It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe. Although not intending to stay, Giovanni suddenly finds that years have passed, as, almost without his noticing, he has come to share the others' wait for a foreign invasion that never happens. Over time the fort is downgraded and Giovanni's ambitions fade until the day the enemy begins massing on the desolate steppe...

    His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create.Darkness at Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he relives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, it asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present. It is —- as the Times Literary Supplement has declared —- "A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian Revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualized drama."

    and The Pangs of LoveLove had come to David for the first time, glorious, overwhelming, passionate. It was far greater and far more lovely than he had ever dreamed possible. And it was returned in full measure, with equal passion. But he could not take her without pain--pain for himself, for her, for his beloved family.Lucilla has spent a lifetime making the Hampshire estate of Damerosehay a tranquil haven for the Eliot family. When her favourite grandson, David, falls in love with an unsuitable woman Lucilla feels is unsuitable, she sees her most cherished ambitions put at risk. But can she persuade David and Nadine to put duty before love?At last, in the magical peace of the countryside, watched over by a benevolent old house that had nourished so much love, they knew the path their hearts must take....

    Aram Garoghlanian was a Californian, born in Fresno on the other side of the Southern Pacific tracks. But he was also part of a large, sprawling family of immigrant Armenians--a whole tribe of eccentric uncles, brawling cousins, and gentle women. Through these unforgettable, often hilarious characters Aram comes to understand life, courage, and the power of dreams. Whether it is fierce Uncle Khosrove who yells "Pay no attention to it" in any situation, Uncle Melik, who tries to grow pomegranate trees in the desert, or angelic-looking Cousin Arak who gets Arma into classroom scrapes, Aram's visions are shaped and colored by this tum-of-the-century clan. Like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, William Saroyan's brilliant short stories in My Name Is Aram work together to create a picture of a time, a place, and a boy's world-a truly classic account of an impoverished family newly arrived in America-rich in matters of the heart.

    Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.Inspired by Bioy Casares’s fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction’s now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Last Year at Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.

    It originally appeared in serialized form between 1928 and 1940. The English translation of the second half of this monumental work appeared under this title in 1940.The novel follows the fortunes of the Don Cossacks in peace and war, revolution and civil war. The novel depicts the destruction of Cossack society during the Civil War. Grigory Melekhov is the protagonist. The book tells of his tragic affair with Aksinia, the wife of a neighbour, and how he fights for the Reds, the Whites, and the Partisans.

    When he returns to that town he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and friends feel naked and exposed by the truths they have seen in his book, and their fury drives him from his home. He begins a search for his own identity that takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of expatriates; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. At last Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope.

    It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

    

    Set in a small town in the middle of the deep South, it is the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and a disparate group of people who are drawn towards his kind, sympathetic nature. The owner of the café where Singer eats every day, a young girl desperate to grow up, an angry drunkard, a frustrated black doctor: each pours their heart out to Singer, their silent confidant, and he in turn changes their disenchanted lives in ways they could never imagine.

    Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River was an unbroken sea of trees. Beneath them the forest trails were dark, silent, and lonely, brightened only by a few lost beams of sunlight. Here, in the first novel of Conrad Richter's Awakening Land trilogy, the Lucketts, a wild, woods-faring family, lived their roaming life, pushing ever westward as the frontier advanced and as new settlements threatened their isolation. This novel gives an excellent feel for America's lost woods culture, which was created when most of the eastern midwest was a vast hardwood forest---virtually a jungle. The Trees conveys settler life, including conflicts with Native Americans, illness, hunting, family dynamics, and marriage.

    Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

    This book is set in 1930’s Punjab, before partition and was originally written in the Punjabi Language. Navdeep Suri has translated this Indian classic masterfully, preserving the sadness and poetry that flow through this exceptional work. The Author, Nanak Singh has been described as the father of the Punjabi Novel

    God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly “whiskey priest” is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.   In his introduction, John Updike calls The Power and the Glory, “Graham Greene’s masterpiece…. The energy and grandeur of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist.”

    It is the story, seen through the eyes of a boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its sense of independence and the mining camp with its uncertain promise of material prosperity. In his world privation, violence, and death are part of everyday life, accepted and endured. Yet it is a world of dignity, love, and humor, of natural beauty which Still evokes in sharp, poetic images. No writer has caught more effectively the vividness of mountain speech or shown more honestly the trials and joys of mountain life.

     Franz von Heiden, son of a Nazi official and an English mother, comes to England early in 1938 to visit his English cousins – and to study them. He is both accepted and entertained by Wynne Braithwaite’s family and friends. But the peace and abundance which he finds about him are not what he had been taught to expect. These people are not the decadent enemy; their casual talk and happy lives betray no weakness. Franz is disturbed – his reports to his father at home are not what had been expected there. Finding himself in love with Wynne, he is further troubled at the thought of his mother’s broken life in Germany. Would Wynne suffer the same slow death? As tremendous events succeed each other – Munich, Czechoslovakia and war itself – Franz’s dilemma grows increasingly acute. His final devastating choice is a thrilling climax to a moving book. Written in 1940, this book is a fascinating insight into the interwar years. Praise for The English Air: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This book was pure wisdom mixed with British charm and wit' - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Her descriptive imagery brings the British countryside to life' - Goodreads Reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'has a lovely, graceful-while-yet-down-to-earth style' - Goodreads Reviewer D. E. Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. Her father was a first cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson. She was educated privately and travelled widely in France and Italy with her parents. She married a major in the Highland Light Infantry and moved with the regiment from place to place gaining valuable experience of life and people.

    What follows is a nightmare of intrigue for the English armaments engineer as he makes his way home aboard an Italian freighter. Among the passengers are a couple of Nazi assassins intent on preventing his returning to England with plans for a Turkish defense system, the seductive cabaret dancer and her manager husband, and a number of surprising allies. Thrilling, intense, and masterfully plotted, Journey Into Fear is a classic suspense tale from one of the founders of the genre.

    Its trade was prosperous, its hospitality famous and the host was jolly and generous. To his servants he was cruel and menacing, and to Ellie Roon, the most menial servant at the Fleece, he was a figure of terror. Ellie was used to being bullied, but when her illegitimate daughter was born - in a rat-ridden attic of the Fleece - she decided that Hester must have a different kind of life. And so, Hester Roon began her eventful progress in the harsh world of 18th century England. After fleeing from the inn, and the attentions of the owner, she became involved in the London underworld. From there she found herself in a world far beyond her imaginings..

    A British air reconnaissance officer falls for a pub waitress, but finds his lift in chaos when he accidentally bombs a British submarine, mistaking it for a German U-boat. What begins as a romantic fling develops into true love as Mona fights to present the evidence she has discovered about this tragedy in the hope that it will absolve her lover.

    In his later years, his favorite work was writing the tales spun by Dr. Dogbody, a peg-legged old salt who never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. Doctor Dogbody's tales vividly recreate the Napoleonic Wars, and delight with broad comedy, rollicking naval adventure, and characters that will live on in the reader's memory.

    O. Fagunwa, was a Nigerian author who pioneered the Yoruba-language novel. His novels draw heavily on folktale traditions and idioms, including many supernatural elements. His heroes are usually Yoruba hunters, who interact with kings, sages, and even gods in their quests. Thematically, his novels also explore the divide between the Christian beliefs of Africa's colonizers and the continent's traditional religions. Fagunwa remains the most widely read Yorùbá-language author, and a major influence on such contemporary writers as Amos Tutuola.D. O. Fagunwa was the first Nigerian writer to employ folk philosophy in telling his stories. (Source: Wikipedia)

    Two of the finest future histories ever written, each concerning a central question: If and when a superior being is introduced into a culture, how will either survive? Odd John is the definitive fictionalization of the mutated superman who has to decide what to do with his gifts, while Sirius concerns a dog with superhuman mentality.

    He sets off for France, and enters a life of confusion, mystery and suspense - and bloody execution.

    Douglas. This novel, written in 1940 focuses on the lives of two friends, Kitty Baillie and Isobel Logan.

    Mab is spirited orphan who had been living with her Aunt Sarah in Iowa. Now she travels to Massachusetts to live with her Aunt Belinda Prior, where she will explore family history and make lasting friends in a close knit and quirky community.

    The children's efforts and the details of fixing up a real house are fascinating to those of us who like houses. Each chapter is introduced with one of Coatsworth's lyrical poems, and the slipcover and illustrations by Marguerite Davis give a detailed record of the period from her own sketches in the little town of Hingham, Massachusetts, where the author lived with her family.

    Boll weevils have devoured his cotton crop, his chickens have stopped laying eggs, and everything he owns is mortgaged — even his cow. He has no money, no prospects, and nothing to do but hang around filling stations, wondering where his next drink will come from. As far as hooch goes, there's no place like Smut Milligan's, where Breath of Spring moonshine sells for a dollar a pint. A bootlegger with an entrepreneurial spirit, Milligan has plans to open a roadhouse, and he asks Jack to run the till. The music will be hot, the liquor cheap, and the clientele rough. But the only thing stronger than Milligan's hooch is his greed, and Jack is slowly drawn into the middle of Smut's dalliances with a married woman, the machinations of corrupt town officials — and a savage act of murder.

    It follows the eponymous cowardly layabout as he escapes his unhappy family life by going on the run to avoid the coming Japanese invasion. Just a step ahead of the destruction, bumbling his way from one poorly thought out situation to the next, Ma Bole’s comic journey mirrors that of China as a whole during this chaotic period of history.Incredibly well respected during her short, difficult lifetime, Xiao Hong’s final novel is an undiscovered masterpiece, a philosophical comedy in the vein of Bouvard and Pécuchet, finally available to English readers in Howard Goldblatt’s inventive rendering.

    These two wisecracking friends—the first lean and clever, the second stout and tough—have ridden together from the Rocky Mountains to the deserts of West Texas. All they want is a trail to follow straight through to Mexico, where a ranching job offers honest work, peace, and quiet. But no matter how fast they ride, trouble keeps hot on their heels.   A gunshot breaks the silence of the lonely wagon road. By the time Twister and Chuckaluck reach the corpse, the killer is long gone. In the victim’s pocket they find a letter from a woman begging for help, a woman whose savior now lies dead in the alkali dust. Twister and Chuckaluck have no choice but to take up his mission—even if it means facing down the quickest draw they’ve ever been up against.  Death Rides the Pecos is the 2nd book in the Twister and Chuckaluck Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.