Read Around North America Challenge

Read at least one book by an author from each country in North America.

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Best books from North America (732)
591.

The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories by Robert W. Chambers EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Description:
A milestone of American supernatural fiction, The King in Yellow created a sensation upon its 1895 publication. Since then, it has markedly influenced writers in the genre, most famously, H. P. Lovecraft. Author Robert W. Chambers has been hailed as a writer of remarkable imaginative powers and the historic link between Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King. This edition features 12 of his gripping stories and was edited by a noted authority on supernatural fiction, E. F. Bleiler, who provides an informative introduction.

592.

The Pearl by John Steinbeck EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Description:
“There it lay, the great pearl, perfect as the moon.” One of Steinbeck’s most taught works, The Pearl is the story of the Mexican diver Kino, whose discovery of a magnificent pearl from the Gulf beds means the promise of a better life for his impoverished family. His dream blinds him to the greed and suspicions the pearl arouses in him and his neighbors, and even his loving wife Juana cannot temper his obsession or stem the events leading to tragedy. This classic novella from Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck examines the fallacy of the American dream, and illustrates the fall from innocence e... continue

593.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes EN

Rating: 4 (4 votes)
Description:
A mentally retarded adult has a brain operation that turns him into a genius.


595.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Description:
Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time). Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiog... continue

596.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville EN

Rating: 5 (3 votes)
Description:
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read First published in 1851, Herman Melville’s masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick’s words, “the greatest novel in American literature.” The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale remains a peerless adventure story but one full of mythic grandeur, poetic majesty, and symbolic power. Filtered through the consciousness of the novel’s narrator, Ishmael, Moby-Dick draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories, from the noble cannibal Queequeg to the natural history of ... continue

597.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Description:
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century is the story of a family of Southern aristocrats on the brink of personal and financial ruin. The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest no... continue

598.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Description:
Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past. As they begin to cope with chilling, even horrifying occurrences beyond their control or understanding, they cannot possibly know what lies ahead. For Hill House is gathering its powers � and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

599.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Description:
Arthur Miller's depiction of innocent men and women destroyed by malicious rumour, The Crucible is a powerful indictment of McCarthyism and the 'frontier mentality' of Cold War America, published in Penguin Modern Classics. Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 - 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' - and the American anti-communist purges led by Senator McCarthy in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating... continue

600.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft EN

0 Ratings
Description:
H P Lovecraft is credited with reinventing the horror genre in the twentieth century. In this volume, Lovecraft's preeminent interpreter, S T Joshi, presents a selection of the master's fiction. These stories reveal the development of Lovecraft's mesmerizing narrative style and establish him as a canonical - and visionary - American writer.