Best of
Fiction

1945

Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country


Erich Maria Remarque - 1945
    Despite a law banning him from performing surgery, Ravic – a German doctor and refugee living in Paris – has been treating some of the city’s most elite citizens for two years on the behalf of two less-than-skillful French physicians.Forbidden to return to his own country, and dodging the everyday dangers of jail and deportation, Ravic manages to hang on – all the while searching for the Nazi who tortured him back in Germany. And though he’s given up on the possibility of love, life has a curious way of taking a turn for the romantic, even during the worst of times…

The Bridge on the Drina


Ivo Andrić - 1945
    A great stone bridge built three centuries ago in the heart of the Balkans by a Grand Vezir of the Ottoman Empire dominates the setting of Andric's stunning novel. Spanning generations, nationalities, and creeds, the bridge stands witness to the countless lives played out upon it: Radisav, the workman, who tries to hinder its construction and is impaled on its highest point; to the lovely Fata, who throws herself from its parapet to escape a loveless marriage; to Milan, the gambler, who risks everything in one last game on the bridge with the devil his opponent; to Fedun, the young soldier, who pays for a moment of spring forgetfulness with his life. War finally destroys the span, and with it the last descendant of that family to which the Grand Vezir confided the care of his pious bequest - the bridge.

The Great Divorce


C.S. Lewis - 1945
    Lewis’ The Great Divorce is a classic Christian allegorical tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven. An extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment, Lewis’s revolutionary idea in the The Great Divorce is that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. Using his extraordinary descriptive powers, Lewis’ The Great Divorce will change the way we think about good and evil.

The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking


Astrid Lindgren - 1945
    Since Pippi Longstocking was first published in 1950, the escapades of the incomparable Pippi,the girl with upside-down braids and no parents to tell her what to do, have delighted boys and girls alike. Now, for the first time, Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Goes on Board, andPippi in the South Seas are all together in one bumper volume, with new illustrations in full-color and black-and-white.The collection is an ideal introduction for anyone discovering Pippi for the first time, while confirmed fans will enjoy revisiting their favorite episodes and recalling some they've forgotten. Her admirers will also find fascinating new biographical information about author Astrid Lindgren and the origin of the Pippi stories. Astrid Lindgren was awarded the 1958 Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her contribution to international children's literature.

Leaf by Niggle


J.R.R. Tolkien - 1945
    Niggle, the painter, is a kind hearted soul and goes out of his way to help his friends and neighbours but eventually finds that this prevents him from completing his masterpiece. He has a hard decision to make; when engrossed in his work, his neighbour asks him to fix his roof using his art supplies.

The Egyptian


Mika Waltari - 1945
    A 1940s #1 Bestseller and a Historic Novel All-Time Favorite A historic novel all-time favorite, after its translation in English from Swedish, The Egyptian topped the bestseller charts in 1949 and the years following. The protagonist of the novel is the fictional character Sinuhe, the royal physician, who tells the story in exile after Akhenaten's fall and death. Apart from incidents in Egypt, the novel charts Sinuhe's travels in then Egyptian-dominated Syria, in Mitanni, Babylon, Minoan Crete, Mitanni, and among the Hittites.The main character of the novel is named after a character in an ancient Egyptian text commonly known as The Story of Sinuhe. The original story dates to a time long before that of Akhenaten: texts are known from as early as the 12th Dynasty.Much concerned about the historical accuracy of his detailed description of ancient Egyptian life forced the author to carry out considerable research into the subject. The result has been praised not only by readers but also by Egyptologists.Waltari had long been interested in Akhenaten and wrote a play about him which was staged in Helsinki in 1938. World War II provided the final impulse for exploring the subject in a novel which, although depicting events that took place over 3,300 years ago

The Thurber Carnival


James Thurber - 1945
    . . . Mr. Thurber belongs in the great lines of American humorists that includes Mark Twain and Ring Lardner." --Philadelphia InquirerJames Thurber’s unique ability to convey the vagaries of life in a funny, witty, and often satirical way earned him accolades as one of the finest humorists of the twentieth century. A bestseller upon its initial publication in 1945, The Thurber Carnival captures the depth of his talent and the breadth of his wit. The stories compiled here, almost all of which first appeared in The New Yorker, are from his uproarious and candid collection My World and Welcome to It--including the American classic "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"--as well as from The Owl in the Attic, The Seal in the Bathroom, Men, Women and Dogs. Thurber’s take on life, society, and human nature is timeless and will continue to delight readers even as they recognize a bit of themselves in his brilliant sketches.

Pippi Longstocking


Astrid Lindgren - 1945
    She has crazy red pigtails, no parents to tell her what to do, a horse that lives on her porch, and a flair for the outrageous that seems to lead to one adventure after another!

Big Red


Jim Kjelgaard - 1945
    From the moment Danny sees the beautiful Irish setter, he knows Red is the dog for him.  Fast and smart, strong and noble, Red is the only dog Danny wants by his side.  Soon, neither boy nor dog can stand to be apart.  Together Danny and Red face many dangers in the harsh Wintapi wilderness that they call home.  But the greatest test of their courage and friendship will come from an enemy more cunning than any they've known before--a bear who is the undisputed king of the wilderness, a savage killer called Old Majesty.

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield


Katherine Mansfield - 1945
    Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1888, she came to London in 1903 to attend Queen's College and returned permanently in 1908. her first book of stories, 'In a German Pension', appeared in 1911, and she went on to write and publish an extraordinary body of work. This edition of The Collected Stories brings together all of the stories that Mansfield had written up until her death in January of 1923. With an introduction and head-notes, this volume allows the reader to become familiar with the complete range of Mansfield's work from the early, satirical stories set in Bavaria, through the luminous recollections of her childhood in New Zealand, and through the mature, deeply felt stories of her last years. Admired by Virginia Woolf in her lifetime and by many writers since her death, Katherine Mansfield is one of the great literary artists of the twentieth century.

The Death of Virgil


Hermann Broch - 1945
    Out of the last hours of Virgil's life and the final stirrings of his consciousness, the Austrian writer Hermann Broch fashioned one of the great works of twentieth-century modernism, a book that embraces an entire world and renders it with an immediacy that is at once sensual and profound.Begun while Broch was imprisoned in a German concentration camp, The Death of Virgil is part historical novel and part prose poem - and always an intensely musical and immensely evocative meditation on the relation between life and death, the ancient and the modern.

Ross Poldark


Winston Graham - 1945
    But instead, he discovers that his father has died, his home is overrun by livestock and drunken servants, and Elizabeth, having believed Ross dead, is now engaged to his cousin. Ross must start over, building a completely new path for his life, one that takes him in exciting and unexpected directions....Thus begins an intricately plotted story spanning loves, lives, and generations. The Poldark series is the masterwork of Winston Graham, who evoked the period and people like only he could, and created a world of rich and poor, loss and love, that listeners will not soon forget.

London Belongs to Me


Norman Collins - 1945
    This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ed Glinert, author of The London Compendium.It is 1938 and the prospect of war hangs over every London inhabitant. But the city simply doesn't stop. Everywhere people continue to work, drink, fall in love, fight and struggle to get on in life. At the lodging-house at No.10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington, the buttoned-up clerk Mr Josser returns home with the clock he has received as a retirement gift. The other residents include the faded actress Connie; tinned food-loving Mr Puddy; widowed landlady Mrs Vizzard (whose head is turned by her new lodger, a self-styled 'Professor of Spiritualism'); and flashy young mechanic Percy Boon, whose foray into stolen cars descends into something much, much worse...Norman Collins (1907-1982) was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who was responsible for creating Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, and became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television (ITV) network in the UK. In all Norman Collins wrote 16 novels and two plays, including London Belongs to Me (1945), The Governor's Lady (1968) and The Husband's Story (1978).If you enjoyed London Belongs to Me, you might like Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'One of the great city novels: a sprawling celebration of the comedy, the savagery, the eccentricity and the quiet heroism at the heart of ordinary London life'Sarah Waters, author of The Night Watch

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir


R.A. Dick - 1945
    Upon discovering the rumors to be true, the young widow ends up forming a special companionship with the ghost of handsome former sea captain Daniel Gregg. Through the struggles of supporting her children, seeking out romance from the wrong places, and working to publish the captain's story as a book, Blood and Swash, Lucy finds in her secret relationship with Captain Gregg a comfort and blossoming love she never could have predicted. Originally published in 1945, made into a movie in 1947, and later adapted into a television sitcom in 1968, this romantic tale explores how love can develop without boundaries, both in this life and beyond.

Black Boy


Richard Wright - 1945
    An enduring story of one young man's coming of age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America.

The Delicate Prey and Other Stories


Paul Bowles - 1945
    That tense, stretched tone is the key to this collection of 17 eerie tales by the author best known for The Sheltering Sky. The Delicate Prey is dedicated: "For my mother, who first read me the stories of Poe." If Poe had lived in Mexico, and he'd had ice water running in his veins to counteract his feverish romanticism, he might have crafted something like these odd vignettes about human frailty and cruelty. The setting is a world where palm trees are like "shiny green spiders," where bats reel silently overhead in a jet-black sky, where a hot, relentless wind blows across deserted plazas. As Tobias Wolff writes in Esquire, "The Delicate Prey is in fact one of the most profound, beautifully wrought, and haunting collections in our literature.... Bowles's tales are at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. They move with the inevitability of myth. His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirely its own, capable of instantly modulating from farce to horror without a ruffle."

In Youth Is Pleasure


Denton Welch - 1945
    An adolescent voyeur, Orvil takes pleasure in the microscopic observation of his relatives and fellow guests, charting their eccentricities and love affairs as faithfully as he exposes his own obsessions. In a highly perceptive Afterword, Jeremy Reed relates the novel to Welch's life and work, praising it for writing that 'oscillates between moments of lyrical serenity and outbreaks of psychological disorder.' Flagrantly controversial on its first publication in 1945, In Youth Is Pleasure will impress new readers with its arresting visual descriptions and its defiance of convention.

Cannery Row


John Steinbeck - 1945
    Rather, it is an attempt to capture the feeling and people of a place, the cannery district of Monterey, California, which is populated by a mix of those down on their luck and those who choose for other reasons not to live "up the hill" in the more respectable area of town. The flow of the main plot is frequently interrupted by short vignettes that introduce us to various denizens of the Row, most of whom are not directly connected with the central story. These vignettes are often characterized by direct or indirect reference to extreme violence: suicides, corpses, and the cruelty of the natural world.The "story" of Cannery Row follows the adventures of Mack and the boys, a group of unemployed yet resourceful men who inhabit a converted fish-meal shack on the edge of a vacant lot down on the Row.Sweet Thursday is the sequel to Cannery Row.

The Black Rose


Thomas B. Costain - 1945
    By stated by the author, this story "grows out of a legend, a most beguiling and romantic legened which is found in a very few old English histories"."Solid in its facts, colorful and romantic...a rich and remarkable historical tapestry." Quote from Christian Science Monitor".

The Berlin Stories


Christopher Isherwood - 1945
    Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which make up The Berlin Stories are recognized today as classics of modern fiction.A charming city of avenues and cafés, a grotesque city of night-people and fantasts, a dangerous city of vice and intrigue, a powerful city of millionaires and mobs - all this was Berlin in 1931, the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power.Here are Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught in the struggle between Nazis and Communists; plump Fräulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her Büste might relieve her heart palpitations; the Landauers, a distinguished and doomed Jewish family; Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in the demimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in "I Am a Camera" and by Liza Minelli in "Cabaret."

Justin Morgan Had a Horse


Marguerite Henry - 1945
    He spoke now to the horse, as though he were the one that mattered. "Why, come to think of it, you're just like us, Bub. You're American! That's what you are. American!" In 1791 a Vermont schoolmaster by the name of Justin Morgan comes home with a two-year-old colt named Little Bub. Taken as payment for an outstanding debt, the little colt doesn't seem like he is worth much, but the kindly teacher asks one of his students, Joel Goss, to train him. Joel knows the horse has great potential, and soon word about Little Bub spreads throughout the entire Northeast for his ability to outwork, outrun, outtrot, and outwalk any horse in the area. This is the extraordinary tale of a little workhorse, who, after being born in obscurity, becomes one of the greatest breeding stallions of all time. In this true story Newbery Medal-winning author Marguerite Henry and artist Wesley Dennis celebrate the life of the only horse ever to establish a breed all by himself -- the Morgan.

Captain From Castile


Samuel Shellabarger - 1945
    "Torrid, nonstop adventure. . . . First-rate, " "Time Magazine."

The Moomins and the Great Flood


Tove Jansson - 1945
    It´s the story about Moominmamma and Moomintroll´s search for the missing Moominpappa and how they found their way to the Moominvalley.

The Tree That Sat Down


Beverley Nichols - 1945
    Maybe some of the characters have a modern touch...the witch for instance keeps a vacuum cleaner to assist her with her spells, but otherwise it joins all those magic tales which begin once upon a time.'Beverly Nichols

The Best of Damon Runyon


Damon Runyon - 1945
    Stokes Company, February 24, 1938.

The White Deer


James Thurber - 1945
    It is the story of a beautiful princess, transformed from a deer, who assigns each of three princes a perilous labor to perform in order to win her hand. Drawings by the Author.

Only Yesterday


S.Y. Agnon - 1945
    Agnon's famous masterpiece, his novel Only Yesterday, here appears in English translation for the first time. Published in 1945, the book tells a seemingly simple tale about a man who immigrates to Palestine with the Second Aliya--the several hundred idealists who returned between 1904 and 1914 to work the Hebrew soil as in Biblical times and revive Hebrew culture. Only Yesterday quickly became recognized as a monumental work of world literature, but not only for its vivid historical reconstruction of Israel's founding society. This epic novel also engages the reader in a fascinating network of meanings, contradictions, and paradoxes all leading to the question, what, if anything, controls human existence?Seduced by Zionist slogans, young Isaac Kumer imagines the Land of Israel filled with the financial, social, and erotic opportunities that were denied him, the son of an impoverished shopkeeper, in Poland. Once there, he cannot find the agricultural work he anticipated. Instead Isaac happens upon house-painting jobs as he moves from secular, Zionist Jaffa, where the ideological fervor and sexual freedom are alien to him, to ultra-orthodox, anti-Zionist Jerusalem. While some of his Zionist friends turn capitalist, becoming successful merchants, his own life remains adrift and impoverished in a land torn between idealism and practicality, a place that is at once homeland and diaspora. Eventually he marries a religious woman in Jerusalem, after his worldly girlfriend in Jaffa rejects him.Led astray by circumstances, Isaac always ends up in the place opposite of where he wants to be, but why? The text soars to Surrealist-Kafkaesque dimensions when, in a playful mode, Isaac drips paint on a stray dog, writing "Crazy Dog" on his back. Causing panic wherever he roams, the dog takes over the story, until, after enduring persecution for so long without "understanding" why, he really does go mad and bites Isaac. The dog has been interpreted as everything from the embodiment of Exile to a daemonic force, and becomes an unforgettable character in a book about the death of God, the deception of discourse, the power of suppressed eroticism, and the destiny of a people depicted in all its darkness and promise.

All Through the Night


Grace Livingston Hill - 1945
    All alone, Dale had to face the bitterness and greed of her relatives who were trying to claim her home. But Dale's greatest sorrow was that her beloved was at war--and he might never return.Then Dale's deep faith and gentle love begin to change her self-centered family, and a hope starts to build in her heart that love truly can triumph over all.

Brideshead Revisited


Evelyn Waugh - 1945
    It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

Voices; The Walls


Vaikom Muhammad Basheer - 1945
    Two important works published as one by Malayalam fiction writer Vaikom Muhammad Basheer.

The City Of Trembling Leaves


Walter Van Tilburg Clark - 1945
    His classic coming-of-age tale is situated in Reno.

Coroner Creek


Luke Short - 1945
    The army wagon train carried rifles, ammunition, and a chestful of gold through Apache territory, where every white man was a target. With the soldiers rode a single stagecoach carrying the woman whom Chris Danning planned to marry. When the train passed through Karnes Canyon, an Apache raiding party stormed out of the shadows, and the creek ran red with blood.   For eighteen months now, Danning has searched for the Apache who attacked the wagon train and killed his fiancée. He’s also hunting the corrupt white man who sold the soldiers out. With the help of a grizzled Indian scout, Danning finally gets the name of the Apache chief and a description of their informer. When he finds them, the real battle will begin.   A truly unique saga of vengeance and obsession in the American West, Coroner Creek—which was made into a 1948 Columbia Pictures film starring Randolph Scott—explores the darkest parts of the cowboy soul. .

The Short Novels of Dostoyevsky


Fyodor Dostoevsky - 1945
    Dostoevsky in Moderation--Thomas MannThe GamblerNotes from UndergroundUncle's DreamThe Eternal HusbandThe DoubleThe Friend of the Family

Glory for Me


MacKinlay Kantor - 1945
    The film, The Best Years of Our Lives was based on this book, with some changes.

The Age of Reason


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1945
    Translated from the French by Eric Sutton.

Lucifer and the Child


Ethel Mannin - 1945
    She wanted to be solitary and free."This is the story of Jenny Flower, London slum child, who one day, on an outing to the country, meets a Dark Stranger with horns on his head. It is the first day of August — Lammas — a witches' sabbath. Jenny was born on Hallowe'en, and possibly descended from witches herself . . .Reminiscent of Machen's, "The White People", Lucifer and the Child is a tale of witchcraft — or is it? The author does not commit herself; merely stating that the story is open to natural explanation; alternatively, she invites "the willing suspension of disbelief"."There is never any name for the impact of strangeness on the commonplace," Mannin writes. With this sensibility Lucifer and the Child will at last be recognised as a classic of strange fiction and a work to be enjoyed by contemporary lovers of the genre.Once banned in Ireland by the Censorship of Publications Board, Lucifer and the Child is now available worldwide in this splendid new edition from Swan River Press featuring an introduction by Rosanne Rabinowitz and cover by Lorena Carrington.Ethel Mannin (1900-1984) was a best-selling author born and bred in South London. Her first novel, Martha, was published in 1923, having first been entered in a writing competition. She continued to write at an astonishing pace, producing over fifty novels during her long career, plus multiple volumes of short stories, autobiographies, travel and political writing. Mannin was also a lifelong socialist, feminist, and anti-fascist. She died in Devon at the age of 84.

The Blood of Others


Simone de Beauvoir - 1945
    He is the one who sent her on the mission that led to her death, and before morning, he must ultimately decide how many others to send to a similar fate.

Best Supernatural Stories


H.P. Lovecraft - 1945
    Collection that includes the following stories:Introduction: Something About Howard Phillips LovecraftThe Whisperer in Darkness In the VaultThe Call of CthulhuThe Colour Out of SpaceThe Dunwich Horror The Haunter of the Dark The Music of Erich ZannThe Picture in the HouseThe Terrible Old Man The Thing on the DoorstepCool Air Pickman's Model The OutsiderThe Rats in the Walls

Conceived in Liberty


Howard Fast - 1945
    Shortly after the soldiers establish quarters for the cold months ahead, disease begins to rip through the camp. The men, helpless against sickness and despair, are facing the longest winter of their lives—and their survival will determine the fate of their young nation. Passionate and unforgettable, Conceived in Liberty is one of Fast’s rawest accounts of the brutality of the Revolutionary War, and of the heroism of its soldiers. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate.

The Lonely


Paul Gallico - 1945
    He is torn by his loyalty to his fiance/childhood sweetheart back home.

Animal Farm


George Orwell - 1945
    With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

The Mudhen


Merritt Parmelee Allen - 1945
    

Journey to the Interior


P.H. Newby - 1945
    H. Newby's debut novel, first published in 1945.In the desert Sultanate of Rasuka, the European supervisors of an oil well form a community favourable to the development of minor eccentricities and personal antagonisms. But when one of them disappears, Winter is forced to embark on a unique journey to find him.

The Eighth Champion of Christendom


Edith Pargeter - 1945
    

The House in the Dark


Tarjei Vesaas - 1945
    Part allegory, part fable, The House In The Dark was written in secret during the German occupation of Norway, and gives a stirring picture of how a society struggled to stay united under the strain of being watched by their invaders.

Clarence Day Omnibus: God and My Father / Life With Father / Life With Mother


Clarence Day Jr. - 1945
    

If He Hollers Let Him Go


Chester Himes - 1945
    The novel takes place in the space of four days in the life of Bob Jones, a black man who is constantly plagued by the effects of racism. Living in a society that is drenched in race consciousness has no doubt taken a toll on the way Jones behaves, thinks, and feels, especially when, at the end of his story, he is accused of a brutal crime he did not commit. "One of the most important American writers of the twentieth century ... [a] quirky American genius..."—Walter Mosley, author of Bad Boy Brawly Brown, Devil in a Blue Dress "If He Hollers is an austere and concentrated study of black experience, set in southern California in the early forties."—Independent Publisher

The Best Stories of Guy de Maupassant


Guy de Maupassant - 1945
    Modern Library volume 98 edited by Saxe Commins.

Miriam


Truman Capote - 1945
    H. T. Miller who wants to spend the remaining years of her life alone in her apartment near the East River after the death of her husband, H. T. Miller. She is very lonely, has no friends to speak of and does not keep in touch with any of her relatives.One day, going into a movie theater, she meets a young, intelligent girl named Miriam. Mrs. Miller is intrigued that the girl's first name is also Miriam…This creepy short story was originally published in the June 1945 issue of Mademoiselle. "Miriam" was one of Capote's first published short stories, and in 1946 it earned an O. Henry Award in the category Best First-Published Story.

An Ape, A Dog and A Serpent


Gerald Kersh - 1945
    

A Bell for Adano


Paul Osborn - 1945
    Summary: An Italian-American major, part of American occupation forces in Sicily during World War II, tries to reform the town in his charge by being decent to people. His efforts are epitomized by his efforts to replace the 700-year-old bell melted down for bullets by the fascists. World War, 1939-1945 -- Drama.

The Fear Makers


Darwin Teilhet - 1945
    

The High Barbaree


Charles Bernard Nordhoff - 1945
    

Country mouse


Louise Andrews Kent - 1945
    Soon a motley crew of writers, musicians and refugees is assembled, making life hard for Nancy Rolland, the manager of the colony. Several military men on leave flit in and out, but their attention is often captured by the glamorous and unscrupulous Lady Finchfallow. Through it all, the women of the colony wonder about their fathers, husbands and brothers and wait for letters and news from the front. Mrs. Appleyard puts in an appearance here.

The Return of the Continental Op


Dashiell Hammett - 1945
    A collection of five short stories previously unpublished in book form, edited and introduced by Ellery Queen.The Whosis KidThe Gutting of CouffignalDeath and CompanyOne HourThe Tenth Clue

Steer by the Stars


Olivia Fitzroy - 1945
    Naturally this adds to their fun enormously, and they have a wonderful time sailing, camping and fishing together besides having some very exciting and unexpected adventures.