This is a tragic 1937 novella by John Steinbeck (John Steinbeck – Biographical – NobelPrize.org) that tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant workers searching for job opportunities in California during the Great Depression. George is sharp and protective, while Lennie is a physically massive man with an intellectual disability. […]

This historical novel begins in 1752 in Liverpool. William Kemp, a merchant facing mounting debts, stakes his entire remaining fortune on constructing a slave ship named the Liverpool Merchant. To protect his investment, Kemp hires his idealistic nephew, Matthew Paris, a disgraced doctor and scientist, to serve as the ship’s surgeon. Kemp reasons that keeping

This story opens and closes in April 1950 with the discovery and retrieval of a sunken steam locomotive from the deep waters of Flathead Lake, Montana. Inside a boxcar are the skeletal remains of three individuals who had died forty-four years previously, hinting at a long-buried secret and a lost fortune. The core of the

Alicia Berenson is a successful London painter married to a fashion photographer, Gabriel. One evening, Gabriel returns home late, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face. When police arrive, she is found covered in blood next to his body, completely mute. She never speaks again, making her only statement through a haunting self-portrait

White Noise follows Jack Gladney, a professor of ‘Hitler Studies’ in a tech saturated American suburb. Jack, his wife Babette, and their chaotic blended family live under a constant drone of media, consumerism, and a shared, paralyzing fear of mortality. The family’s eccentric domestic life is dominated by constant supermarket trips, brand names, and television

Julia is a young, talented art restorer hired to prepare a 1471 masterpiece by Flemish artist Pieter Van Huys, titled The Chess Game, for a high-profile auction. The painting depicts the Duke of Flanders and a knight locked in a game of chess while a mysterious woman reads a book in the background. Whilst X-raying

Anton Chekhov (Anton Chekhov – Melikhovo, Plays, Short Stories | Britannica) offers psychological precision, and atmosphere in his stories. These are slices of life where little happens externally, but much changes internally. His minimalist, impressionistic prose captures the tragicomedy of human existence with clinical objectivity and profound empathy. Included are Chekhov’s characteristically brief, evocative early

Georges Simenon (The New York Times: Book Review Search Article) was a prolific Belgian born writer, publishing 400 books. He is best known as the creator of fictional detective Jules Maigret. The Widow Couderc is one of Simenon’s ‘romans durs’, his more literary output. It follows Jean, a quiet, rootless ex-convict who has recently finished

This book is narrated by Freddie Montgomery, a 38-year-old brilliant but deeply amoral and narcissistic scientist. After drifting through Europe, Freddie returns to Ireland to raise cash because his wife and child are being held hostage by a Mediterranean gangster over a debt. When his mother reveals she has sold off the family’s art collection