Embedded Files
** Rating Key **
Audience: A = Adult Audience | YA = YA Audience
Content: D = Death/Grief | L = Strong Language | MH = Mental Health |
P = Political/Social Issues | S = Sexual Content/Relationships | SU = Substance Use | V = Violence
Fiction
Fiction
Audience: A
Content: V
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
From the Publisher
*An international bestseller * Over 80 million copies sold worldwide * A PBS Great American Read Top 100 pick *
Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.
Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different--and far more satisfying -- than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.
Audience: A
Content: L, D, S, V
All the Pretty Horses (Border, Book 1) by Cormac McCarthy
From the Publisher
* National Book Award Winner * National Bestseller *
The first volume in the Border Trilogy, from the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road.
All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
Audience: A
Content: D, MH, P, S, SU
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
From the Publisher
Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring masterwork must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit
"A masterpiece. . . . One of the most prophetic dystopian works." --Wall Street Journal
Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching work of social commentary and a vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order--all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. "A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine" (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history's keenest observers of human nature and civilization.
This masterpiece of dystopian fiction, Brave New World, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as a thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, this science fiction classic likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.
Audience: YA
Content: D, P, V
Dune (Dune, Book 1) by Frank Herbert
From the Publisher
* Nebula Award Winner * Hugo Award Winner *
Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.
Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreides—who would become known as Muad'Dib—and of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition mankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.
A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.
Audience: YA
Content: D, V
The Fellowship of the Ring : being the first part of the lord of the rings (Lord of the Rings, Book 1) by J. R. R. Tolkien
From the Publisher
* Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read *
The opening novel of The Lord of the Rings -- the greatest fantasy epic of all time -- which continues in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
The dark, fearsome Ringwraiths are searching for a Hobbit. Frodo Baggins knows that they are seeking him and the Ring he bears -- the Ring of Power that will enable evil Sauron to destroy all that is good in Middle-earth. Now it is up to Frodo and his faithful servant, Sam, with a small band of companions, to carry the Ring to the one place it can be destroyed: Mount Doom, in the very center of Sauron's realm.
Audience: A
Content: D, P, V
The Metamorphosis by Kafka
From the Publisher
"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."
With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -though absurdly comic -meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction.
First published in 1915, Kafka's surreal novel about living in an indifferent universe has long been considered a seminal work of Existentialist literature.
Audience: YA
Content: D, MA, P, S, SU
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
From the Publisher
This #1 New York Times bestselling coming-of-age story with millions of copies in print takes a sometimes heartbreaking, often hysterical, and always honest look at high school in all its glory.
The critically acclaimed debut novel from Stephen Chbosky follows observant “wallflower” Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.
A #1 New York Times bestseller for more than a year . . . and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), this novel for teen readers (or wallflowers of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life.
Audience: A
Content: D, V
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
From the Publisher
Emily Bronte's only novel and a gothic classic -- a gripping story of obsession, revenge, and tragedy . . .
"Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same."
There are few more convincing, less sentimental accounts of passionate love than Wuthering Heights. This is the story of the savage, tormented foundling Heathcliff, who falls wildly in love with Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of his benefactor, and of the violence and misery that result from their thwarted longing for each other.
A book of immense power and strength, it is filled with the raw beauty of the moors and an uncanny understanding of the terrible truths about men and women. It is an understanding made even more extraordinary by the fact that it came from the heart of a woman who lived most of her brief life in remote rural England. Emily Bronte died a year after this great novel was published.
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