Next Reads: American Classics: Home

An account of the senseless murder of a Kansas farm family and the search for the killers An account of the senseless murder of a Kansas farm family and the search for the killers.

Also Available as an Audio Book.

The Black leader discusses his political philosophy and reveals details of his life, shedding light on the ideas that enabled him to gain the allegiance of a still growing percentage of the Black population.

A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

A Black man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility.

Also Available as an Audio Book

A young man newly rich tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married.

Also Available as an Audio Book.

A young woman, publicly scorned for bearing an illegitimate child, refuses to be vanquished by the seventeenth-century Boston community.

When Janie Starks returns home, she seeks identity and independence as the small southern black community buzzes with gossip about the outcome of her affair with a younger man.

Also Available as an Audio Book.

The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice.

Also Available as an Audio Book.

Dissects the character of a middle-class businessman whose search for material wealth and social status leaves him spiritually sterile and doomed to destruction in pre-Depression America. Describes the life of an aggressive, prosperous realtor, reflecting an image of middle-class America.

The itinerant sailor Ishmael begins a voyage on the whaling ship Pequod whose captain, Ahab, wishes to exact revenge upon the whale Moby-Dick, who destroyed his last ship and took his leg. As they search for the savage white whale, Ishmael questions all aspects of life.

After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved." Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things begin to happen. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel.

A feisty young boy fakes his own death to escape his abusive father and heads off down the Mississippi River with his newfound friend Jim, a runaway slave. The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century.

Also Available as an Audio Book and in Juvenile format.