Literature Research Guide: JRP Resource List

When Thomas Sutpen returns from the war, he tries to continue his family name and complete his design to be a Southern aristocrat, but his children thwart his plan.

An author of guidebooks for travelling businessmen goes through life "accidently". It is an accident tinged with purpose when he gets involved with the astonishing Muriel and her talent for finding adventure.

Alice had charm, looks and ambition, but lacked the money to keep up with the town's society. With her parents' help, she tries until a young man forces her to face facts.

Joe Kavalier has managed to escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, and now he must use his cunning wits to help rescue his family from Hitler's evil plans.

Christopher Newman, a wealthy, American, goes to Europe to enjoy his wealth and becomes engaged. Her family is against the engagement and has it annuled. Newman is confronted with a moral dilemma when the possibility of revenge presents itself.

Seymour "Swede" Levov, a hard working man who came of age in triumphant postwar America, must give up his dreams of a peaceful life when his daughter grows up to be a 1960s revolutionary terrorist.

In order to marry Sondra who is rich and beautiful, ambitious Clyde murders his pregnant mistress.

The story of a doctor who struggles to maintain his integrity as he is forced to give up successive positions as an instructor in medicine, small town doctor, and research pathologist-by various obstacles.

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.

George Babbitt, a successful middle-aged businessman living in 1920s Ohio, is shocked when his best friend is convicted of murder.

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.

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.

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.

Sherman McCoy, a young investment banker with a fourteen-room apartment in Manhattan becomes involved in a freak accident. Prosecutors, politicians, press, police, clergy, and assorted hustlers close in on him.

A tiny footbridge in Peru breaks, and five people hurtle to their deaths. For Brother Juniper, a humble monk who witnesses the catastrophe, the question is: Why those five?

This book is the account of a well-to-do man who serves on a minesweeper during World War II, describing the events on the Navy ship Caine and what ultimately led the first mate, Lieutenant Maryk, a man with little schooling or experience, to take command of the vessel from Captain Queeg and the subsequent court-martial of Maryk.

Set on a tiny Mediterranean island during World War II, this comic novel recounts the amazing adventures of the 256th bombing squadron and its lead bombardier, Captain Yossarian.

Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds. It is also the story of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

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.

Pulitzer Prize winning farce, set in New Orleans, telling about Ignatius J. Reilly and his various attempts at employment and one-man wars.

Daisy Miller, an innocent yet bold American girl, runs afoul of the European code of conduct at the turn of the twentieth century.

The story of the courage and love that held a family together when one of the members suddenly dies.

Two young men search for truth the Zen way in California and Washington State.

The portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church while living a life of hypocrisy, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence.
Target Audience Note 521 2 _a

Christianna Wheeler is a Kentucky farm wife who becomes a national sensation when she gives birth to quintuplets in 1900.

Abel, a young American Indian home from a foreign war, finds himself torn between his father's world on the reservation and the lure of industrial America.

Lily Bart, an orphaned child of a New York merchant, calmly prepares a campaign to marry for the power and luxury that money brings.

A prominent New England family suffering under a curse is plagued by greed, vengeful acts, and violent death.

Ruth and her sister Lucille are cared for by Sylvie, the transient sister of their dead mother. They attempt to keep house as the forces of nature erode their stronghold.

The story of the Garcia family's adjustment to life in the United States.

Charlie Citrine has failed to live up to his potential, until Humboldt's gift arrives, a mocking gift from the grave that sends Charlie groping towards redemption.

At Dupont University, an innocent college freshman named Charlotte Simmons learns that her intellect alone will not help her survive.

Contains the confessions of a vampire which are hypnotic, shocking, and erotic.

Chronicles the final wanderings of a one-time ballplayer turned down-and-out murderer.

This story follows the adventures of Thomas Hudson, who establishes himself as an artist in the tropics, until he is called to serve in World War II by destroying submarines off the coast of Cuba.

Senator "Buzz" Windrip, having used hot rhetoric, warm folksiness, and cold calculation to get into the White House, proceeds to bring in his own paramilitary storm troopers, seizes control of the government, and sets in motion his totalitarian program.

Henry Townsend, a African farmer and former slave, is befriended by the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County and becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves.

Describes the coming of age of Eugene Gant, his boyhood in North Carolina and his growing passion to experience life.

In San Francisco in 1928, Sam Spade searches for a priceless statuette. He finds himself torn between loyalty to his murdered partner and an opportunity for personal gain.

Follows the experiences of Mr. March, the father in Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," as he witnesses the cruelty and racism of both Northern and Southern soldiers and the harsh realities of Civil War.

Presents an historical novel that centers around William Tecumseh Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas and those he encounters along the way which include a freed slave girl named Pearl; a Union regimental surgeon, Colonel Sartorius; Emily Thompson, the daughter of a Southern judge; and two misfit soldiers.

Three generations of a Greek American family find themselves plagued by a mutant gene which causes bizarre side effects in the family's teenage girls.

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco web-design drone and landed hi a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly ad never seem to actually buy anything. Soon he embarks on a complex analysis of the customers' behavior and ropes his friends into helping him figure out just what's going on

A young man born of Indian parents in America struggles with issues of identity from his teens to his thirties.

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

On the Road is a thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac's real life friends, lover, and fellow travelers. Narrated by Sal Paradise, one of Kerouac's alter-egos, On the Road is a cross-country bohemian odyssey that not only influenced writing in the years since its 1957 publication but penetrated into the deepest level of American thought and culture.

A woman who has left the South returns when her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back to the small Mississippi town where she grew up.

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.

Twenty-six-year-old Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, unhappy with his life, deserts his pregnant wife and young son and becomes involved with another woman, but when his wife gives birth, he returns home, only to be met by tragedy.

A vivid, panoramic view of American life in the years between the turn of the century and World War I, focused on the fate of three families, representing three major socioeconomic units: the white middle class, the new immigrant and the black.

New York intellectuals Frank and April Wheeler move to the suburbs of Connecticut in 1955 and soon learn that the American dream is not at all what they expected.

In early colonial Massachusetts a young woman endures the consequences of her sin of adultery and spends her life in atonement.

Presents an allegory that describes the passengers on board a ship sailing from Mexico to Germany in 1931.

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

A wounded veteran returns home from World War I to find the life he left behind dramatically changed.

This novel tells the multi-generational story of the Stampers, a lumber family in Oregon. Throughout the novel, tension filled relationships within the family are echoed by the relationship the family has with a nearby town and its citizens.

After his arrival on Earth from his home on Mars, Valentine Michael Smith becomes the founder and pastor of a new religious sect.

Based on the recollections of a former student of the author's about the nightmare adventures of the Wendall family, living in the slums of Detroit.

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

The story of five generations of an African-American family and the wedding on Martha's Vineyard that could tear them apart.

The Gladney's family life is disrupted and threatened when an industrial accident sends a lethal cloud over their community. Jack Gladney struggles with the ensuing complications which include murder.

The son of a famous radical feminist spends his life struggling with his diverse personal relationships and with his ambition to be a writer.

The story of a small mountain village in England and housemaid Anna Frith as they try to survive the terrible plague year of 1666.

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