Special Collections
Teacher Recommended Reading: Grades 9-12
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Haunted House
by Peggy ParishLiza, Bill and Jed realize that something weird is happening in and around their new home. Nearly every morning they find mysterious messages. Strange footprints appear, lights flash and secret compartments pop open. Is John Blake's ghost responsible? If not, who is?
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
by Carson MccullersWith its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life.
When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph ConradLoosely based on Conrads firsthand experience of rescuing a company agent from a remote station in the heart of the Congo, the novel is considered a literary bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Hiroshima
by John HerseyMemories and tales from the survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. 37 years later, Hersey went back to Japan. The final chapter is what he found there.
The Hunt for Red October
by Tom ClancyDon't Miss the Original Series Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Starring John Krasinski!The #1 New York Times bestseller that launched the phenomenal career of Tom Clancy—a gripping military thriller that introduced the world to his unforgettable hero, Jack Ryan—nominated as one of America&’s best-loved novels by PBS&’s The Great American Read. Somewhere under the freezing Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision. The Red October is heading west. The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. The chase for the highly advanced nuclear submarine is on—and there&’s only one man who can find her... Brilliant CIA analyst Jack Ryan has little interest in fieldwork, but when covert photographs of Red October land on his desk, Ryan soon finds himself in the middle of a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek played by two world powers—a game that could end in all-out war.
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
by Margaret CravenA novel about the clash of the ancient culture versus the modern culture of the Indians of the Pacific Northwest.
Illusions
by Richard BachWhat if a Siddartha or a Jesus came into our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if I could meet him in person, if he were flying a biplane and landed in the same meadow with me? What would he say, what would he be like?
Invisible Man
by Ralph EllisonInvisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952.
The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.
Winner of the National Book Award
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë"Come to me-come to me entirely now," said he. "Make my happiness--I will make yours." Born into a poor family and raised by an oppressive aunt, young Jane Eyre becomes the governess at Thornfield Manor to escape the confines of her life. There her fiery independence clashes with the brooding and mysterious nature of her employer, Mr. Rochester. But what begins as outright loathing slowly evolves into a passionate romance. When a terrible secret from Rochester's past threatens to tear the two apart, Jane must make an impossible choice: Should she follow her heart or walk away and lose her love forever? Unabashedly romantic and utterly enthralling, Jane Eyre endures as one of the greatest love stories of all time. This must-have edition of a timeless classic is beautifully presented for a modern teen audience.
Johnny Tremain 75th Anniversary Edition
by Nathan Hale and Esther Hoskins ForbesThis striking 75th Anniversary edition of this Newbery Medal-winning historical fiction classic is updated with new jacket art and an illustrated foreword from author-illustrator Nathan Hale. Johnny Tremain is one of the finest historical novels ever written for children. To read this riveting novel is to live through the defining events leading up to the American Revolutionary War. Fourteen-year-old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith with a bright future, injures his hand in an accident, forcing him to look for other work. In his new job as a horse boy, he encounters John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Soon Johnny is involved in pivotal events from the Boston Tea Party to the shots fired at Lexington. For this anniversary edition, Nathan Hale brings his distinct graphic-novel storytelling to a new foreword.
Advisory: Bookshare has learned that this book offers only partial accessibility. We have kept it in the collection because it is useful for some of our members. Benetech is actively working on projects to improve accessibility issues such as these.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
by Jules VerneA team of explorers makes an expedition into a crater in Iceland which leads to the center of the earth and to incredible and horrifying discoveries.
The Joy Luck Club
by Amy TanAmy Tan’s beloved, New York Times bestselling tale of mothers and daughters
Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.
Jude the Obscure
by Thomas HardyBook Description Hardy's masterpiece traces a poor stonemason's ill-fated romance with his free-spirited cousin.
Julius Caesar
by William ShakespeareShakespeare's timeless tragedy of conspiracy and betrayal tells the story of the murder of Julius Caesar and the gruesome aftermath as Rome descends into a violent mob. This edition includes: An overview of Shakespeare's life, canon, and dramaturgy An introduction to the play by Barbara Rosen and William Rosen of the University of Connecticut Selections from Plutarch's Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, the source from which Shakespeare derived the play Also included are the following commentaries: Maynard Mack: The Modernity of Julius Caesar Coppelia Kahn: A Voluntary Wound Roy Walker: From Unto Caesar: A Review of Recent Productions Richard David: A Review of Julius Caesar (Royal Shakespeare, 1972) Ralph Berry: On Directing Shakespeare: An Interview with Trevor Nunn, Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company Peggy Goodman Endel: Julio Cesar: The 1986 Florida Shakespeare Festival Sylvan Barnet: Julius Caesar on the Stage and Screen
The Jungle
by Upton SinclairBack cover: Upton Sinclair's unflinching chronicle of crushing poverty and oppression set in Chicago in the early 1900s.
Kim
by Rudyard KiplingIt is the tale of an orphaned sahib and the burdensome fate that awaits him when he is unwittingly dragged into the Great Game of Imperialism.
Love's Labour's Lost
by William ShakespeareThe play opens with the King of Navarre and three noble companions, Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, taking an oath to devote themselves to three years of study, promising not to give in to the company of women - Berowne somewhat more hesitantly than the others. Berowne reminds the king that the princess and her three ladies are coming to the kingdom and it was suicidal for the King to agree to this law. The King denies what Berowne says, insisting that the ladies make their camp in the field outside of his court. The King and his men comically fall in love with the princess and her ladies.
Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert and Eleanor Marx-AvelingFrom inside flap: Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams
The Martian Chronicles
by Ray BradburyChronicles of man and Mars as man conquers Mars and Mars conquers man.
The Merchant of Venice
by William ShakespeareShakespearean play with two subplots 1) Antonio defaults on a loan from Shylock the Jew, who demands his life as bond 2) Portia must marry the man who passes a test her father arranged.
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
by Franz KafkaThe Metamorphosis is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. [This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 9-10 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
Moll Flanders
by Daniel DefoeMoll Flanders, Defoe's 18th Century classic novel, was "marketed" in its day in much the same way that a modern commercial novel might be - its title page promised the racy details of a woman's life spent in thievery and whoredom. The book is much more than this; it is a Puritan tale of sin, repentance, conversion, and redemption. It is also seen by many critics as a satirical and ironic picaresque novel with a twist (that being its female protagonist). On yet another level, it is a playful and beguiling social commentary set between the Puritan age (which saw humankind as fallen) and the Age of Reason in which humankind was seen as born innocent and good and corrupted by society. Taking center stage in this whorl of irony, humor, pathos, and religious faith is one Moll Flanders - both the most plausible sinner and the most pious repentant in English literature; arguably the most notorious heroine in the canon of fiction in the English language. She is as controversial today as when she first appeared in 1722.