100 Best Novels

One of a series of titles first published by Faber between 1930 and 1990, and in a style and format planned with a view to the appearance of the volumes on the bookshelf. Flannery O'Connor's first novel concerns a man who, released from the armed services, returns to the evangelical Deep South.

Quentin Compson and Shreve, his Harvard room-mate, are obsessed by the tragic rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen. As a poor white boy, Sutpen was turned away from a plantation owner's mansion by a negro butler. From then on, he was determined to force his way into the upper echelons of Southern society. His relentless will ensures his ambitions are soon realised; land, marriage, children. But in after the chaos of Civil War, secrets from his own past threaten to destroy everything he has worked for.

2 cassettes / 3 hours
Read by Lynn Whitfield

Beloved is also available Unabridged, read by the author, Toni Morrison


"An extraordinary novel." -The New York Times

Toni Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel brings the unimaginable experience of slavery into our comprehension.  Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave, who has risked her life in order to wrench herself from  living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad.  Sethe, who now lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing apparition who calls herself Beloved.

Profoundly affecting, this is one of Toni Morrison's greatest novels - a dazzling and spellbinding achievement.

Owen Meany, the only child of a New Hampshire granite quarrier, believes he is God's instrument; he is.
This is John Irving's most comic novel, yet Owen Meany is Mr. Irving's most heartbreaking character.
"Roomy, intelligent, exhilarating and darkly comic...Dickensian in scope....Quite stunning and very ambitious."
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"John Irving is an abundantly and even joyfully talented storyteller."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOKR EVIEW

Spoiled Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara never stops loving the married Ashley Wilkes even as she faces the hardships of life during the Civil War and the changes brought about by Reconstruction. Reprint.

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, "Gravity's Rainbow" is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's "Ulysses" was to the first.

Nevil Shute's bestselling novel of love, courage, and unfailing faith in humanity. Her time in occupied Malaya inured Jean Paget to illness, cruelty and death. Yet it was there that she first heard of Alice Springs, and fell in love with the gentle Australian and his strange tales.

Luna is an open penal colony and the regime is a harsh one. Not surprisingly, revolution against the hated authority is planned. But the key figures in the revolt are an unlikely crew: Manuel Garcia O'Kelly, an engaging jack of all trades, the beautiful Wyoming Knott - and Mike, a lonely computer who likes to make up jokes...

An exploration of the eternal human struggle between the human individual and the state offers the first installment of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and features an introduction by the author's heir, Leonard Peikoff. Reissue.

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

A beautiful illustrated boxed set collecting the two most popular Tolkien hardbacks -- the Centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings and the 60th Anniversary edition of The Hobbit, both illustrated by Alan Lee. Since they were first published, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have been two books people have treasured. Steeped in unrivalled magic and otherworldliness, these works of sweeping fantasy have touched the hearts of young and old alike. Between them, nearly 100 million copies have been sold around the world. And no editions have proved more popular than the two that were illustrated by award-winning artist, Alan Lee -- the Centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings and the 60th Anniversary edition of The Hobbit. Now, for the first time, these two beautifully illustrated hardbacks have been collected together into one deluxe boxed set. Readers will be able to follow the complete story of the Hobbits and their part in the quest for the Ring -- beginning with Bilbo's fateful visit from Gandalf and culminating in the dramatic climax between Frodo and Gollum atop Mount Doom -- while also enjoying over seventy full-page colour paintings and numerous illustrations which accompany this epic tale.

When The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand's daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This edition contains a special afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff, which includes excerpts from Ayn Rand's own notes on the making of The Fountainhead. As fresh today as it was then, here is a novel about a hero—and about those who try to destroy him.

 

Tells the story of an American couple's fated attempt to regenerate their strange and troubled marriage as they journey through North Africa. The book is a portrayal of a man's physical and mental disintegration and is written by the author of Midnight Mass.

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.

Hovedpersonen er en ung forfatter, der fører en tilfældig tilværelse blandt Londons bohemer, men han drømmer om at skrive en stor roman

A tragic love story.

HARDCOVER 227 pp ISBN 0-670-40176-5

Jack Kirkland

adapted from the novel by Erskine Caldwell

Full Length, Comedy

Characters: 6 male, 5 female

Exterior Set

The story of the Lester's of "Tobacco Road", of father Jeeter who dreams of planting a garden beside his ramshackle home, the idiotic son who marries a ravenous evangelist and drives an automobile to destruction, a daughter with strong sexual inclinations, another who is sold into marriage for $7. This heralded play ran for over 3,000 performances in it's intial Broadway production.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Winner of the Booker of Bookers Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India's independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India's 1,000 other “midnight's children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight's Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

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.

This novel recounts the interrelated early 20th-century lives of the families of a New Rochelle manufacturer, an immigrant socialist, and a Harlem musician and their involvement with Evelyn Nesbit, Henry Ford, Houdini, Morgan, Freud, Zapata, and other period notables.

Y lo que tuve ante mí durante todo el tiempo fueron aquellos ojos azules, infantiles, que miraban de frente a los míos, aquel joven rostro, los anchos hombros, la frente abierta y bronceda con una línea blanca las raíces de un mata de pelo rubio: una apariencia que a primera vista daba a que aflorasen todo tipo de simpatías...

First published in 1979, A Bend in the River is a profound and richly observed novel of the politics and society of postcolonial Africa. Salim, a young Indian man, moves to a town on a bend in the river of a recently independent nation. As Salim strives to establish his business, he comes to be closely involved with the fluid and dangerous politics of the newly created state, the remnants of the old regime clashing inevitably with the new. "Naipaul's novels are about the struggle for existence in a world still colonial despite the breakup of the old Western empires," wrote Alfred Kazin.
   A Bend in the River is demonstration of V. S. Naipaul's status as one of the world's best novelists. The New York Times Book Review noted: "For sheer abundance of talent there can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses V. S. Naipaul." Elizabeth Hardwick, who has provided a
The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with afford-
able hardbound editions of impor-
tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-
fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring
as its emblem the running torch-
bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-
gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

For a complete list of titles,
see the inside of the jacketnew Introduction for this Modern Library edition, has said, "The sweep of Naipaul's imagination, the brilliant fictional frame that expresses it, are in my view without equal today."

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1971, Angle of Repose has also been selected by the editorial board of the Modern Library as one of the hundred best novels of the twentieth century.
        
Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, husbands and wives. Set in many parts of the West, Angle of Repose is a story of discovery--personal, historical, and geographical--that endures as Wallace Stegner's masterwork: an illumination of yesterday's reality that speaks to today's.

        "Angle of Repose is a long, intricate, deeply rewarding novel," wrote William Abrahams in the Atlantic Monthly. "[It] is neither the predictable historical-regional Western epic, nor the equally predictable four-decker family saga, the Forsytes in California, so to speak. . . . For all [its] breadth and sweep, Angle of Repose achieves an effect of intimacy, hence of immediacy, and, though much of the material is 'historical,' an effect of discovery also, of experience newly minted rather than a pageantlike re-creation. . . . Wallace Stegner has written a superb novel, with an amplitude of scale and richness of detail altogether uncommon in contemporary fiction."


"Angle of Repose is a novel about Time, as much as anything--about people who live through time, who believe in both a past and a future. . . . It reveals how even the most rebellious crusades of our time follow paths that our great-grandfathers' feet beat dusty."
        --Wallace Stegner

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Augie's nonconformity leads him into an eventful, humorous, and sometimes earthy way of life.

The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece-a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire. Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities. At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh's early satiric explorations and reveals him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity.

A Room with a View
E. M. FORSTER (1879 - 1970)

A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the repressed culture of Edwardian era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. Merchant-Ivory produced an award-winning film adaptation in 1985.

The Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century (1998).

For Kim, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, India is an exotic, richly coloured, magical land with an exciting array of landscapes, people and cultures. From life as a street vagabond in Lahore, to companion and devotee of an old Tibetan lama, Kim learns to find a new vision amid the kaleidoscopic scenes before him, a vision that unites, not divides, and promotes harmony not discord. Kim is a masterly novel from an expert craftsman and presents an enduring and powerful portrait of India under the Raj.