20th Century's Best Books

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20th Century's Best Books includes Interview with the Vampire (2000), Roots (2007), Perfume (1994), Waste Land (2006), The Velveteen Rabbit (2007).

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Interview with the Vampire

release date: Jan 01, 2000
Interview with the Vampire
2 cassettes / 3 hours
Read by F. Murray Abraham
Also available on Compact Disk

Interview with the Vampire is a novel that evokes the brilliance, the decadence, the horror of The Vampire's world - as he pours out the erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead.  It is the first of the famous "Chronicles of the Vampires" by Anne Rice.

"From the beginning we are seduced, hypnotized by the voice of the vampire."
--Chicago Tribune

"A supernatural thriller raised to the level of literature."
-- Philadelphia Inquirer

"If you surrender, you will find that you have surrender to enchantment, as if in a voluptuous dream."
-- Boston Globe

Roots

release date: Oct 01, 2007
Roots
[*ABRIDGED -- Audiobook CD Edition]
[Read by Avery Brooks]

One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn't been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. -- Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of Americas past. Over the years, both Roots and Alex Haley have attracted controversy, which comes with the territory for trailblazing, iconic books, particularly on the topic of race. Some of the criticism results from whether Roots is fact or fiction and whether Alex Haley confused these two issues, a subject he addresses directly in the book. There is also the fact that Haley was sued for plagiarism when it was discovered that several dozen paragraphs in Roots were taken directly from a novel, The African, by Harold Courlander, who ultimately received a substantial financial settlement at the end of the case. -- But none of the controversy affects the basic issue. Roots fostered a remarkable dialogue about not just the past, but the then present day 1970s and how America had fared since the days portrayed in Roots.

Perfume

release date: Jun 01, 1994
Perfume
'In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages . . . ' Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in a Parisian slum and abandoned on the streets, discovers he has an extraordinary - near superhuman - sense of smell. As he sniffs his way across France, this gift is exploited by Grenouille to make the world's most marvellous perfumes. Yet in seeking perfection in his experiments, he realises that a vital ingredient is missing for the perfect scent: innocence. And in order to get the ingredient he needs, he must capture it - whatever the price. 'Ingenious and totally absorbing.' Daily Telegraph

Waste Land

release date: Jan 01, 2006
Waste Land

This volume brings together the full contents of Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Poems (1920), and The Waste Land (1922), together with an informative introduction and a selection of background materials. Included as well are two of Eliot's most influential essays, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) and “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921).

As with other volumes in this series, the material appearing here is for the most part drawn from The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, acclaimed as “the new standard” in the field. Appendices include a wide range of contextual materials pertaining to Modernism; writings by Ezra Pound, H.D., and Mina Loy; reviews of The Waste Land; art by Wyndham Lewis; and excerpts from essays by Virginia Woolf and others.

The Velveteen Rabbit

release date: Jan 01, 2007
The Velveteen Rabbit

This title is suitable for ages 4-8. An all-time favorite with children, Margery Williams Bianco`s " The Velveteen Rabbit" is sure to give you and your child great reading enjoyment. This book is certain to become a reading time favorite.

House of Mirth

release date: Jan 01, 1999
House of Mirth
A literary sensation when it was published by Scribners in 1905, The House of Mirth quickly established Edith Wharton as the most important American woman of letters in the twentieth century. The first American novel to provide a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's aristocracy, it is the story of the beautiful and beguiling Lily Bart and her ill-fated attempt to rise to the heights of a heartless society in which, ultimately, she has no part.

Watchmen

release date: Jan 01, 1995
Watchmen
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Exceptional graphic artwork brings to life the story of the Watchmen as they race against time to find a killer, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Northern Lights

release date: Jul 01, 2002
Northern Lights
Lyra Belaqua is content to run wild among the scholars of Jordan College, with her daemon familiar Pantalaimon always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle-a struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armored bears. And as she hurtles toward danger in the cold, far North, young Lyra never suspects the shocking truth: She alone is destined to win, or to lose, this more-than-mortal battle.

Fight Club

release date: Jan 01, 2008
Fight Club
Every weekend, in basements and parking lots across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded for as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on a world where cancer support groups have the corner on human warmth.

As I Lay Dying

release date: Jan 30, 1991
As I Lay Dying

“I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall.” —William Faulkner on As I Lay Dying
 
As I Lay Dying is Faulkner's harrowing account of the Bundren family's odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn  by each of the family members—including Addie herself—as well as others the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. Considered one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama, As I Lay Dying is a true 20th-century classic.

This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.

Trial

release date: Jan 01, 2007
Trial
The Trial, reinvented in this graphic novel, is the chilling and bleakly amusing tale of Joseph K, a man arrested for reasons that are never revealed and who maintains his innocence in the face of the judicial process. Kafka's works have come to embody the mix of absurd, surreal and mundane which have given rise to the adjective kafkaesque. The Eye Classics series transforms some of the most important European and world classics into graphic novels, making them accessible to a wide audience.

Goodnight Moon

Goodnight Moon

In a great green room, tucked away in bed, is a little bunny. "Goodnight room, goodnight moon." And to all the familiar things in the softly lit room—to the picture of the three little bears sitting in chairs, to the clocks and his socks, to the mittens and the kittens, to everything one by one—he says goodnight.

In this classic of modern children's literature, beloved by generations of readers and listeners, the quiet poetry of the words and the gentle, lulling illustrations combine to make a perfect book for the end of the day.

Steppenwolf.

Steppenwolf.
Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. With its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Hesses best-known and most autobiographical work, originally published in English in 1929, Steppenwolf continues to speak to our souls and is a classic of modern literature.

Things Fall Apart

release date: Jan 01, 2009
Things Fall Apart
First published in 1958, this is the story of a strong man whose life is dominated by fear and anger. It is also a social document, recounting the impact of colonialism and Christianity on the life of an African tribe - the Ibo - in turn-of-the-century Nigeria.

The Godfather

release date: Jan 01, 1997
The Godfather
When Mario Puzo's blockbuster saga, The Godfather, was first published in 1969, critics hailed it as one of the greatest novels of our time, and "big, turbulent, highly entertaining." Since then, The Godfather has gone on to become a part of America's national culture, as well as a trilogy of landmark motion pictures. Now, in this newly-repackaged 30th Anniversary Edition, readers old and new can experience this timeless tale of crime for themselves.From the lavish opening scene where Don Corleone entertains guests and conducts business at his daughter's wedding...to his son, Michael, who takes his father's place to fight for his family...to the bloody climax where all family business is finished, The Godfather is an epic story of family, loyalty, and how "men of honor" live in their own world, and die by their own laws.

Mrs Dalloway

release date: Jan 01, 2006
Mrs Dalloway
Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence. Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide.

Call of the Wild

release date: Jun 01, 1993
Call of the Wild
Taken from a kindly owner, Buck is forced into the perilous life of a sled dog in the treacherous Yukon Territory during the Klondike gold rush. Presented in comic book format.

The Crucible

release date: Aug 01, 1989
The Crucible
Note: This book is an analysis of the play only and does not include the original text of the play.

Here, especially for high school students, is an analysis and summary of Arthur Miller's famous play. Titles in the Literature Made Easy Series analyze novels and plays found in most school curricula. More than mere plot summaries, these books explain themes, analyze characters, and discuss each author's unique writing style, mastery of language, and command of his material. Books also feature "Mind Maps," diagrams that summarize a work's most important details as a way to help students focus ideas for exams and term papers.

Flowers for Algernon

release date: Apr 01, 1995
Flowers for Algernon
Oscar-winning film Charly starring Cliff Robertson and Claire Bloom-a mentally challenged man receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Princess Bride

release date: Jan 01, 1987
Princess Bride

William Goldman's modern fantasy classic is a simple, exceptional story about quests—for riches, revenge, power, and, of course, true love—that's thrilling and timeless.

 

Anyone who lived through the 1980s may find it impossible—inconceivable, even—to equate The Princess Bride with anything other than the sweet, celluloid romance of Westley and Buttercup, but the film is only a fraction of the ingenious storytelling you'll find in these pages. Rich in character and satire, the novel is set in 1941 and framed cleverly as an “abridged” retelling of a centuries-old tale set in the fabled country of Florin that's home to “Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passions.”

Where the Sidewalk Ends

Where the Sidewalk Ends

Where the Sidewalk Ends turns forty! Celebrate with this anniversary edition that features an eye-catching commemorative red sticker. This classic poetry collection, which is both outrageously funny and profound, has been the most beloved of Shel Silverstein's poetry books for generations.

Where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein's world begins. There you'll meet a boy who turns into a TV set and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.

Shel Silverstein's masterful collection of poems and drawings is one of Parent & Child magazine's 100 Greatest Books for Kids. School Library Journal said, "Silverstein has an excellent sense of rhythm and rhyme and a good ear for alliteration and assonance that make these poems a pleasure to read aloud."

Shel Silverstein's incomparable career as a children's book author and illustrator began with Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. In 1964, Shel's creativity continued to flourish as four more books were published in the same year—Don't Bump the Glump!, A Giraffe and a Half, Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?, and the beloved classic The Giving Tree. Later he continued to build his remarkable body of work with Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, Every Thing On It, The Missing Piece, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, and Runny Babbit.

Supports the Common Core State Standards.

Blood Meridian (Naxos Contemporary Classics)

release date: May 05, 1992
Blood Meridian (Naxos Contemporary Classics)
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

Publisher's Note: The 25th Anniversary Edition has been reset, causing the text to reflow. Page references based on earlier editions will no longer apply, so Vintage Books has compiled the following chart as a conversion aid. Download the chart by copying and pasting the following link into your browser:
http://knopfdoubleday.com/marketing/BloodMeridianPageReference.pdf

Cat's Cradle

Cat's Cradle
The setting for this relatively short novel is the Caribbean Island of San Lorenzo, and it is here that we meet Felix Hoenikker, a physicist and one of the fathers of the atomic bomb.

He has just made another discovery -- "ice nine" -- a substance that can turn all the liquid in the world into a solid block of ice.

Supporting characters include a crazy religious prophet, a bicycle salesman from Indiana, a Caribbean beauty and her dictator father.

The Hiding Place

release date: Jan 01, 2011
The Hiding Place
“I pray that God forgive them...”

Corrie Ten Boom stood naked with her older sister Betsie, watching a concentration camp matron beating a prisoner. “Oh, the poor woman,” Corrie cried. “Yes. May God forgive her,” Betsie replied. And, once again, Corrie realized that it was for the souls of the brutal Nazi guards that her sister prayed.

Both woman had been sent to the camp for helping the Jews. Christ's Spirit and words were their guide; it was His persecuted people they tried to save—at the risk of their own lives; it was His strength that sustained them through times of profound horror.

Here is a book aglow with the glory of God and the courage of a quiet Christian spinster whose life was transformed by it. A story of Christ's message and the courage woman who listened and lived to pass it along—with joy and triumph!

To the Lighthouse

release date: Jan 01, 2000
To the Lighthouse
This reading of Virginia Woolf's most celebrated novel is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction, a survey of the novel's critical reception, notes, bibliography and textual variants. It should be useful to students of modern literature at all levels.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

release date: Jun 01, 1997
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Don't panic! You're not timetripping! It's the tenth anniversary of the publication of Douglas Adams's zany, best-selling novel, and to celebrate Harmony is reissuing a special edition of this cult classic!By now the story is legendary. Arthur Dent, mild-mannered, out-to-lunch earth-ling, is plucked from his planet by his friend Ford Prefect just seconds before it was demolished to make way for a hyper-space bypass. Ford, posing as an out-of-work actor, is a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Together the gruesome twosome begin their now-famous inter-galactic journey through time, space and best-sellerdom.For Hitchhiker fanatics (you know who you are!) who've read the books, seen the television program, and listened to the radio show, as well as newcomers to Douglas Adams's unique universe -- remember -- don't panic, don't forget to bring a towel, and don't forget to celebrate The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's tenth anniversary by wearing your bathrobe.

Blindness

release date: Jan 01, 2005
Blindness
A city is hit by an epidemic of white blindness which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangersamong them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tearsthrough the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of mans worst appetites and weaknessesand mans ultimately exhilarating spirit. This is the stunningly powerful novel of mans will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Early Works of James Joyce

release date: Jan 01, 2003
Early Works of James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel and best selling masterpiece by James Joyce. It depicts the formative years in the life of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and a pointed allusion to the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology, Daedalus.

Sophie's Choice

release date: Dec 01, 2003
Sophie's Choice
In this extraordinary novel, Stingo, an inexperienced twenty-two year old Southerner, takes us back to the summer of 1947 and a boarding house in a leafy Brooklyn suburb. There he meets Nathan, a fiery Jewish intellectual; and Sophie, a beautiful and fragile Polish Catholic. Stingo is drawn into the heart of their passionate and destructive relationship as witness, confidant and supplicant. Ultimately, he arrives at the dark core of Sophie's past: her memories of pre-war Poland, the concentration camp and - the essence of her terrible secret - her choice.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

release date: Jan 01, 1993
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' first appeared in Rolling Stone in 1971. Highly acclaimed, it is a fictionalised account of the author's drug-induced rampage in Las Vegas whilst on a long weekend trip with his attorney.
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