| Edward S Aarons |
| | Assignment - Bangkok | He could neither stand nor sit nor lie down. | Buy | |
| | Assignment - Lili Lamaris | Durell flew from New York via an Alitalia airliner directly to the Ciampino Airport outside of Rome, and he used the regular bus service to get to his hotel on the Via Veneto, not far from the Palazzo Margherita, where the American Embassy was located. | Buy | |
| | Assignment - Sumatra | "Don't touch me," Lydia said. | Buy | |
| | Assignment--Angelina | Mark drove the Cadillac right into town. | Buy | |
| | Assignment--Peking | The man in the mask struggled in the darkness of his nonidentity. | Buy | |
| | Assignment--The Girl in the Gondola | He was dying. | Buy | |
| | Assignment--White Rajah | Durell ran and fell and picked himself up and ran again. | Buy | |
| | I Can't Stop Running | The light bothered him. | Buy | |
| | Outlander | It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first sight. | Buy | |
| William B Aarons |
| | Assignment - 13th Princess | Durell thought he must be dreaming. | Buy | |
| | Assignment--Death Ship | Durell squinted into the Caribbean glare, searching the distance where the stricken liner Sun Rover could be expected to emerge from its shroud of salt haze. | Buy | |
| Alexander Aaronsohn |
| | With The Turks In Palestine | Thirty-five years ago, the impulse which has since been organized as the
Zionist Movement led my parents to leave their homes in Roumania and
emigrate to Palestine, where they joined a number of other Jewish
pioneers in founding Zicron-Jacob--a little village lying just south of
Mount Carmel, in that fertile coastal region close to the ancient Plains
of Armageddon. | Buy | Read |
| Edwin Abbott Abbott |
| | Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions | I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space. | Buy | Read |
| | World of Wonders | "Of course he was a charming man." | Buy | |
| Ellen Hallowell Abbott |
| | Little Eve Edgarton | "But you live like such a fool—of course you're bored!" drawled the Older Man, rummaging listlessly through his pockets for the ever-elusive match. | Buy | Read |
| | Molly Make-Believe | The morning was as dark and cold as city snow could make it--a dingy whirl at the window; a smoky gust through the fire-place; a shadow black as a bear's cave under the table. Nothing in all the cavernous room, loomed really warm or familiar except a glass of stale water, and a vapid, half-eaten grape-fruit. | Buy | Read |
| | The Indiscreet Letter | The Railroad Journey was very long and slow. The Traveling Salesman was rather short and quick. And the Young Electrician who lolled across the car aisle was neither one length nor another, but most inordinately flexible, like a suit of chain armor | Buy | Read |
| | The White Linen Nurse | The White Linen Nurse was so tired that her noble expression ached.
| Buy | Read |
| Jane Abbott |
| | Keineth | Keineth Randolph's world seemed suddenly to be turning upside down!
| Buy | Read |
| John S C Abbott |
| | Kit Carson, the Pioneer of the West | Christopher Carson, whose renown as Kit Carson has reached almost
every ear in the country was born in Madison county, Kentucky, on
the 24th of December, 1809. | Buy | Read |
| Lee K Abbott |
| | The Talk Talked Between Worms | According to the tapes, my father, then about as run-of-the-mill as Joe Blow himself, didn't want to see the thing. | Buy | |
| Edmond About |
| | The King Of The Mountains | At about six in the morning of July 3, 1860, while I was watering my petunias, and thinking of nothing in particular, I perceived coming towards me, a tall, beardless, fair-haired young fellow, wearing a German cap and gold-rimmed spectacles. | Buy | |
| Chinua Achebe |
| | A Man Of The People | No man can deny that Chief the Honourable M.A. Nanga, M.P. was the most approachable politician in the country. | Buy | |
| | Things Fall Apart | Okonwko was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. | Buy | |
| Andy Adams |
| | Brazilian Gold Mine Mystery | "Guard this letter as you would your life!" | Buy | |
| Douglas Adams |
| | Life, The Universe And Everything | The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was. | Buy | |
| | Mostly Harmless | Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, cuases itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order though. | Buy | |
| | So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish | Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. | Buy | |
| | The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy | Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. | Buy | |
| | The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe | There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. | Buy | |
| Harold Adams |
| | When Rich Men Die | The digital clock showed 2:41 A.M. as I rolled to lift the receiver before the second ring and said, "Yeah?" | Buy | |
| Henry Brooks Adams |
| | Democracy | For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot
Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington. | Buy | |
| | Esther | The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery, beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow maples. | Buy | |
| Richard Adams |
| | Watership Down | The primroses were over. | Buy | |
| David A Adler |
| | Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Monster Movie | It was a cold winter Sunday afternoon. | Buy | |
| James Agee |
| | A Death in the Family | We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child | Buy | |
| M Ageyev |
| | Novel With Cocaine | Early one morning I, Vadim Maslennikov, set off for school (I was going on seventeen at the time) having forgotten the envelope with the first-semester fees Mother had left me in the dining room the day before. | Buy | |
| William Harrison Ainsworth |
| | Old St. Paul's | One night, at the latter end of April 1665, the family of a
citizen of London carrying on an extensive business as a grocer
in Wood Street, Cheapside, were assembled, according to custom,
at prayer. | Buy | |
| | The Tower Of London | On the 10th of July 1553, about two hours after noon, a loud discharge of ordnance burst from the turrets of Durham House, then the residence of the Duke of Northumberland, grandmaster of the realm, and occupying the site of the modern range of buildings known as the Adelphi; and at the signal, which was immediately answered from every point along the river where a bombard or culverin could be planted-- . . .
| Buy | |
| | Windsor Castle | In the twentieth year of the reign of the right high and puissant King Henry the Eighth, namely, in 1529, on the twenty-first of April, and on one of the loveliest evenings that ever fell on the loveliest district in England, a fair youth, having somewhat the appearance of a page, was leaning over the terrace-wall on the north side of Windsor Castle, and gazing at the magnificent scene before him. | Buy | |
| Marvin H Albert |
| | All the Young Men | The bodies of the two Marine scouts who had been trudging through the frozen Korean hills ahead of the advancing Second Platoon lay in the deep snow behind the brush-filled gully that lined the north rim of the valley. | Buy | |
| Mitch Albom |
| | The Five People You Meet In Heaven | This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. | Buy | |
| Louisa May Alcott |
| | Flower Fables | The summer moon shone brightly down upon the sleeping earth, while far away from mortal eyes danced the Fairy folk. | Buy | |
| | Little Men | "Please, sir, is this Plumfield?" asked a ragged boy of the man who opened the great gate at which the omnibus left him. | Buy | |
| | Little Women | "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. | Buy | |
| Brian W Aldiss |
| | Life in the West | To stretch his legs between consultations, Maclean escorted his
last patient to Baker Street station. | Buy | |
| | The Long Afternoon of Earth | Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, spreading riotous and strange in their instinct for growth. | Buy | |
| Bess Streeter Aldrich |
| | A White Bird Flying | It was the first Tuesday in August. The Nebraska heat rolled in upon one like the engulfing waves of a dry sea,--a thick material substance against which one seemed to push when moving about. | Buy | |
| | Miss Bishop | In 1846 the prairie town of Oak River existed only in a settler's dream. | Buy | |
| Nelson Algren |
| | The Man With The Golden Arm | The captain never drank. Yet, toward nightfall in that smoke-colored season between Indian summer and December's first true snow, he would sometimes feel half drunken. He would hang his coat neatly over the back of his chair in the leaden station-house twilight, say he was beat from lack of sleep and lay his head across his arms upon the query-room desk. | Buy | |
| Hervey Allen |
| | Action At Aquila | Southward, two mighty ranges of the Appalachians shouldered their way into the blue distance like tremendous caravans marching across eternity. | Buy | |
| | Anthony Adverse | Between the villages of Aubiere and Romagnat in the ancient Province of Auvergne there is an old road that comes suddenly over the top of a high hill. To stand south of this ridge looking up at the highway flowing over the skyline is to receive one of those irrefutable impressions from landscape which requires more than a philosopher to explain. In this case it is undoubtedly, for some reason, one of exalted expectation. | Buy | |
| | The Forest and the Fort | In the beginning was the forest. God made it and no man knew the end of it. | Buy | |
| James Lane Allen |
| | The Mettle of the Pasture | She did not wish any supper and she sank forgetfully back into the stately oak chair. | Buy | |
| | The Reign of Law | The Anglo-Saxon farmers had scarce conquered foothold, stronghold, freehold in the Western wilderness before they became sowers of hemp--with remembrance of Virginia, with remembrance of dear ancestral Britain. | Buy | |
| Isabel Allende |
| | House of the Spirits | Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. | Buy | |
| Dorothy Allison |
| | Bastard Out Of Carolina | I've been called Bone all my life, but my name's Ruth Anne | Buy | |
| John Allyn |
| | The 47 Ronin Story | March 13, 1701.
The sun completed its route over the Pacific and began to set, reddening the waters around the islands of Japan. | Buy | |
| Jorge Amado |
| | Sea Of Death | Night was running ahead of itself. | Buy | |
| Eric Ambler |
| | The Ability to Kill | Word goes round the court that the jury is returning. | Buy | |
| | The Siege of Villa Lipp | They stopped the car by the gateway in the wall on the lower coast road. | Buy | |
| Kingsley Amis |
| | Lucky Jim | "They made a silly mistake, though," the professor of history said, and his smile, as Dixon watched, gradually sank beneath the surface of his features at the memory. | Buy | |
| | The Anti-Death League | A girl and an older woman were walking along a metalled pathway. | Buy | |
| | The Old Devils | 'If you want my opinion,' said Gwen Cellan-Davies, 'the old boy's a terrifically distinguished citizen of Wales. Or at any rate what passes for one these days.' | Buy | |
| Commander William R Anderson |
| | Nautilus 90 North | It was Sunday, June 8, 1958. Our ship, the nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus, lay quietly moored at Pier 91 in Seattle, Washington. | Buy | |
| Sherwood Anderson |
| | Winesburg, Ohio | The writer, an old man with a white moustache, had some difficulty getting into bed. | Buy | |
| Maya Angelou |
| | I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - "To Whom It May Concern" - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson. | Buy | |
| Anonymous |
| | Go Ask Alice | September 16
Yesterday I remember thinking I was the happiest person in the
whole earth, in the whole galaxy, in all of God's creation.
Could that only have been yesterday or was it endless light-years
ago? | Buy | |
| | Primary Colors | He was a big fellow, looking seriously pale on the streets of
Harlem in deep summer. I am small and not so dark, not very
threatening to Caucasians; I do not strut my stuff. | Buy | |
| | The Inner Shrine | Though she had counted the strokes of every hour since midnight,
Mrs. Eveleth had no thought of going to bed. | Buy | |
| | The Masquerader | Two incidents, widely different in character yet bound together
by results, marked the night of January the twenty-third. | Buy | |
| | The Wild Olive | Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a
long, straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the
late-lingering Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive,
hatless, coatless, and barefooted, paused a minute for
reflection. As he paused, he listened; but all distinctiveness
of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and down dale,
through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of
forest. | Buy | |
| Anonymous (Basil King) |
| | The Inner Shrine | Though she had counted the strokes of every hour since midnight, Mrs. Eveleth had no thought of going to bed. | Buy | |
| | The Wild Olive | Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long, straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of forest. | Buy | |
| Anonymous (Beatrice Matthews Sparks) |
| | Go Ask Alice | September 16
Yesterday I remember thinking I was the happiest person in the whole earth, in the whole galaxy, in all of God's creation. Could that only have been yesterday or was it endless light-years ago? | Buy | |
| Anonymous (Joe Klein) |
| | Primary Colors | He was a big fellow, looking seriously pale on the streets of Harlem in deep summer. I am small and not so dark, not very threatening to Caucasians; I do not strut my stuff. | Buy | |
| Anonymous (Katherine Cecil Thurston) |
| | The Masquerader | Two incidents, widely different in character yet bound together by results, marked the night of January the twenty-third. | Buy | |
| Victor Appleton |
| | Tom Swift and His Airship | "Are you all ready, Tom?" | Buy | |
| Jeffrey Archer |
| | Kane And Abel | She only stopped streaming when she died. It was then that he started to scream. | Buy | |
| William Arden (Also known as: Dennis Lynds, Michael Collins) |
| | The Mystery Of The Laughing Shadow | Bob Andrews and Pete Crenshaw were still two miles from their homes in Rocky Beach when they had to turn on their bicycle lights. | Buy | |
| Michael Arlen |
| | The Green Hat | It has occurred to the writer to call this unimportant history The Green Hat because a green hat was the first thing about her that he saw: as also it was, in a way, the last thing about her that he saw. | Buy | |
| William H Armstrong |
| | Sounder | The tall man stood at the edge of the porch. The roof sagged from the two rough posts which held it, almost closing the gap between his head and the rafters. The dim light from the cabin window cast long equal shadows from man and posts. A boy stood nearby shivering in the cold October wind. He ran his fingers back and forth over the broad crown of the head of a coon dog named Sounder. | Buy | |
| Stephen Aron |
| | How The West Was Lost | Around sunset on December 22, 1769, while hunting near the Kentucky River, Daniel Boone met Wil Emery. | Buy | |
| Sholem Asch |
| | Mary | Every dawn renews the Beginning, and to behold the earth struggling out of the formless void, out of the night, is to witness the act of creation. | Buy | |
| | Moses | Many and diverse were the reasons which impelled Rameses the Second to abandon the ancient royal capital, sanctified by many dynasties, namely the city of Thebes on the banks of the Nile, and to settle in Rameses, on the frontier road which led to the lands of the Asiatics. | Buy | |
| | The Apostle | Seven weeks had gone by since that memorable day when on the hill of Golgotha Yeshua of Nazareth had been crucified by command of Pontius Pilate. The disciples and followers of the crucified one had left the city and gone into hiding among their own on the Mount of Olives. | Buy | |
| | The Nazarene | Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition of our existence. If the lore of the transmigration of souls is a true one, then these, between their exchange of bodies, must pass through the sea of forgetfulness. | Buy | |
| Penelope Ashe |
| | Naked Came The Stranger | Screwed. It was, Gilian realized, an obscene word. But it was the word that came to mind. Screwed. It had been, after all, an obscene act. She tried not to think about it. | Buy | |
| Isaac Asimov |
| | Foundation | His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. | Buy | |
| | Foundation and Empire | Bel Riose traveled without escort, which is not what court etiquette prescribes for the head of a fleet stationed in a yet-sullen stellar system on the Marches of the Galactic Empire. | Buy | |
| | I, Robot | I looked at my notes and I didn't like them. I'd spent three days at U.S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica. | Buy | |
| | Robbie | "Ninety-eight--ninety-nine--one hundred." Gloria withdrew her
chubby little forearm from before her eyes and stood for a
moment, wrinkling her nose and blinking in the sunlight. | Buy | |
| | Second Foundation | There is much more that the Encyclopedia has to say on the subject of the Mule and his Empire but almost all of it is not germane to the issue at immediate hand, and most of it is considerably too dry for our purposes in any case. | Buy | |
| Margot Asquith |
| | Margot Asquith, an Autobiography | I was born in the country of Hogg and Scott between the Yarrow
and the Tweed, in the year 1864. | Buy | |
| Gertrude Atherton |
| | Black Oxen | "Talk. Talk. Talk. . . . Good lines and no action . . . said all . . . not even promising first act . . . eighth failure and season more than half over . . . rather be a playwright and fail than a critic compelled to listen to has-beens and would-bes trying to put over bad plays." | Buy | |
| | The Sisters-in-Law | The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest crest high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted even by the private watchmen that guarded the homes of the apprehensive in the Western Addition. | Buy | |
| Philip Atlee |
| | The Ill Wind Contract | There was a hint of snow in the air as I drove back into the Ozark Mountains, headed for my remote eyrie. | Buy | |
| Richard and Florence Atwater |
| | Mr. Popper's Penguins | It was an afternoon in late September. In the pleasant city of Stillwater, Mr. Popper, the house painter, was going home from work. | Buy | |
| Margaret Atwood |
| | Cat's Eye | Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. | Buy | |
| | The Blind Assassin | Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left but charred smithereens. | Buy | |
| | The Handmaid's Tale | We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball net were still in place, though the nets were gone. | Buy | |
| Louis Auchincloss |
| | The Embezzler | I have the distinctions of having become a legend in my lifetime,
but not a very nice one. | Buy | |
| | The Rector of Justin | September 10, 1939. I have always wanted to keep a journal, but whenever I am about to start one, I am dissuaded by the idea that it is too late. | Buy | |
| Jean M Auel |
| | The Mammoth Hunters | Trembling with fear, Ayla clung to the tall man beside her as she watched the strangers approach. Jondlar put his arm around her protectively, but she still shook. | Buy | |
| | The Plains of Passage | The woman caught a glimpse of movement through the dusty haze ahead and wondered if it was the wolf she had seen loping in front of them earlier. | Buy | |
| | The Shelters of Stone | People were gathering on the limestone ledge, looking down at them warily. | Buy | |
| | The Valley of Horses | She was dead. What did it matter if icy needles of freezing rain flayed her skin raw. The young woman squinted into the wind, pulling her wolverine hood closer. Violent gusts whipped her bearskin wrap against her legs. | Buy | |
| Jane Austen |
| | Emma | Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. | Buy | Read |
| | Frederic and Elfrida | The Uncle of Elfrida was the Father of Frederic; in other words, they were first cousins by the Father's side. | Buy | |
| | Lady Susan | My Dear Brother,--I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to
be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. | Buy | Read |
| | Lesley Castle | Letter The first is from Miss Margaret Lesley to Miss Charlotte Lutterell | Buy | |
| | Love and Friendship | Letter the First from Isabel to Laura | Buy | Read |
| | Mansfield Park | About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. | Buy | |
| | Northanger Abbey | No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. | Buy | |
| | Persuasion | Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. | Buy | |
| | Pride and Prejudice | It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. | Buy | Read |
| | Sanditon | A gentleman and a lady travelling from Tunbridge towards that part of the Sussex coast which lies between Hastings and Eastbourne, being induced by business to quit the high road and attempt a very rough land, were overturned in toiling up its long ascent, half rock, half sand. | Buy | |
| | Sense and Sensibility | The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. | Buy | Read |
| Paul Auster |
| | City Of Glass | It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. | Buy | |
| James Axler |
| | Destiny Run | She came awake slowly. | Buy | |
