Published in 1930, near the end of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes's Not Without Laughter is a coming-of-age narrative about James "Sandy" Rogers, an African-American boy from the small Kansas town of Stanton. Loosely based on Hughes's own childhood in Kansas, the novel traces the challenges of African-American life in the Midwest during the years leading up to World War I. The novel opens with a cyclone that rips the porch from the house of... Read Not Without Laughter Summary

Novel Without a Name, first published in English in 1995, tells the story of a young North Vietnamese soldier named Quan whose physical and emotional journey draws heavily from Vietnamese author Duong Thu Huong’s own life. Novel Without a Name is her third book. Other works by this author include Paradise of the Blind, Beyond Illusions, No Man's Land, and Memories of a Pure Spring.At the start of the novel, Quan is with his military... Read Novel Without a Name Summary

Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel written by the British author W. Somerset Maugham. The novel follows the maturation of a young man named Philip Carey as he grows up in England at the very end of the 19th century. The novel incorporates elements of both realism and modernism and has been interpreted as having some autobiographical inspiration drawn from Maugham’s own life. By describing events from Philip’s life, Maugham develops themes related to... Read Of Human Bondage Summary

Set in the seaport city of Santa María de Antigua, in colonial Spanish Colombia, at the end of the 18th century, Gabriel García Márquez'snovel Of Love and Other Demons tells the tragic story of Sierva María de Todos Los Ángeles. The only daughter of the American-born Marquis de Casalduero, Sierva lives with her father the Marquis, and her mother, Bernarda, in a decaying mansion.Neither parent takes an interest in their daughter, so she's raised by... Read Of Love And Other Demons Summary

American author John Steinbeck published his novella Of Mice and Men in 1937. Despite its place in the classical canon, the novella is one of the most challenged books of the 21st century due to its depiction of violence and use of profane, racist language. The novella’s title is an allusion to Scottish poet Robert Burns’s 1785 poem “To a Mouse,” in which a farmer unwittingly and regrettably kills a mouse while plowing. Of Mice... Read Of Mice and Men Summary

Tobias Wolff’s novel Old School was published in 2003. It is a work of literary fiction that can also be considered a roman à clef, as it is a thinly veiled account of Wolff’s own experience in prep school. Old School was a finalist for the 2004 Pen/Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Fiction.Plot SummaryOld School follows the unnamed narrator’s plight at a prestigious New England prep school in the early... Read Old School Summary

Oliver Twist is Charles Dickens’s second novel. First published in serial form in 1837, the work was later compiled into a novel. The novel has been adapted into many a screenplay and movie, and is often referenced in popular culture. Oliver Twist follows the life of the titular Oliver on the streets of London in the early 19th century.Orphaned at birth, Oliver is raised in numerous government and church-run workhouses. There, Oliver is subjected to... Read Oliver Twist Summary

South African author Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014) published the short story “Once Upon a Time” in 1989 while South Africa was still under apartheid, an institutionalized system of racism that from 1948 until 1994 discriminated against all people who were not white. Gordimer was the daughter of Jewish immigrants. Though not an Afrikaner (a South African descended from 17th-century Dutch colonizers), Gordimer was white and therefore part of South Africa’s ruling minority. Gordimer wrote about characters... Read Once Upon a Time Summary

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Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff is the first installment of a historical fiction trilogy originally published in 1990 that explores the lives of a Māori family in early 1990s New Zealand. In the first year of its publication, it won the PEN Best First Book award and was the runner-up for the Goodman Fielder Wattie Award. In 1994, Once Were Warriors was optioned and made into a movie of the same name, which won... Read Once Were Warriors Summary

Once We Were Brothers is a Jewish historical fiction novel and legal thriller published in 2013 by the American author and attorney Ronald H. Balson. A finalist for the Harper Lee Award for Legal Fiction, the book tells the story of two young men on opposite sides of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. It is the first entry in Balson’s Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart book series.Plot SummaryThe book is divided into three parts. Part... Read Once We Were Brothers Summary

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, first published in 1962 in the USSR, is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It follows the protagonist, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, during a typical day in the forced labor camp where he is imprisoned. The novel explores the human cost of Stalinism in Soviet Russia. Shukhov and the other prisoners waver between unity and division as they attempt to survive in the labor camp, which is situated far... Read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Summary

One of Ours is a 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Willa Cather, an American author best known for depictions of life in the Great Plains. This novel follows the personal evolution of a young man named Claude Wheeler, dividing his story into two parts: his life on a family farm in Nebraska, and his experiences as a soldier in France during World War I. Exploring themes of youthful restlessness, the search for meaning, and the... Read One Of Ours Summary

Ordinary Grace is a mystery and coming-of-age novel written by William Kent Krueger. Published in 2013, the novel is narrated from the perspective of Frank Drum. Like many of Krueger’s other works, including Iron Lake and the rest of the Cork O’Connor series, Ordinary Grace is set in Minnesota. The plot centers on a series of deaths that strike the fictional town of New Bremen in 1961, and the book is a bildungsroman for both Frank and... Read Ordinary Grace Summary

Oroonoko by Aphra Behn is a seventeenth-century novella that tells the story of the eponymous hero, the prince and heir to the throne of the African country of Cormantien. Oroonoko’s story is related to us by a nameless female narrator, the daughter of the Lord Governor of Surinam, an English colony where Oroonoko will find himself a slave. Oroonoko’s tale is one of an exemplary man who falls in love with an exceptional woman, Imoinda. However... Read Oroonoko Summary

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline recounts the stories of two extraordinary women: Vivian, a 91 year-old wealthy retiree, and 17 year-old Molly, a troubled orphan living in foster-care. On the surface, these women would seem to have nothing in common; however, as they get to know each other’s stories, they come to understand the many ways in which they share life experiences and emotional truths. They become unlikely, but true, friends.Operating primarily as a... Read Orphan Train Summary

Written in 1823 by Claire de Duras, Ourika is a French novella based on real events about a Senegalese woman taken as a slave from her native country and raised in French high society. Ourika is one of the first European texts to feature a black protagonist, the psychological depth of whom promotes empathy with the racial “Other” and highlights the importance of nurture (versus nature) in human psychological development. In the Introduction, a young doctor is summoned to an... Read Ourika Summary

Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black is an autobiographical novel first published in 1859 by Harriet E. Wilson. Rediscovered by renowned African-American literary critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in 1981, it was republished and redistributed with wider appeal than its initial publication.The autobiographical novel tells a fictionalized version of Wilson’s life story through the character of Frado, who is also known as “Nig” by other white people. Frado is born to... Read Our Nig Summary

Outlander, published by Random House in 1991, is the first in a highly successful romantic novel series written by Diana Gabaldon, a #1 New York Times bestselling author. The series was adapted into a historical drama television series in 2014.Other works by this author include Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, Dragonfly in Amber, and An Echo in the Bone.Plot SummaryTold from the perspective of 27-year-old Englishwoman Claire Beauchamp, Outlander begins in 1945... Read Outlander Summary

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