Superb escapism (all novels mysteries sci-fi and the like)
Discover superb escapism with our curated list of mystery, sci-fi, and novel recommendations. Lose yourself in thrilling stories and captivating reads perfect for any book lover.
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Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy's evocative tale of doomed love—one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. Anna Karenina startled the world with its powerful portrayal of the human need for love and purpose. In a story that brings to vivid life nineteenth century Russia across various social classes, Anna renounces a respectable yet stifling marriage for a passionate affair that weighs her happiness against her love for her son, her family’s status and the rigid demands of society. Her story contrasts with that of Levin, a young self-doubting agnostic who takes a different journey to fulfillment and finds faith and satisfaction in an age of repression. Considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century, Anna Karenina has been called Tolstoy’s spiritual autobiography. Anna and Levin personify Tolstoy’s lifelong struggle to reconcile his physical desires and intellectual ideals in order to create a more meaningful existence. Translated by David Magarshack Includes an Introduction by Priscilla Meyer
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Tropic of Cancer
by Henry Miller
The account of a young writer and his friends in free-wheeling Paris.
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Stranger in a Strange Land
by Robert A. Heinlein
Epic, entertaining, Stranger in a Strange Land caused controversy and uproar when it was first published. Still topical and challenging today, the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the first man from Mars to visit Earth, is in the great tradition of stories that endure through the power of the author's imagination that stretches from Gulliver's Travels to 1984
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As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner
A true 20th-century classic from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Sound and the Fury: the famed harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. As I Lay Dying is one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama. Narrated in turn by each of the family members, including Addie herself as well as others, the novel ranges in mood from dark comedy to the deepest pathos. “I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force. Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first word I knew what the last word would be and almost where the last period would fall.” —William Faulkner on As I Lay Dying This edition reproduces the corrected text of As I Lay Dying as established in 1985 by Noel Polk.
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Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to some one dangerously sane -- a masterpiece of our time.
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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader contend with Twain's language, allusions, and deliberate misstatements and malapropisms.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain's sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, became an instant success in the year of its publication, 1884, but was seen by some as unfit for children to read because of its language, grammar, and "uncivilized hero." The book has sparked controversy ever since, but most scholars continue to praise it as a modern masterpiece, an essential read, and one of the greatest novels in all of American literature.Twain's satiric treatment of racism, religious excess, and rural simplicity and his accuracy in presenting dialects mark Huck Finn as a classic. His unswerving confidence in Huck's wisdom and maturity, along with the well-rounded and sympathetic portrayal of Jim draw readers into the book, holding them until Huck's last words rejecting all attempts to "sivilize" him.
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Tortilla Flat
by John Steinbeck
Danny, a mule skinner during the First World War, returns to Tortilla Flat to enjoy the carefree and amoral life of the paisano
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The Pool in the Desert
by Sara Jeannette Duncan
In The Pool in the Desert, first published in 1903, Sara Jeannette Duncan explores the impact of isolation on the small British communities of Victorian India. In the four stories collected here—“The Pool in the Desert,” “A Mother in India,” “An Impossible Ideal,” and “The Hesitation of Miss Anderson”—Duncan’s women have certain freedoms living amidst the reaches of Empire, but they also must negotiate their way through a landscape dominated by the constraints of small military societies. The stories that result combine a delicacy of manners and movement that recalls Henry James, with a wit and sharp eye for small town foibles that bring Stephen Leacock to mind.
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The Poorhouse Fair
by John Updike
At the Diamond County Home for the Aged, the inmates prepare for the annual ritual of the Poorhouse Fair. The elderly residents take pride in the self-respect they gain from this one day. But when the fair goes less well than the folks had hoped, they blame Conner, the new prefect of the home. Together, they begin to revolt against the man.
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Clutch of Constables
by Ngaio Marsh
Troubled waters... Celebrated painter Troy Alleyn, aboard the Zodiac on a cruise of the English waterways, finds a colorful constellation of personalities on its passengers list. Plus one who missed the boat-found murdered in London. Her letters to her husband, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, relate a string of incidents-capped by a grisly drowning-that convince him that one of the ship's company is a world-class art forger on the run. But can he unmask this master of disguise in time to save another life-possibly Troy's?
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On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
The classic novel of freedom and the search for authenticity that defined a generation One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “Beat” and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than fifty years ago. This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction by Ann Charters. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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A Severed Head
by Iris Murdoch
A novel about the frightfulness and ruthlessness of being in love, from the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The Sea Martin Lynch-Gibson believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional reeducation. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendor at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. As his Medusa informs him, “this is nothing to do with happiness.” A Severed Head was adapted for a successful stage production in 1963 and was later made into a film starring Claire Bloom, Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, and Ian Holm.
