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1) The pearl
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"For the diver Kino, finding a magnificent pearl means the promise of better life for his impoverished family. His dream blinds him to the greed and suspicions the pearl arouses in him and his neighbors, and even his loving wife cannot temper his obsession or stem the events leading to tragedy. Kino and his wife illustrate the fall from innocence of people who believe that wealth erases all problems"--P. [4] of cover.
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Classics - St. Charles Public Library
Novels of Power and Influence
OBD Banned Books Week (September) - Adult
U.S. Poet Laureates
Novels of Power and Influence
OBD Banned Books Week (September) - Adult
U.S. Poet Laureates
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this classic book is generally regarded as the finest novel ever written on American politics. It describes the career of Willie Stark, a back-country lawyer whose idealism is overcome by his lust for power.
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One of the greatest epic novels in history, Les Misérables is the moving story of Jean Valjean's struggle for redemption and his lifelong pursuit by Javert, a police detective determined to return Valjean to chains. Always one step ahead of Javert, Valjean encounters the tragic Fantine, and ultimately rescues Fantine's daughter, Cosette, from her wretched life with the Thénadiers, treating the child as his own as she comes of age in pre-revolutionary...
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Sent by his fiancée to seek her son who has run away with an entrancing Parisian woman, Lambert Strether finds himself nearly as bewitched by the culture and women of Europe as his would-be son-in-law. Strether gets chased or dragged across provincial France by a slew of influences intent either on drawing the pair of bachelors home to Boston or showing him the world, and winds up testing his patience along with his own illusions.
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Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s. The book is written with such keen empathy and understanding that to read it is to share fully in the gravity of the characters' situations. It both touches your heart deeply and inspires a renewed faith in the dignity of mankind. Cry, the Beloved Country...
8) Kim
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Classics - St. Charles Public Library
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
Historical Fiction Set in India
If you Like The Covenant of Water, try...
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Rudyard Kipling's epic rendition of the imperial experience in India is also his greatest long work. Born in India and growing into early manhood, Kim is the son of an Irish soldier born under British Imperial rule in 19th century India. Left in the care of a half-caste woman, Kim is free to explore the back allies and bazaars of Lahore. But when he meets with his father's old regiment he trades his native clothes for European suits and abandons his...
9) Lord Jim
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The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, "the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck." He also harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism--which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat,...
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When the miller Mr. Tulliver becomes entangled in lawsuits, he sets off a chain of events that will profoundly affect the lives of his family and bring into conflict his passionate daughter Maggie with her inflexible but adored brother Tom. As she grows older, Maggie's discovery of romantic love draws her once more into a struggle to reconcile familial and moral claims with her own desires. Strong-willed, compassionate, and intensely loyal, Maggie...
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Bunyan wrote the first part of "The pilgrim's progress" when he was in prison as a Baptist preacher. In his hands a pious tract is transformed into a work of imaginative literature which has been more widely read than any book in English except the Bible. Its influence, both indirectly on the English consciousness and directly on the literature that followed, has been immeasurable. The rich countryman's phrases that Bunyan borrowed or invented have...
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Now in paperback for the first time, here is the classic version of a car lover's fairy tale: You look into an old abandoned barn or garage or warehouse—and there's the car you've searched for your whole life. Here are the true stories of people who found their dream cars in the most unlikely places: A man finds one of three King Cobras ever built in a junkyard in South Carolina; another discovers a rare Delahaye in a barn in the former Czech...
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"Clyde Griffiths was born poor and is poorly educated, but his prospects begin to improve when he is offered a job by a wealthy uncle who owns a shirt factory. Soon he achieves a managerial position, and despite being warned to stay away from the women he manages, he becomes involved with Roberta, a poor factory worker who falls in love with him. At the same time, he catches the eye of Sondra, the glamorous socialite daughter of another factory owner,...
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This updated authoritative edition of the classic Hardy novel, which was published anonymously and first attributed to George Eliot, is set from Hardy's revised, unedited final draft of 1912 and features a new Introduction and Afterword. There is in England no more real or typical district than Thomas Hardy's imaginary Wessex, the scattered fields and farms of which were first discovered in Far from the Madding Crowd. It is here that Gabriel Oak observes...
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On its publication In 1964, John le Carre's The Spy Who Came In from the Cold forever changed the landscape of spy fiction. Le Carre combined the inside knowledge of his years in British intelligence with the skills of the best novelists to produce a story as taut as it is twisting, unlike any previously experienced, which transports us back to the shadowy years in the early 1960s when the Berlin Wall went up and the Cold War came to life. When the...
17) Satan's Diary
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What would happen if Satan came to earth in human form in order to lure helpless innocents to do his bidding—and found himself outdone at every turn by the inherent greed and depravity of humankind? That's the deliciously dark premise at the heart of Russian writer Leonid Andreyev's brilliant satire Satan's Diary. It's an engaging and surprisingly thought-provoking read that's well worth your time.
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During WWII, on board a ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, an event occurs unlike any that the United States Navy has ever experienced. A ship's captain is removed from his command by his executive officer in an apparent outright act of mutiny. As the trial of the mutineers unfold, it comes to light that Captain Queeg was mentally unstable, perhaps even insane. The Navy must then decide if the Caine Mutiny is a criminal act or an act of courage to save...
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A man's life can change in an instant. For Ben-Hur, a young Jewish aristocrat, that time comes when he accidentally knocks a roof tile onto a Roman official's head. He is condemned to the galleys, but the most fateful moment of his life is yet to come: the day he meets Jesus.
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