ARHS Recommended Reading Lists: College Preperatory/Recommended Reading List

Set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, the novel recreates pre-Christian tribal life and shows how the coming the white man led to the breaking up of the old ways.

A bitter eighty-three-year-old war veteran who believes his life is meaningless dies while trying to save a little girl's life and finds himself in heaven, where five people from his past--some loved ones, some strangers--explain what his years on Earth really meant, and whether or not he succeeded in saving the child.

The author, an alumnus of Brandeis University, tells of his meetings with a former professor suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease and of the lessons he learned about life and death from his college mentor.

After years of drinking, being rejected by his wife and daughter, and a suicide attempt, ex-baseball star Charley Benetto returns to his childhood home where he encounters the ghost of his mother, who tells him family secrets and guides him in making his life better.

A unified collection of short stories about life in a small town in the American Midwest.

A feminist painter returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her work and confronts her memories, family, and friends.

Set in the near future, America has become a puritanical theocracy and Offred tells her story as a Handmaid under the new social order.

A novel of Regency England which centers upon a self-assured young lady who is determined to arrange her life and the lives of those around her into a pattern dictated by her romantic fancy

Describes a day in the life of several members of a Harlem fundamentalist church. The saga of three generations of people is related through flashbacks.

Ishmael Beah describes his experiences after he was driven from his home by war in Sierra Leone and picked up by the government army at the age of thirteen, serving as a soldier for three years before being removed from fighting by UNICEF and eventually moving to the United States.

In a small town in 1928, a twelve year-old boy savors the magic of childhood and the wonders of summer.

A bookburner official in a future fascist state finds out books are a vital part of a culture he never knew. He clandestinely pursues reading, until he is betrayed.

A re-creation of the Arthurian legend following the clash between Christianity and paganism that led to the demise of Camelot

Forced by a storm to spend the night at the home of Heathcliff, Mr. Lockwood uncovers a tale of terror and hatred on the Yorkshire moors.

Traces the white man's conquest of the Indians of the American West, emphasizing major Indian Wars.

The author recounts his experiences during the sixteen months he spent as a Marine infantry officer in the Vietnam war.

A New York lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with a pioneer Bohemian girl.

A group of pilgrims tell their stories on the way to Canterbury Cathedral.

Tells of a woman's desire for an affair with the son of a Louisiana resort owner whom she meets on vacation.

When a rancher is reported murdered by cattle rustlers, the people of Ox-Bow decide to take justice into their own hands and lynch the alleged killers. Includes discussion questions.

When the Overlords first came to Earth, they brought peace and prosperity with them, but it soon became apparent that their purpose was the elimination of the human race.

English police Sergeant Cuff tries to locate a fabulous diamond that might have been stolen by a group of Hindus who regard it as a sacred stone.

Tom Wingo is a high school football coach whose marriage and career are falling apart, upon learning of his twin sister's suicide attempt he goes to New York to try to help her, and in doing so realizes he also needs to help himself.

Hawkeye, a young frontier scout, and Uncas, a Mohican Indian, form an unlikely friendship as they battle against the Iroquois Indians and try to preserve the unspoiled wilderness.

A young boy desperately tries to unlock his past yet knows he must hide those memories if he is to remain alive.

A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.

Life changes on the Greek island of Cephalonia as Axis forces invade during World War II, and beautiful Pelagia finds that she must choose between Mandras, a fisherman who joins the resistance and Corelli, a captain with the communist Italian troops.

After being shipwrecked on a deserted island, Robinson Crusoe endures a lonely struggle for survival.

The classic novel about the French Revolution and its effect upon the lives of several individuals, both French and English.

Describes the Kenya experiences of Karen Blixen who set out with her husband to manage a coffee plantation close to the Ngong Hills near Nairobi.

A saga of three generations of Indian women, beset by hardship and torn by angry secrets, yet joined together by the bonds of kinship.

Describes the resultant physical and mental depletion after a student in St. Petersburg murders an old woman, a money lender, and her sister.

When Fyodor Karamazov, a man of immoral character, is murdered one night, his four sons must contend with the criminal investigation and with their own inner questions about justice and the existence of God.

For months after her death, the memory of Rebecca de Winter continues to dominate everyone at her former home, Manderley, one of the most famous English country houses.

In the course of his wanderings from a Southern college to New York's Harlem, an African-American man becomes involved in a series of adventures.

A romantic and poignant tale of love and family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico.

Describes a family's struggle to get their mother properly buried, while they encounter catastrophes of flood and fire, as well as the chaos of their own feelings.

The tragic and haunting story of Dick Diver, a young psychiatrist whose career is thwarted and his genius numbed through marriage to the exquisite and wealthy Nicole Warren.

Charles Smithson, a nineteenth-century English gentleman of traditional values, is engaged to a wealthy, proper young woman but finds himself haunted by the independent and destitute Sarah Woodruff.

Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier, leaves the hospital where he is being treated and determines to walk home to his sweetheart Ada, only to find the land and the girl he remembers as changed by the war as he.

A 110-year-old African American woman reminisces about her life, which has stretched from the days of slavery to the African American militancy and civil rights movements of the 1960's

A love story that ranges from the late nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth, tracing the lives of three people and their entwined fates.

When a newspaper journalist covers the trial of a Japanese American accused of murder, he must come to terms with his own past.

The tragic story of Tess, who is victimized by lust, poverty, and Victorian hypocrisy.

The Pyncheons, having lived for generations under the curse of a supposed witch who once occupied the land on which the family mansion was built, gain a new lease on life with the arrival of young Phoebe Pyncheon from the country.

A bombardier, based in Italy during World War II, repeatedly tries to avoid flying bombing missions while his colonel tries to get him killed by demanding that he fly more and more missions.

The story of Robert Jordan, an American fighting during the Spanish Civil War with the anti-fascist guerillas in the mountains of Spain.

Focuses on a "lost generation" of Americans who fought in France during World War I and who expatriated themselves from America after the war.

Forced by the Emperor of the known universe to live in exile on a barren planet, Duke Leto Atreides and his son lead the struggle against the Empire.

An English veterinarian reminisces about his life, career, and animal patients in a small village.

An English veterinarian reminisces about his life, career, and animal patients in an English village.

During World War II an American Major is placed in charge of the Italian village of Adano.

"A new edition with a final chapter written forty years after the explosion." The story of six people who lived through the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945 in Hiroshima.

Notes: Translated from the German. Harry Haller, a joyless, reclusive intellectual, finally learns to reconcile the warring parts of his personality after meeting Hermine, a woman who knows how to enjoy life.

Amir, haunted by his betrayal of Hassan, the son of his father's servant and a childhood friend, returns to Kabul as an adult after he learns Hassan has been killed, in an attempt to redeem himself by rescuing Hassan's son from a life of slavery to a Taliban official.

A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan's history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband

Set in medieval Paris Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral, struggles to save the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda from being unjustly executed.

Married to a man she did not love, Janie was not yet forty when Joe died. Then she found true happiness.

An eleven-year-old boy, Owen Meany, hits a foul ball that kills his best friend's mother during a Little League game in 1953. Owen believes he was God's instrument during the incident.

An autobiographical novel depicting the childhood, adolescence, and early manhood of Stephen Dedalus.

Insect transformations as a narcissistic metaphor in Kafka's Metamorphosis

Captures the glory and shame of America's most tragic conflict, the Civil War, in the crowded world of the infamous prison, Andersonville, and the people who lived outside its barricades.

A rebel named Randle Patrick McMurphy is committed to a mental ward and challenges the authority of its dictatorial head nurse.

Codi returns to her hometown to confront her past and face her ailing father. What she finds is a town threatened by an environmental catastrophe and a man who could change her life.

Six-year-old Turtle Green witnesses a freak accident drawing her and her mother into a conflict of historic proportions.

Taylor, a poor Kentuckian, makes her way west with an abandoned baby girl and stops in Tucson. There she finds friends and discovers resources in apparently empty places.

Nathan Price and his family move to the Belgian Congo in 1959, and the experiences they have while living in Africa affect each member of the family in a different way.

Paul Morel, a painter from a British working-class family, is unable to choose between his possessive mother and two young beautiful women.

When a Southern white woman accuses a black man of rape, the outcome of the trial is a foregone conclusion and no lawyer except Peck will defend him. Peck's defense costs him friendships but earns him the respect of his two children.

A treatise on leadership written in sixteenth century Italy.

Jewish handyman Yakov Bok, is arrested, imprisoned, and accused for a murder he did not commit.

Pi Patel, having spent an idyllic childhood in Pondicherry, India, as the son of a zookeeper, sets off with his family at the age of sixteen to start anew in Canada, but his life takes a marvelous turn when their ship sinks in the Pacific, leaving him adrift on a raft with a 450-pound Bengal tiger for company.

Sam Hughes lives in Hopewell, Kentucky with her Uncle Emmett who is a Vietnam veteran. Sam's father was killed in Vietnam and she wants to understand about the war, but Emmett and other vets refuse to tell her much

Philip Carey, a handicapped orphan, is brought up by a self-indulgent Victorian clergyman. Shedding his religious faith as a young man, he begins to study art in Paris, but finally returns to London to qualify as a doctor.

A young American man named Larry Darrell traverses Europe, China, Burma, and India in search of meaning after experiencing the horrors of the First World War.

The story of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers, who, along with two companions, sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

Traces the journey of a father and his son as they walk alone after a great fire has consumed the nation and left everything in ashes.

The author chronicles his impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland, in the 1930s and 1940s, describing his father's alcoholism and talent for storytelling; the challenges and tragedies his mother faced, including the loss of three children; and his early experiences in the Catholic church, and balances painful memories with humor.

A deaf mute who has lost his only friend to a hospital for the insane becomes the recipient of the confidences of several other town residents.

Captain Ahab's determination to find and kill the great white whale becomes an obsession driving him to disaster.

A novel that chronicles the history of the Hawaiian people, dramatizing the interactions of Hawaii's original Polynesians, the first missionaries who arrived there, and the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos who intermarried with the Hawaiians and helped shape their culture.

: Story of the men of a naval task force operating in the icy waters off the Korean shore with a vital mission to perform; to destroy with jet bombers the heavily guarded bridge at Toko-ri and thus to stop essential supplies from moving to the Communist front lines

After the Civil War sweeps away the genteel life to which she has been accustomed, Scarlett O'Hara sets about to salvage her Georgia plantation home.

Sethe, an escaped slave who now lives in post-Civil War Ohio, has borne the unthinkable and works hard at "beating back the past." She struggles to keep Beloved, an intruder, from gaining possession of her present while throwing off the legacy of her past.

An eleven-year-old African-American girl in Ohio, in the early 1940s, prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be beautiful.

Childhood friends Sula Peace and Nel Wright part company when Nel chooses to remain in their small Ohio hometown where she marries and raises a family, and Sula leaves for the excitement of college and the big city, but they both must face the consequences of their choices when Sula returns home after an absense of ten years.

Contains a collection related fiction short stories with recurring characters, interwoven plot and themes told by a foot soldier retelling his experiences in the Vietnam War.

A group of international guests, taken hostage by terrorists while attending a birthday party at the home of the vice president of a small South American country, form bonds with their captors and enter into an almost idyllic lifestyle, united by the music of Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano.

Having felt deprived all her life of schooling, friends, mother, and even her name by her twin sister, Louise finally begins to find her identity.

Chronicles the mental breakdown of Esther Greenwood--a brilliant, beautiful, talented and successful young woman.

Philadelphia defense attorney Ellie Hathaway, unsatisfied with the course of her career and personal life, leaves her job for an open-ended stay at her great-aunt's home in Paradise, Pennsylvania, arriving just in time to become embroiled in the case of a young, unmarried Amish woman accused of killing her newborn baby.

Thirteen-year-old Anna, conceived specifically to provide blood and bone marrow for her sister Kate who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia at the age of two, decides to sue her parents for control of her body when her mother wants her to donate a kidney to Kate.

Recounts the story of Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders--one an orthodox Jew, the other the son of a Hasidic rabbi--and the course of their friendship as they grow up in Brooklyn.

Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters return to the family ancestral home in Newfoundland to start new lives.

Depicts the experiences of a group of young German soldiers fighting and suffering during the last days of World War I.

An adolescent boy, knowing he is about to be dropped by his school, spends three days and nights in New York City.

Working as a telegraph messenger in California during World War II, fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley gains an understanding of the world and an acceptance of his brother's death.

Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon, the victim of a sexual assault and murder, looks on from the afterlife as her family deals with their grief, and waits for her killer to be brought to some type of justice.

Contains the text of the play, a synopsis of the action, and an explanation of difficult words and activities.

Contains the text of the play, edited for young adult readers, with a running symposis of the action, explanations of difficult words, and a wide range of classroom-tested activities.

Contains the unabridged text of the drama about King Lear and his three daughters; includes explanations of words and passages, a plot synopsis, scene summaries, and notes on the main characters; and features questions, activities, and biographical information about Shakespeare.

Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, discusses the author and the theater of his time, and provides quizzes and other study activities.

Follows Tayo, a young Native American, after his release from a veteran's hospital following World War II as he searches for meaning and sanity in his life.

Describes the conditions of the Chicago stockyards through the eyes of a young immigrant struggling in America.

The story of an Iowa farmer who decides to retire in 1979 and turns over his valuable land to his three daughters.

Young Francie Nolan experiences the problems of growing up in a Brooklyn, New York slum.

Contains three of Sophocles' most famous tragedies. Includes introduction, textual note, chronology, and explanatory notes.

Enzo, the dog of professional race car driver Denny Swift, recalls the memories of his life and shares his insight into the human condition that he learned from observing his owner.

In the Pearl terrible events follow the discovery of a magnificent pearl by a poor Mexican fisherman.

The story of American slavery and Uncle Tom, a black man who never lost his dignity under the most inhumane circumstances.

Three friends, Stingo, a twenty-two-year-old writer; Sophie, a survivor of the Nazi camps; and Nathan, her mercurial lover, share magical, heart-warming times until doom overtakes them as Sophie's and Nathan's darkest secrets are revealed.

An Englishman's voyages carry him to Lilliput, a land of people six inches high, and to Brobdingang, a land of giants.

In 1949 four Chinese women began meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong. They called their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Forty years later they look back and remember.

Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years, but now that she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything.

San Francisco ghostwriter Ruth Young finally begins to understand her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother LuLing's preoccupation with ghosts and curses when she reads Luling's writings of her dark backwoods childhood in 1920s China--where LuLing's mute, disfigured nursemaid committed suicide, and a nearby cave held what may have been the bones of the lost ancient hominid Peking Man.

"Walden," "Civil disobedience," "Life without principle," and selections from "A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," "Cape Cod," "The Maine woods," and "The journal."

Civil disobedience

In nineteenth-century Russia, the wife of an important government official loses her family and social status when she chooses the love of Count Vronsky over a passionless marriage.

An epic novel featuring the Russian role in the Napoleonic wars and providing a complex panorama of the life of the time.

A young man who was severely wounded in World War One thinks about his life and about the horror and futility of war and its toll on him.

A Connecticut Yankee, a nineteenth-century mechanic suffers a blow to the head and wakes up in King Arthur's Britain.

Cody, Jenny, and Ezra, who were deserted by their father and raised by their angry mother, go their separate ways but meet again for their mother's funeral.

In 1965 the Bedloe family lives on a quiet street in Baltimore. Seventeen-year-old Ian has dreams for the future, until the night when he meddles in his older brother's life--and from that careless moment on, nothing can ever be the same.

A saga of glories and defeats, triumphs and tragedies, lived by a young Catholic rebel and the beautiful and valiant Protestant girl who defied her heritage to join him.

The story of a simple, optimistic man whose travels take him from one disaster to another.

In the year 2000, a young man discovers ice-nine, which can set off a chain reaction more deadly than a nuclear bomb, and discovers a new prophet whose teachings sweep the world.

Tells the story of two sisters: Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a child-wife living in the South, in the medium of their letters to each other and in Celie's case, the desperate letters she begins, "Dear God."

A portrayal of New York society in the 1870's where money counted for less than manners and morals.

Troy Maxson, a strong, hard man who has learned how to be Black and proud in the 1950s, finds the changing spirit of the 1960s hard to deal with.

Trapped in the poverty-stricken ghetto of Chicago's South Side, a young black man finds release only in acts of violence.

The autobiography of an African-American writer, recounting his early years and the harrowing experiences he encountered drifting from Natchez to Chicago to Brooklyn.