all her daughters.


Rabbit, Run

Author: Updike, John

Tired of the responsibility of married life, Rabbit Angstrom leaves his wife and home.

 

Return of the Native, The                  

Author: Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928

Clym's mother disapproves of his marriage, and when she comes to visit, Clym's wife is entertaining her lover and does not answer the door.

 

Scarlet Letter, The: a romance

Author: Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864

In early colonial Massachusetts, a young woman endures the consequences of her sin of adultery and spends the rest of her life in atonement.

The Sea Gull

Author:  Chekhov, Anton

In this tragic masterpiece portraying the inner anguish of a tormented artist who burns with unrequited love, the Russian playwright uses the death of a sea gull to symbolize the ruined hopes and dreams of his characters. Universally acclaimed as a prototype of twentieth-century drama, the play pioneered a new form of impressionistic realism

Shipping News, The

Author: Proulx, Annie

Quoyle retreats to Newfoundland with his daughters after the death of his unfaithful wife. There, as his family begins anew, Quoyle deals with his personal fears.

Siddhartha

Author: Hesse, Hermann, 1877-1962

Blends elements of psychoanalysis and Asian religions to probe an Indian aristocrat's efforts to renounce sensual and material pleasures and discover ultimate spiritual truths

Sister Carrie

Author: Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945

Young Carrie Meeber leaves home for the first time and experiences work, love, and the pleasures and responsibilities of independence in late-nineteenth-century Chicago and New York.

Six Characters in Search of an Author

Author:  Pirandello, Luigi

This 1921 intellectual comedy contrasts illusion with reality by introducing 6 individuals to a bare stage occupied by actors in rehearsal. Proclaiming themselves the incomplete creations of an author’s imagination, the six demand dialog for the story of their lives. A classic dramatic exploration of the many faces of reality. Publisher’s Note.

Song of Solomon

Author: Morrison, Toni

Macon Dead, Jr., called Milkman, son of the richest Negro in town, moves from childhood into early manhood, searching, among the disparate, mysterious members of his family, for his life and reality

Sons and Lovers

Author: Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930

Paul Morel's childhood and early manhood in the English midlands are deeply affected by his devotion to and concern for his dominating mother.

 

Sound and the Fury, The                       Author: Faulkner, William, 1897-1962

Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their Black servant

Stranger, The

Author: Camus, Albert, 1913-1960

An ordinary man is unwittingly caught up in a senseless murder in Algeria

 

Sula

Author: Morrison, Toni

At the heart of Sula is a bond between two women, a friendship whose intensity first sustains, then injures. Sula and Nel are both black, both smart, and both poor. Through their girlhood years, they share everything. All this changes when Sula gets out of the Bottom, the hilltop neighborhood where there hides a fierce resentment at the invisible line that cannot be overstepped.

Sun also Rises, The                                         

Author: Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961   

A story of expatriate Americans and British living in Paris after the First World War. 

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: a pure woman

Author: Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928

The son in the family for which Tess Durbeyfield works assaults her, and she has a child who dies in infancy, but her husband is unforgiving.

To the Lighthouse

Author: Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941

An English family's complex lives are followed and picked up again after a ten year hiatus in order to explore the effects of time

 

Their Eyes were Watching God: a novel

Author: Hurston, Zora Neale

Meet the unforgettable Janie Crawford, an articulate African-American woman in the 1930s. Traces Janie's quest for identity, through three marriages, on a journey to her roots.


Things Fall Apart

Author: Achebe, Chinua

Traces the growing friction between village leaders and Europeans determined to save the heathen souls of Africa. But its hero, a noble man who is driven by destructive forces, speaks a universal tongue.

 

Tom Jones

Author: Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754

In 1745, Tom Jones experiences a variety of situations resulting from his love for a young girl.

 

Turn of the Screw, The

Author: James, Henry, 1843-1916

The story unfolds with the arrival of a new governess at a remote country estate. She has been hired by the uncle of two young orphans to take complete charge of the children's lives and upbringing. Her first peaceful weeks are disturbed by the apparition of the ghosts of two evil servants who once served in the house.

 

Vanity Fair: a novel without a hero

Author: Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863

Becky Sharp and her husband stand in contrast to the lives of Dobbin and Amelia in this revelation of societal classes.

Victory: an island tale

Author: Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924

Skeptic Axel Heyst, a Swedish baron, attempts to remain detached from the people and events surrounding his life on a South Seas island, but his rescue of a young English girl from an exploitive innkeeper draws him out of his isolation. Movie tie in. 17,500 first printing.

Warden, The

Author:  Trollope, Anthony

The warden interacts with citizens in the cathedral town of Barchester during the 19th century.

Wide Sargasso Sea

Author: Rhys, Jean

In a prequel to Jane Eyre, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway lives in Dominica and Jamaica in the 1830s before she travels to England, becomes Mrs. Rochester, and goes mad.

Winter in the Blood

Author: Welch, James, 1940-

A troubled 32-year-old Blackfoot Indian returns home to Montana, even though he feels he doesn't belong there. -- Multnomah County Library, Portland, Oregon.

 

Wise Blood

Author: O'Connor, Flannery, 1925-1964

The passengers on the train to Taulkinham show mixed reactions when Haze questions their belief in Jesus

 

Women in Love

Author: Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930

Set in industrial England in the days surrounding World War I, the story of two sisters and their lovers--one a mining tycoon, the other a school inspector--interweaves the author's perennial themes of love, sex, and death.

 

Wuthering Heights

Author: Brontë, Emily, 1818-1848

When Mr. Lockwood has an encounter with the spirit of Catherine Linton at the home of the unsociable Heathcliff, he hears the story of the tempestuous love affair between Catherine and Heathcliff.



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