Herman Finkelstein Collection (Library of Congress)
1) Tobacco road
Author
Language
English
Description
A tale of violence and sex among rural poor in the American South, the novel was highly controversial in its time. It is the story of Georgia sharecropper Jeeter Lester and his family, who are trapped by the bleak economic conditions of the Depression as well as by their own limited intelligence and destructive sexuality. Its tragic ending is almost foreordained by the characters' inability to change their lives. Caldwell's skillful use of dialect...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Driven by dreams of literary success, George Webber has left his provincial hometown to make his name as a writer in New York City. When his first novel is published, it brings him the fame he has sought, but it also brings the censure of his neighbors back home, who are outraged by his depiction of them. Unsettled by their reaction and unsure of himself and his future, Webber begins a search for a greater understanding of his artistic identity that...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.3 - AR Pts: 19
Lexile measure
760L
Language
English
Description
When she was only twenty-three, Carson McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She was very special, one of America's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition. This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl,...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.2 - AR Pts: 30
Lexile measure
950L
Language
English
Description
In the course of his wanderings from a Southern Negro college to New York's Harlem, an American black man becomes involved in a series of adventures. Introduction explains circumstances under which the book was written. Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity--powerfully imagined and written with a savage,...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
This is a powerful semi-autobiographical novel by an authentic man of genius, Thomas Wolfe - about the struggles and triumphs of an aspiring writer named George Webber in the glittering world of New York, about one young man's discovery of life and the world. It follows Webber from humble Southern beginnings to his arrival in The Big City to write. Then he meets Esther Jack, and things go as differently - but wonderfully so - as they possibly could....
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.1 - AR Pts: 71
Lexile measure
1100L
Language
English
Description
The epic tale of Scarlett O'Hara, her life, loves, and ultimate tragedy. Set against the background of the ante-bellum South, this novel chronicles the story of one family's destruction by the conflict between the states.
10) Saratoga trunk
Author
Language
English
Description
Saratoga Trunk unfolds the story of Clio Dulaine, an ambitious Creole beauty who more than meets her match in Clint Maroon, a handsome Texan with a head for business—and an eye for beautiful young women. Together they do battle with Southern gentry and Eastern society, but in their obsession to acquire all they've ever wanted, they fail to realize they already have all they'll ever need—each other.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.3 - AR Pts: 9
Lexile measure
900L
Language
English
Description
Twelve-year-old Frankie's brother will soon return to Georgia from Alaska to marry. Plotting to accompany the newlyweds on their honeymoon occupies much of Frankie's waking hours, while at the same time she is coping with the pressures of puberty and its effects on her body and mind.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.1 - AR Pts: 5
Lexile measure
1080L
Language
English
Description
"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.1 - AR Pts: 4
Lexile measure
940L
Language
English
Description
The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from...
14) Hiroshima
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 8.4 - AR Pts: 9
Lexile measure
1190L
Language
English
Description
On August 6th, 1945, a bomb with the explosive force of 12,500 tons of dynamite was shot into the heart of the Japanese metropolis of Hiroshima. Not only did the initial blast virtually topple the city, maiming and killing tens of thousands, but the radiation unleashed by the atomic bomb inflicted countless more with radiation poisoning that caused chronic sickness and even more gruesome deaths. Less than a year after the attack, journalist, John...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.9 - AR Pts: 25
Lexile measure
680L
Language
English
Description
The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man's fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman's stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath...