105 results for "World Literature"

World War Z: an oral story of the Zombie War

Brooks, Max
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched firsthand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.
Duckworth 2006 342 pages

Dating game

Steel, Danielle
In her 57th bestselling novel, Danielle Steel brilliantly chronicles the roller-coaster ride of dating the second time around—and tells a captivating story of the surprises one woman encounters when she’s thrust into the terrifying, exhilarating world of the Dating Game . Paris Armstrong never saw it coming. With two grown children and a lovely home in Connecticut, Paris was happy with her marriage, her family, her life. So when her husband of twenty-four years said they needed to talk, Paris couldn’ t imagine what he was about to say. “I want a divorce,” Peter tells her. Just like that, the husband she adored had dumped her for a younger woman. And just like that, Peter and his thirty-one-year-old lover had made their plans for their future, leaving Paris to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. Within days, Peter was gone. And Paris was left to figure out how she intended to get through the next day, let alone the rest of her life. The task could not have been more painful. First came the tears. Then the excruciating attempts by well-meaning friends to “fix her up” with men who paled in comparison to Peter. Worse yet, she still loved him. Finally, Paris realized she was in a fight for her very survival. Drastic measures were called for. Even her shrink agreed. It was time to move—as far away as possible, just after Peter remarried. Paris had never felt, or been, more alone. Saying good-bye to the world she knew and loved, Paris heads west, to San Francisco, and discovers being single in a world full of men who were too young, too old, too married, or too good to be true. For Paris, the list seemed endless...the charming commitment-phobe...the drunken Neanderthal...the young Frenchman—so adorably sexy she almost forgot about his age, and did, for a while. With her dating track record veering between disappointing and disastrous, and her daughter now engaged to a man Paris’s age, Paris finally comes to the conclusion that romance is not in her future. That’s when her small circle of offbeat, loving friends becomes more important than ever before. And a decision Paris makes only for herself changes her life once more. The secret, she discovers finally, is in finding the gifts in life’s unexpected twists and turns, and turning despair into freedom and loss into joy. In a poignant, wickedly funny novel about getting dumped and getting over it, about tackling life with both courage and laughter, Danielle Steel explores what it means to start over, whether you wanted to or not, and finding something better than you had before.
Delacorte Press 2003-03-04 370 pages

Bittersweet

Steel, Danielle
In Bittersweet , Danielle Steel has written a novel for our times, a story of choices and new beginnings. India Taylor lived in a world of manicured lawns and neatly maintained calendars: a merry-go-round of Little League, piano lessons, and Cape Cod summer vacations. With four wonderful children, India believed in commitment and sacrifice, just as she believed in Doug, the man she married 17 years before. For India, this was the promise she made, the life she had chosen--not the award-winning career as a photojournalist she once had. It was a choice she had never truly regretted. Until she begins to regret it with all her heart. India couldn't pinpoint the exact moment. Perhaps it was the last time her agent called, begging her to take an assignment Doug insisted she turn down. Or perhaps it was when Doug told her he thought of her as a companion and someone to take care of their kids, and not much more. At that moment, the price of the sacrifices she'd made began to seem high. And then, she met Paul Ward. A Wall Street tycoon married to a bestselling author, Paul lived life on his own terms, traveling the world on his own yacht. India hadn't planned to become Paul's friend. Anything more was unthinkable. Yet talking to Paul was so easy. India could share her dreams with him, and offer comfort when Paul suffers a heartbreak of his own. And while Paul urges India to reclaim her career, Doug is adamantly against it, determined to keep her tied to the home. But with Paul's encouragement, India slowly, painfully, begins to break free, and find herself again. Rediscovering her creativity and her courage, India uses Paul like a beacon on the horizon, sharing intimate phone conversations with a man half a world away, a man who never stops reminding her of all that is possible for her. India is changing, and nothing in her life will ever be the same again. Not her marriage. Not her friendship with Paul. And when India is presented with an irresistible opportunity, she makes a heart-wrenching decision, leaving a safe, familiar place-and the people she loves there-to move into the terror of the unknown. Bittersweet is her story, a story of freedom, of having dreams and making choices to find them. With unerring insight, Danielle Steel has created a moving portrait of a woman who dares to embark on a new adventure and the man who helps her get there. Her painful, exhilarating journey inspires us all.
Dell 2000-02-29 448 pages

Amazing Grace

Danielle Steel
On a warm May night in San Francisco, the Ritz-Carlton ballroom shimmers with crystal and silver as a glittering, celebrity-studded crowd gathers for a charity dinner dance. The evening is perfect-until, just minutes before midnight, the room begins to sway. Glass shatters. And as the lights go out, people begin to scream.... In the earthquake's aftermath, the lives of four strangers will converge....Sarah Sloane, the beautiful wife of a financial whiz, watches her perfect world fall to pieces.... Grammy-winning singer Melanie Free, the event's headliner, comes to a turning point in her life and career.... Photographer Everett Carson, a former war correspondent whose personal demons have demoted him to covering society parties, finds new purpose amid the carnage...and Sister Maggie Kent, a nun who normally works in jeans and high-tops with the homeless, searches through the rubble-and knows instantly that there is much work to be done....
Delacorte Press 2007 530 pages

A Mind of Her Own A Novel

Danielle Steel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Rising above the devastation of World War I, a young half-French, half-American woman remains true to her own independent spirit in this powerful historical novel by bestselling author Danielle Steel. Alexandra Bouvier is born in Paris in 1900, at the dawn of a new century. From an early age, she is encouraged to think for herself by her enlightened family: her father, a French doctor; her mother, an American nurse; and her maternal grandfather a highly regarded newspaperman back in the Midwest. At age fourteen, Alex’s comfortable life is upended as war erupts across Europe. Her parents follow their sense of duty to the front, performing triage at a field hospital and confronting the horrors of poison gas and trench warfare. The merciless fighting, coupled with the fast-spreading Spanish flu, wreaks havoc on the continent, as well as on Alex’s loved ones. By the time she is eighteen, she has suffered unimaginable losses. With her grandfather’s support, she attends the University of Chicago and decides to follow his footsteps into journalism. As a newspaper intern she meets reporter Oliver Foster, who is covering the gang wars sparked by Prohibition. He too has known devastating loss, and the two are drawn to each other, though both fear any attachment. As it turns out, Alex has good reason to be cautious. Danielle Steel’s sweeping historical novel is a story of resilience and the courage to open one’s heart—no matter how many times it’s been broken—and believe in oneself.
Random House 2025-04-29 336 pages

The Human Stain: A Novel – The PEN/Faulkner Award Winner of Identity, Race, and Scandal in 1990s America

Roth, Philip
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’ 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY “A master novelist's haunting parable about our troubled modern moment." —The Wall Street Journal “By turns unnerving, hilarious, and sad. . . . It is a book that shows how the public zeitgeist can shape, even destroy, an individual's life." —The New York Times “The best novel he has written.” —The Times Literary Supplement It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk’s secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled.
Mariner Books Classics 2026-05-26 448 pages

A God in ruins

Uris, Leon
Master storyteller and international bestselling author of Redemption, Trinity, and Exodus, Leon Uris once again brilliantly interweaves historical fact with gripping fiction in this powerful novel of politics, family, intrigue, love, and the passions that rule human lives. Spanning the decades from World War II to the 2008 presidential campaign, A God in Ruins is the unforgettable story of Quinn Patrick O'Connell, an honest, principled, and courageous man on the brink of becoming the second Irish Catholic President of the United States. In an era morally unmoored, rife with armed separatists and fundamentalist zealotry, Quinn, the last great liberal of the Rocky Mountains, emerges as America's hope to reclaim its great past and its promises of the future. But Quinn is a man with an explosive secret that can shatter his political ambitions and threaten his life--a secret buried for over a half century that even he does not know.... Returning home at the end of World War II a decorated and wounded hero, Daniel Timothy O'Connell had moved his young wife, Siobhan, from the crowded streets of Brooklyn to the golden mountains of Colorado. Building a successful life as cattle ranchers, Daniel and Siobhan had everything they wanted--except a child. Desperate, they turned to the Church and adopted a beautiful three-year-old of mysterious parentage, a charming little boy they named Quinn Patrick. In riveting prose, Leon Uris unfolds Quinn's life as he matures from a restless youth into a brave Marine undertaking a deadly undercover mission, and finally, into an earnest, intelligent, and thoughtful leader willing take on the most vicious and malevolently destructive forces threatening the country. Here, too, are the two beautiful women who have always loved him--Greer, the lover driven by ambition and passion, and Rita, the sensuous, adoring daughter of his friend and mentor, painter and philosopher Reynaldo Maldonado. Through the years Quinn has made some powerful enemies who are determined to destroy him, including presidential incumbent Thornton Tomtree. A conservative computer mogul who built an electronic empire out of his father's Rhode Island junkyard, Tomtree is a right-wing pragmatist who will court the most dangerous and deadly elements of society and risk America s safety to achieve his own ambitions. From America's victorious past to its shadowed future, from the grandeur of Colorado's mountains to the enclaves of private militias hidden deep in the canyons of the Southwest's Four Corners, A God in Ruins races to a powerful, unforgettable conclusion. A sweeping novel of a man, a life, and a nation, it vividly brings to life memorable characters that will indelibly touch the heart and mind and illuminates the major crisis facing America at the dawn of a new millennium.
HarperCollins 1999-05-19 483 pages

American Pastoral: A Novel

Roth, Philip
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE “One of the five best novels I have ever read, maybe the best. . . . It ranks with the greatest of American fiction." —Stephen King, The New York Times “An incandescent fiction. . . . Scintillates with more Rothian wit, paradox, eloquent tantrums, and absurd pitfalls than can be counted." —Los Angeles Times Book Review “The greatest of great American novels.” —Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times “Widely considered to be Roth's masterwork."—Esquire American Pastoral is an elegy for the American century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth’s protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father’s glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede’s beautiful American luck deserts him. For Swede’s adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandish act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the American berserk.
Mariner Books Classics 2026-05-26 512 pages

CHESS STORY

Zweig, Stefan
✨ A SMALL LITERARY MASTERPIECE ✨ Enter the fascinating world of Stefan Zweig's Chess Story, where obsession, isolation, and inner struggle are visualized on the most intellectual of battlefields: the chessboard. ✏ This edition with notes and foreword includes: ▶️ A new translation. ▶️ Notes to help you better understand the text. ▶️ A brief prologue that will give you the main keys. ✍️ Immerse yourself in a sharp and captivating narrative. Zweig masterfully handles the suspense and psychological construction of the characters, offering a story that, beyond a game, reflects human tensions and the resilience of the spirit.
Editorial Letra Minúscula 2024-04-22 84 pages

The future

Alderman, Naomi
Lai Zhen is about to die. As an Internet-famous survivalist, she's spent her life prepping for the end of the world. But now, desperate and cornered in a mall in Singapore, she's mad she might go out not knowing what the hell is going on. If she makes it out alive, what kind of a future will be waiting for her? Across the world, Martha Einkorn works the room at a gathering of mega-rich companies hell-bent securing a future just for them. Covert weapons, private weather, technological prophecy, when Martha fled her father's compound she may have left the cult behind, but if the apocalyptic warnings of his fox and rabbit sermon are starting to come true, how much future is actually left? Martha and Zhen's worlds are about to collide. While a few billionaires assured of their own safety lead the world to destruction, Martha's relentless drive and Zhen's insatiable curiosity could lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilization.[Bokinfo]
4th Estate 2024-08-29 416 pages

Brooklyn Crime Novel

Jonathan Lethem
Named a Best Book of the Year by: Boston Globe * New Yorker * NPR * PopMatters From the bestselling and award-winning author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn comes a sweeping story of community, crime, and gentrification, tracing more than fifty years of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood. "A blistering book. A love story. Social commentary. History. Protest novel. And mystery joins the whole together: is the crime 'time'? Or the almighty dollar? I got a great laugh from it too. Every city deserves a book like this." -- Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin On the streets of 1970s Brooklyn, a daily ritual goes down: the dance. Money is exchanged, belongings surrendered, power asserted. The promise of violence lies everywhere, a currency itself. For these children, Black, brown, and white, the street is a stage in shadow. And in the wings hide the other players: parents; cops; renovators; landlords; those who write the headlines, the histories, and the laws; those who award this neighborhood its name. The rules appear obvious at first. But in memory's prism, criminals and victims may seem to trade places. The voices of the past may seem to rise and gather as if in harmony, then make war with one another. A street may seem to crack open and reveal what lies behind its glimmering facade. None who lived through it are ever permitted to forget. Written with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit, Brooklyn Crime Novel is a breathtaking tour de force by a writer at the top of his powers. Jonathan Lethem, "one of America's greatest storytellers" (Washington Post), has crafted an epic interrogation of how we fashion stories to contain the uncontainable: our remorse at the world we've made.
HarperCollins Publishers 2024-09-24 384 pages

The Color of Hope A Novel

Danielle Steel
A beautiful American widow finds new life in France in this tender portrait from #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel. Following the unexpected death of her beloved husband, art gallery owner Samantha Thompson finds herself adrift in their Malibu beach house. Her three adult children—scattered from New York to London to Milan—are concerned for her well-being and encourage her to take a trip to Paris. Once abroad, an impulsive day trip from Paris to Biarritz leads Samantha to discover the charming medieval village of Arcangues in the Basque countryside, with its unique and iconic blue shutters and historic château. The château is the ancestral home of Xavier de Bonport, who is trapped in a loveless marriage and trying to dig himself out financially after a business failed due to the pandemic. He needs rental income as urgently as Samantha needs a refuge. With Xavier living in a smaller house on the property, Samantha begins to transform the château into a temporary home. As they each sense compassion and resilience in the other, as well as kindness, a friendship blossoms. Inspired by the stories of Xavier’s grandmother, who saved hundreds of Jewish children during World War II, Samantha considers fostering some children at the request of the local Dominican nuns, whose orphanage is filled to capacity. As a newfound family begins to fill the château, Samantha and Xavier wonder if their friendship is becoming something more. A poignant story of healing and new beginnings, The Color of Hope is an uplifting and unforgettable novel from the master, Danielle Steel.
Random House 2025-11-18 320 pages

Baron Wenckheim's homecoming

Krasznahorkai, László
WINNER OF THE 2025 NOBEL PRIZE Now in paperback, the capstone to Krasznahorkai’s four-part masterwork, and winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature Set in contemporary times, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming tells the story of a Prince Myshkin–like figure, Baron Béla Wenckheim, who returns at the end of his life to his provincial Hungarian hometown. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he longs to be reunited with his high-school sweetheart Marika. Confusions abound, and what follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men, and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town’s alternately drab and absurd existence. All along, the Professor―a world-famous natural scientist who studies mosses and inhabits a bizarre Zen-like shack in a desolate area outside of town?offers long rants and disquisitions on his attempts to immunize himself from thought. Spectacular actions are staged as death and the abyss loom over the unsuspecting townfolk.
New Directions Publishing 2025 576 pages

Flashlight

Choi, Susan
Short-listed for the Booker Prize Long-listed for the National Book Award "The first major American novel to be published this year." --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "Gorgeous . . . Almost impossibly heartbreaking." --Sam Worley, New York Magazine A Must-Read: The New York Times , New York Magazine, Time , The Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , The Boston Globe , Entertainment Weekly , USA Today , The Chicago Review of Books , Forbes , Literary Hub , and Town & Country "A major world writer . . . Choi is in thrilling command." ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Devastating." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post "Ranks among her best work." --Hamilton Cain, Los Angeles Times A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick A novel tracing a father's disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise . One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, is Korean, but was born and raised in Japan; he lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to North Korea. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her Midwestern family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne's illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences. But now it is just Anne and Louisa, Louisa and Anne, adrift and facing the challenges of ordinary life in the wake of great loss. United, separated, and also repelled by their mutual grief, they attempt to move on. But they cannot escape the echoes of that night. What really happened to Louisa's father? Shifting perspectives across time and character and turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Flashlight chases the shock waves of one family's catastrophe, even as they are swept up in the invisible currents of history. A monumental new novel from the National Book Award winner Susan Choi, Flashlight spans decades and continents in a spellbinding, heart-gripping investigation of family, loss, memory, and the ways in which we are shaped by what we cannot see.
Picador 2026-05-05 450 pages

Lone eagle

Steel, Danielle
Danielle Steel's fifty-first bestselling novel tells the story of an extraordinary man, the woman who loved him, and a bond so powerful it could never be broken. It is about finding the courage to let someone you love fly free.... The phone call came on a snowy December afternoon. Kate was certain it was Joe, the brilliant, visionary man who had been her soulmate, her driving force since the night they met, almost thirty-four years before. What she got was the one call she had never wanted, and didn't expect. As the snow continued to fall, Kate's mind drifted back, to the moment when she and Joe first met. She had been just seventeen and he was young, powerful, dazzling, and different from any man she'd ever known. It was just days before Christmas, 1940. The war is raging in Europe when Kate Jamison makes her debut in New York City. In a room filled with the scions of East Coast society and the leading political figures of the day, it is Joe Allbright who catches Kate's eye. At twenty-nine, Joe is the brilliant protege of Charles Lindbergh, and already a legend in flying circles for his record-breaking speed and state-of-the-art airplane designs. All Kate sees is a tall, strikingly handsome man who seems at once awkward and larger-than-life, like a shining star -- just out of reach. Joe, too, is caught off balance by his response to Kate, seeing in this beautiful young woman vitality and youth, the lifelong soulmate he never expected to find. As the months pass, they will meet again, forging a bond that will set the course of both their lives. Kate will go off to study at Radcliffe. Joe will skyrocket to fame in modern aviation. Joe's planes are his life, his passion. But irresistibly drawn to her, like moth to flame, he always comes back to Kate. Even after the long, dark years of World War II, when Kate was sure she had finally lost him completely, Joe returns. Never willing to stay, always needing to fly away. As planes are for him, Joe is the passion in her life. When the war is over, at twenty-four Kate wants marriage and a family. Joe wants the world, his limitless horizons, and the unique aviation empire he is building. Unwilling to wait any longer, Kate moves on with her life. But when a chance encounter brings them together again, the time has finally come to make a choice, one that will have profound consequences for them both for the rest of their lives. Against a vivid backdrop of war and thrilling innovation, Danielle Steel breathes life into history, weaving an intensely human story that spans three decades, of two intensely different people who, in spite of themselves, are irrevocably woven into the fabric of each other's lives. With rare insight and emotional power, she brings to life a tale of unconditional love, sacrifice, and compromise -- the joining of two remarkable halves into a single, far more powerful whole. It is a novel of extraordinary grace and compassion from a master storyteller, perhaps the best story she has told.
Delacorte Press 2001-04-10 408 pages

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: Insect or Human?, Awkward or Awesome?, Change of a Lifetime and a Twisted Tale (Classic Literature Books)

Kafka, Franz
METAMORPHOSIS by FRANZ KAFKA is one of the most haunting and iconic novellas of the twentieth century. First published in 1915, this unsettling story follows Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman who awakens one morning to discover he has inexplicably transformed into a giant insect. As his body mutates, so does his relationship with his family and the world around him—exposing themes of isolation, guilt, and existential dread. This literary classic has captivated generations of readers and continues to influence writers and artists across the globe. With its surreal premise and razor-sharp social commentary, Metamorphosis has inspired great minds like George Orwell, Albert Camus, Jorge Luis Borges, and Ray Bradbury. THIS DEFINITIVE EDITION FEATURES: A CLEAN, MODERN LAYOUT designed for readability A BOLD TYPOGRAPHIC COVER that reflects the story’s psychological tension THE UNABRIDGED AND UNALTERED TEXT of Kafka’s original masterpiece Perfect for fans of dystopian fiction, psychological horror, and philosophical literature, Metamorphosis remains as relevant and disturbing today as it was over a century ago. Rediscover one of the most important works of modern fiction—and enter the surreal world of FRANZ KAFKA, where transformation reveals the deepest corners of the human soul.
Independently published 2023-08-13 122 pages