When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote THE GREAT GATSBY in the early 1920s, the American Dream was already on the skids. Originally based on the idea that the pursuit of happiness involves not only material success but moral and spiritual growth, the dream had by Fitzgerald's time become increasingly focused on money and pleasure--a phenomenon the high-liv...more
Leo Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE is an epic war novel, an exploration of family ties, and a manifesto of Tolstoy's beliefs. Against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in the early 1800s, WAR AND PEACE spans the social spectrum, depicting three families--their love affairs, intellectual struggles, and personal conflicts--and the cataclysmic ...more
Jane Austen’s first novel, Northanger Abbey—published posthumously in 1818—tells the story of Catherine Morland and her dangerously sweet nature, innocence, and sometime self-delusion. Though Austen’s fallible heroine is repeatedly drawn into scrapes while vacationing at Bath and during her subsequent visit to Northanger Abb...more
Acknowledged as “America’s most popular suspense novelist”(Rolling Stone ) and as one of today’s most celebrated and successful writers, Dean Koontz has earned the devotion of millions of readers around the world and the praise of critics everywhere for tales of character, mystery, and adventure that strike to the core of what it means to b...more
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. . . With these words the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room in the...more