Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing... (more)

Of Love And Other Demons

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Sierva Mari+a7a, the neglected child of a rich plantation family, is locked in a convent because she is believed to be possessed by demons, and there she falls in love with the priest sent to exorcise her. Reprint. 100,000 first printing.

Women in Love

by D. H. Lawrence

A sequel to Lawrence's earlier novel The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love continues the story of the Brangwen sisters in the coal-mining town of Beldover. Based in part on Lawrence's own stormy marriage to German aristocrat Frieda von Richthofen, the tale is charged with intense feelings and psychological insights as it focuses on the relationships of the two sisters--Ursula, who deeply loves and eventually... (more)

Summer

by Edith Wharton

The child of mountain moonshiners, Charity Royall enjoys an affair with an educated young man from the city, but feels separated from the larger world by her drunken guardian and the overwhelming pressures of environment and heredity. Reissue.

The Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka

Acclaimed graphic artist Peter Kuper presents a brilliant, darkly comic reimagining of Kafka’s classic tale of family, alienation, and a giant bug. Kuper’s electric drawings—which merge American cartooning with German expressionism—bring Kafka’s prose to vivid life, reviving the original story’s humor and poignancy in a way that will surprise and delight readers of Kafka and graphic novels alike. “A brilliant... (more)

Gravity's Rainbow

by Thomas Pynchon

Novel by Thomas Pynchon, published in 1973. The sprawling narrative comprises numerous threads having to do either directly or tangentially with the secret development and deployment of a rocket by the Nazis near the end of World War II. Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop is an American working for Allied Intelligence in London. Agents of the Firm, a clandestine military organization, are investigating an apparent... (more)

Waiting for the Barbarians (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

Waiting for the Barbarians (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

by J. M. Coetzee

These deluxe editions are packaged with French flaps, acid-free paper, and rough front. "A real literary event."-- The New York Times Book Review "A story of profound beauty, clarity and eloquence, which even at its most melodramatic holds to a biblical nobility."-- Chicago Tribune Book World Other Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Heart of Darkness by Joseph... (more)

The Heart of the Matter

by Graham Greene

With a new introduction by James Wood Scobie, a police officer serving in a wartime west-African state, is distrusted — being scrupulously honest and immune to bribery. But then he falls in love, and in so doing, he is forced to betray everything he believes in, with drastic and tragic consequences.

The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Classics)

The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Classics)

by Saul Bellow

As soon as it first appeared in 1953, this gem by the great Saul Bellow was hailed as an American classic. Bold, expansive, and keenly humorous, The Adventures of Augie March blends street language with literary elegance to tell the story of a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Great Depression. A "born recruit," Augie makes himself available for hire by plungers, schemers, risk takers, and... (more)

Humboldt's Gift

by Saul Bellow

A chronicle of success and failure, this work is Bellow's tale of the writer's life in America. When Humboldt dies a failure in a seedy New York hotel, Charlie Citrine coping with the tribulations of his own success, begins to realize the significance of his own life.

All the King's Men

by Robert Penn Warren

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.

All Quiet on the Western Front

by Susan Van Kirk, A. W. Wheen, Erich Maria Remarque, Erich M. Remarqu, A. W. Wheen

ONE OF TWELVE TITLES IN VINTAGE'S A FORMAT WAR PROMOTION The Greatest Novel about the First World War and an International Bestseller All Quiet on the Western Front is probably the most famous anti-war novel ever written. The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war; under fire, on patrol, waiting in the... (more)

The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton

The text of Wharton's richly allusive Pulitzer Prize-winning 1921 novel of Old New York is accompanied by necessarily rigorous annotation. Contexts constructs the historical foundations of the novel, with documents on the "New York Four Hundred," elite social gatherings, and archery (the sport for daughters of the upper-crust), among others. Also featured in this section are contemporary reviews and some of... (more)

Henderson the Rain King

by Saul Bellow

Midnight's Children: A Novel

by Salman Rushdie

Introduction by Anita Desai

Beloved

by Toni Morrison

Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the decade. "A brutally powerful, mesmerizing story . . . read it and tremble."--People.

Love in the Time of Cholera

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermino Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months,... (more)

Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh's best-loved novel and the basis for the PBS television production, Brideshead Revisited, the epic story of a great Catholic family in a doomed aristocratic age.

White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction)

White Noise (Contemporary American Fiction)

by Don Delillo

Jack Gladney, a professor of Nazi history at a Middle American liberal arts school, and his family try to handle normal family life as a black cloud of lethal gaseous fumes threatens their town.

Lord of the Flies

by William Golding

14.5 Million copies sold to date The classic, startling, and perennially bestselling portrait of human nature-now available as a Premium Edition with a stunning new cover and re-set, easy-to-read text.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: penguin great books of the 20th century

A Novel of a Woman's Progression Into Insanity

by Sylvia Plath

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

by D. H. Lawrence

by Edith Wharton

by Franz Kafka

by Thomas Pynchon

by J. M. Coetzee

by Graham Greene

by Saul Bellow

by Saul Bellow

by Robert Penn Warren

by Susan Van Kirk, A. W. Wheen, Erich Maria Remarque, Erich M. Remarqu, A. W. Wheen

by Edith Wharton

by Saul Bellow

by Salman Rushdie

by Toni Morrison

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

by Evelyn Waugh

by Don Delillo

by William Golding