Book picks similar to
Raymond's Run by Toni Cade Bambara


short-stories
read-for-school
childrens
school-reading

Grendel


John Gardner - 1971
    The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his side of the story in a book William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."

Masks


Fumiko Enchi - 1958
    This is a curiously elegant and scandalous tale of sexual deception and revenge. Ibuki loves widow Yasuko who is young, charming and sparkling with intelligence as well as beauty. His friend, Mikame, desires her too but that is not the difficulty. What troubles Ibuki is the curious bond that has grown between Yasuko and her mother-in-law, Mieko, a handsome, cultivated yet jealous woman in her fifties, who is manipulating the relationship between Yasuko and the two men who love her.

Address Unknown


Kathrine Kressmann Taylor - 1938
    Published in book form a year later and banned in Nazi Germany, it garnered high praise in the United States and much of Europe. A series of fictional letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his former business partner, who has returned to Germany, Address Unknown is a haunting tale of enormous and enduring impact.

The Great Gatsby


Celia Turvey - 2000
    He is an extremely wealthy man, although no one knows where he or his money have come from. But Gatsby has a purpose: he is following a dream of love. Will his dream come true?

Measure for Measure


William Shakespeare - 1604
    In it, a duke temporarily removes himself from governing his city-state, deputizing a member of his administration, Angelo, to enforce the laws more rigorously. Angelo chooses as his first victim Claudio, condemning him to death because he impregnated Juliet before their marriage.Claudio’s sister Isabella, who is entering a convent, pleads for her brother’s life. Angelo attempts to extort sex from her, but Isabella preserves her chastity. The duke, in disguise, eavesdrops as she tells her brother about Angelo’s behavior, then offers to ally himself with her against Angelo.

Toliver's Secret


Esther Wood Brady - 1976
    Disguised as a boy, she manages to smuggle a message to General George Washington.

Drown


Junot Díaz - 1995
    Diaz's work is unflinching and strong, and these stories crackle with an electric sense of discovery. Diaz evokes a world in which fathers are gone, mothers fight with grim determination for their families and themselves, and the next generation inherits the casual cruelty, devastating ambivalence, and knowing humor of lives circumscribed by poverty and uncertainty. In Drown, Diaz has harnessed the rhythms of anger and release, frustration and joy, to indelible effect.

Dark Roots


Cate Kennedy - 2006
    This arresting collection introduces a new master of the short story.Following her American debut in The New Yorker, Australian Cate Kennedy delivers a mesmerizing collection of award-winning stories that daringly travel to the deepest depths of the human psyche. In this sublimely sophisticated and compulsively readable collection, Kennedy opens up worlds of finely observed detail to explore the collision between simmering inner lives, the cold outside world, and the hidden motivations that propel us all to act. In just a few pages, Kennedy captures entire lives, expertly documenting the risks and compromises made in both forging and escaping relationships. Her stories are populated by people on the brink: whether it’s a woman floundering with her own loss and emotional immobility as her lover lies in a coma; a neglected wife who cannot convince her husband of the truth about his two brutish, shamelessly libidinous friends; or a married woman who comes to realize that her too-tight wedding ring isn’t the only thing that’s stuck in her relationship. Each character must make a choice and none is without consequence—even the smallest decisions have the power to destroy or renew, to recover and relinquish.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption


Stephen King - 1982
    He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking.com

Wild Geese


Martha Ostenso - 1925
    To a generation bred on sentimental escapist literature, the idea of a heroine as wild as a bronco and as fiery as a tigress was nothing short of revolutionary. In the character of Judith Gare, Martha Ostenso had painted so naked and uncompromising a portrait of human passion and need that it crossed all bounds of propriety and convention.Today, Wild Geese is widely recognized as a milestone in the development of modern realist fiction. Set on the windswept prairies, it is a story of love and tyranny, of destruction and survival, told with vigour and lyric beauty. It is also a poignant evocation of loneliness, which, like the call of the wild geese, is beyond human warmth, beyond tragedy, “an endless quest.”From the Paperback edition.

Psychology in Everyday Life


David G. Myers - 2008
    Students of all kinds are comfortable with Myers' manageable chapters, which include careful connections to associated visuals, comparative tables, and research-based pedagogy. For this edition, there is something completely new to a Myers text: David Myers personally selected new coauthor. Nathan DeWall's enthusiasm for teaching and writing about psychological science makes him uniquely suited to join the worlds bestselling psychology textbook author. And with about 30 more pages of coverage, this edition has become an even stronger and more complete introduction to the science of psychology for courses of all kinds.

"Sweat"


Zora Neale HurstonAlice Walker - 1997
    Among contributions by Gwendolyn Bennett, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, "Sweat" stood out both for its artistic accomplishment and its exploration of rural Southern black life. In "Sweat" Hurston claimed the voice that animates her mature fiction, notably the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God; the themes of marital conflict and the development of spiritual consciousness were introduced as well. "Sweat" exemplifies Hurston's lifelong concern with women's relation to language and the literary possibilities of black vernacular.This casebook for the story includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of the author's life, the authoritative text of "Sweat," and a second story, "The Gilded Six-Bits." Published in 1932, this second story was written after Hurston had spent years conducting fieldwork in the Southern United States. The volume also includes Hurston's groundbreaking 1934 essay, "Characteristics of Negro Expression," and excerpts from her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. An article by folklorist Roger Abrahams provides additional cultural contexts for the story, as do selected blues and spirituals. Critical commentary comes from Alice Walker, who led the recovery of Hurston's work in the 1970s, Robert Hemenway, Henry Louis Gates, Gayl Jones, John Lowe, Kathryn Seidel, and Mary Helen Washington.

Underground to Canada


Barbara Smucker - 1978
    Every day that she spends huddled in the slave trader’s wagon travelling south or working on the brutal new plantation, she thinks about the land where it is possible to be free, a land she and her friend Liza may reach someday. So when workers from the Underground Railroad offer to help the two girls escape, they are ready. But the slave catchers and their dogs will soon be after them…

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters


Julian Barnes - 1989
    Noah disembarks from his ark but he and his Voyage are not forgotten: they are revisited in on other centuries and other climes - by a Victorian spinster mourning her father, by an American astronaut on an obsessive personal mission. We journey to the Titanic, to the Amazon, to the raft of the Medusa, and to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin...This is no ordinary history, but something stranger, a challenge and a delight for the reader's imagination. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is the work of a brilliant novelist.

Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970


Richard Brautigan - 1971
    Richard Brautigan is the author of "Willard & His Bowling Trophies", "Trout Fishing in America", "In Watermelon Sugar" & "A Confederate General From Big Sur".Revenge of the lawn --1692 Cotton Mather newsreel --1/3, 1/3, 1/3 --The gathering of a Californian --A short story about contemporary life in California --Pacific Radio fire --Elmira --Coffee --The lost chapters of Trout fishing in America: "Rembrandt Creek" and "Carthage Sink" --The weather in San Francisco --Complicated banking problems --A high building in Singapore --An unlimited supply of 35 millimeter film --The Scarlatti Tilt --The wild birds of heaven --Winter rug --Ernest Hemingway's typist --Homage to the San Francisco YMCA --The pretty office --A need for gardens --The old bus --The ghost children of Tacoma --Talk show --I was trying to describe you to someone --Trick or treating down to the sea in ships --Blackberry motorist --Thoreau rubber band --44:40 --Perfect California day --The post offices of eastern Oregon --Pale marble movie --Partners --Getting to know each other --A short history of Oregon --A long time ago people decided to live in America --A short history of religion in California --April in god-damn --One afternoon in 1939 --Corporal --Lint --A complete history of Germany and Japan --The auction --The armored car --The literary life in California, 1964 --Banners of my own choosing --Fame in California, 1964 --Memory of a girl --September California --A study in California flowers --The betrayed kingdom --Women when they put their clothes on in the morning --Halloween in Denver --Atlantisburg --The view from the dog tower --Greyhound tragedy --Crazy old women are riding the buses of America today --The correct time --Holiday in Germany --Sand Castles --Forgiven --American flag decal --The World War I Los Angeles airplane