Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent". Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his 16-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins:If you really want to he...more

A collection of brilliant, sad, and influential stories that includes favorites like "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," "Teddy," and "For Esmé, with Love and Squalor," as well as the underrated gem, "Just Before the War With the Eskimos." Almost invariably, Salinger's tormented characters are trying to search for some sort of peace within a hell that...more

This is a collection of nine exceptional short stories from the author of "The Catcher in the Rye", J D Salinger. The book includes two of Salinger's most famous and critically acclaimed pieces, which helped to establish him among contemporary literary greats. The title story - a soldier's recollection of his meeting with a young girl, Esme, before...more

Two long short stories first published in the "New Yorker" in the 1950s, "Raise High the Roof Beam", "Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction" are each narrated by writer Buddy Glass, a character often said to be a portrait of the author himself. Both are stream of consciousness narratives, focusing on the life of Seymour, the eldest Glass brother ...more