Ernest Hemingway’s career culminated with The Old Man and the Sea, the last book he published in his lifetime. It chronicles its leaders, conflicts, and the events that led to its collapse— an outcome that Gibbon lays at the feet of Christianity.

What follows is a battle that’s small in scale but epic in feeling, rendered in Hemingway’s famously spare prose. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and in sickness it would still be dear. Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s Garden Picnic includes a sweet story about Eric Carle’s classic character eating through his favorite foods and includes six fun scents to scratch and sniff on every spread for added fun. Hailed for its depiction of a time of significant social change, it also stands out for its gleaming idealism, as well as endless generosity and compassion towards the follies of humanity. In this collection of Arabic folk tales, the quick-witted storyteller Scheherazade demonstrates the power of a good cliffhanger — on both the king and the reader!

Razor-sharp and thought-provoking, these tales of robotic sentience are still deeply relevant today. Umberto Eco plots a wild ride from start to finish: an intelligent murder mystery that combines theology, semiotics, empiricism, biblical analysis, and layers of metanarratives that create a brilliant labyrinth of a book. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, every day we are together is the greatest day of my life. Previously the author of short stories, in Trespasses, says the Washington Post, "Kennedy has more room to flesh out her characters and dramatise their predicaments. Questioning the idea of a Creator — and therefore challenging the beliefs of most of the Western world — in The Origin of Species, Darwin explored a theory of evolution based on laws of natural selection.

We could go on about its remarkable narrative technique, beguiling voice, and sprawling cast of characters spanning seven generations. If you'd like to try something a little more contemporary, we've got you covered with our favorite novels of the 21st century. This book is a light and scrumptious treat for those who love closed-door romances, Hallmark movies, and a diverse holiday season. Benignly neglected by her step-parents, who are distracted by endless parties, she and her siblings find their own way to grow up and educate themselves.

Not only is this text still considered a groundbreaking scientific work, but the ideas it puts forward remain fundamental to modern biology. One of them, Johnny, makes a decision that will change the course of history – the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Narrated by our protagonist as an adult, it looks back to her childhood when her father defended a Black man falsely accused of rape.

Relentlessly cynical yet profoundly moving, The Catcher in the Rye will strike a chord not just with Holden’s fellow teens but with earnest thinkers of all ages. We've hand-selected 100 classic books to read, written by authors spanning continents and millennia. Though Flaubert’s novel caused a moral outcry on publication, its portrayal of a married woman’s affair was so realistic, many women believed they were the model for his heroine. Set amid the dancers, drinkers and gangsters of "Roaring" 1920s London, Shrines of Gaiety is chock-full of sex, intrigue and vice coalescing around the figure of Nellie Coker, a notorious entrepreneur who presides over a series of Soho nightclubs.With a lauded 1930 film adaptation (only the third to win Best Picture at the Oscars), All Quiet on the Western Front remains as powerful and relevant as ever. An epic work that befits its lengthy title, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire chronicles thirteen centuries of Roman rule. There are some surprising things that have been discussed in the Quran and the current science has proved them now.

Here, in the deep American South of the 1930s, John meets an assortment of people and acts as the silent, kind keeper of their stories — right up until an unforgettable ending that will blow you away. The short story A Christmas Memory is a short and beautiful tale about a young boy in rural Alabama, looking back with nostalgia about his elderly friend. Set in Kingsolver's home region of Appalachia, it transposes Dickens's critique of the injustices of Victorian Britain to contemporary America, where Copperhead lives in near-destitution amid the US opioid crisis. Light, bright, and flawlessly crafted, Pride and Prejudice is an Austen classic you’re guaranteed to love. In 2019, following her debut novel Stubborn Archivist, Yara Rodrigues Fowler was named by the Financial Times as "one of the planet's 30 most exciting young people," and the author's follow-up has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political fiction and the Goldsmiths Prize.Laclos expertly plays with form and structure, composing a riveting narrative of letters passed between the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont — aristocratic former lovers who get in over their heads when they start playing with people's hearts. This began a holiday tradition and, along the way, they picked up two more Christmas orphans, Theo and Priya.