In Tom Wolfe's morality tale, his innocent heroine, Charlotte Simmons, is an earnest freshman at the fictional Dupont University. Charlotte is shocked by the campus goings-on--sex, drugs, rock & roll, and worse--and by the amoral, high-living students she encounters: her roommate is a snooty rich girl with no morals, and (in a graphically described scene) Charlotte loses her virginity to a caddish heartbreaker. A sexual scandal and a sports scandal concentrate the plot, as Charlotte endures a series of trials, at the end of which she emerges older, wiser, and in control. Wolfe's novel takes place entirely on the college campus, and most of the characters are students in a work that is quite different from his last novels--and one that is, inevitably, seen as a tour de force by a 74-year-old writer whose college days are far behind him and who has created, for the first time, a female heroine. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.

In Tom Wolfe's morality tale, his innocent heroine, Charlotte Simmons, is an earnest freshman at the fictional Dupont University. Charlotte is shocked by the campus goings-on--sex, drugs, rock & roll, and worse--and by the amoral, high-living students she encounters: her roommate is a snooty rich girl with no morals, and (in a graphically described scene) Charlotte loses her virginity to a caddish heartbreaker. A sexual scandal and a sports scandal concentrate the plot, as Charlotte endures a series of trials, at the end of which she emerges older, wiser, and in control. Wolfe's novel takes place entirely on the college campus, and most of the characters are students in a work that is quite different from his last novels--and one that is, inevitably, seen as a tour de force by a 74-year-old writer whose college days are far behind him and who has created, for the first time, a female heroine. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.

These 19 stories are often violent or are about people with violent pasts, including a teacher who seduces a disturbed boy, a woman whose ideal life is broken apart by the events of 9/11, and a pair of siblings who return to the scene of the murder of their mother by their father.

Marietta Cook is different from the other Gullah-speaking women among whom she lives. Choosing isolation, she focuses on raising her twin sons. The success her sons have on the football field finally releases Marietta from her self-imposed separation from the world.

A novel about Gilchrist's beloved, flawed, deeply human heroine Rhoda Manning.

This novel covers five days in the lives of Jeremiah Henderson and Willet Mercer, who leave the slums of Pittsburgh and head for New York City, where they hope to make a new life. Instead, the moneymaking scheme that entangles them ends in violence.

In this first volume of her celebrated collection of memoirs, the poet Maya Angelou describes in vivid, lyrical detail her childhood as a young black girl in the South.

Narrated by Calla's granddaughter, "I Lock My Door Upon Myself" is the story of Calla Freilicht, born in 1890. Calla's mother died in childbirth; raised by relatives, Calla is deemed eccentric. She meets a water diviner named Tyrell Thompson, and the bulk of the novel concerns her relationship with him.

Narrated by Calla's granddaughter, "I Lock My Door Upon Myself" is the story of Calla Freilicht, born in 1890. Calla's mother died in childbirth; raised by relatives, Calla is deemed eccentric. She meets a water diviner named Tyrell Thompson, and the bulk of the novel concerns her relationship with him.

Ira Ringold, a Jew from Newark (Philip Roth's home town), joins the communist party during World War II. Back home, he becomes a radio celebrity and marries an aging movie queen named Eve Frame. The marriage ends in disaster when Eve writes a book called I MARRIED A COMMUNIST, exposing Ira's secret life and making him vulnerable to the American anti-communist frenzy. Ultimately, he is destroyed. Like AMERICAN PASTORAL (1997), this novel is partly narrated by Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, and seems to be based on Roth's own troubled relationship with the actress Claire Bloom, to whom he was married for five years--and who had already written her own scathing book about the marriage. I MARRIED A COMMUNIST was a New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) gave up the craft of poetry when he was 21, and became a salesman who traveled in Africa and the Middle East. This collection of his letters dates mostly from his traveling days, chronicling his profits and losses.