| The Centaur | John Updike | Caldwell turned and as he turned his ankle received an arrow. | Buy | |
| Moby Dick | Herman Melville | Call me Ishmael | Buy | |
| Cat's Cradle | Kurt Vonnegut | Call me Jonah. | Buy | |
| Cat's Cradle | Kurt Vonnegut Jr | Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me
John. | Buy | |
| The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz | Joan Rivers | Can we talk? When someone mentions the name of Heidi Abromowitz,
words such as "virtuous," "chaste," "honorable," "moral," and
"upright" never come to mind. | Buy | |
| A Day Late and a Dollar Short | Terry McMillan | Can't nobody tell me nothing I don't already know. | Buy | |
| Cannery Row | John Steinbeck | Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem , a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. | Buy | |
| Cannery Row | John Ernst Steinbeck | Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a
grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia,
a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron
and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and
junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks,
restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and
laboratories and flophouses. | Buy | |
| Ahab's Wife, or, The Star-Gazer | Sena Jeter Naslund | Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last. Yet,
looking up--into the clouds--I conjure him there: his gray-white
hair; his gathered brow; and the zaggy mark (I saw it when lying
with him by candlelight and, also, taking our bliss on the sunny
moor among curly-cup gumweed and lamb's ear.) | Buy | |
| The Mauritius Command | Patrick O'Brian | Captain Aubrey of the Royal Navy lived in a part of Hampshire well supplied with sea-officers, some of whom had reached flag-rank in Rodney's day while others were still waiting for there first command. | Buy | |
| Typhoon | Joseph Conrad | Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy that, in the order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of his mind: it presented no marked characteristics of firmness or stupidity; it had no pronounced characteristics whatever; it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled | Buy | |
| Armageddon | Leon Uris | Captain Sean O'Sullivan lifted the blackout curtain. A burst of
dull light grayed the room. Christ, he thought, doesn't the sun
ever shine in London. He heard planes droning overhead toward
the English Channel but he could not see them through the thick
fog. He wondered if his brother, Tim, was flying today. | Buy | |
| Going Overboard | Christina Skye | Carolina Sullivan needed a man's body desperately. | Buy | |
| The Human Factor | Graham Henry Greene | Castle, ever since he had joined the firm as a young recruit more
than thirty years ago, had taken his lunch in a public house
behind St. James's Street, not far from the office. | Buy | |
| Lamb in His Bosom | Caroline Miller | Cean turned and lifted her hand briefly in farewell as she rode
away beside Lonzo in the ox-cart. Her mother and father and
Jasper and Lias stood in front of the house, watching her go. | Buy | |
| The Two Gentlemen of Verona | William Shakespeare | Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus;
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. | Buy | |
| The Arrow of Gold | Joseph Conrad | Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of
universal fame and the particular affection of their citizens.
One of such streets is the Cannebiere, and the jest: "If Paris
had a Cannebiere, it would be a little Marseilles" is the jocular
expression of municipal pride. I, too, I have been under the
spell. For me it has been a street leading into the unknown. | Buy | |
| Into the Niger Bend | Jules Verne | Certainly the audacious robbery which the press featured as 'The Central Bank Business,' and which was front-page news for a whole fortnight, has not yet been forgotten. | Buy | |
| Vanished | Danielle Steel | Charles Delauney limped only slightly as he walked up the steps
of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, as a bitter wind reached its icy
fingers deep into his collar. It was two weeks before Christmas,
and he had forgotten how cold it was in New York in December. It
was years since he'd been back to New York . . . years since he'd
seen his father. | Buy | |
| Point of No Return | John Phillips Marquand | Charles Gray had not thought for a long time, consciously at
least, about Clyde, Massachusetts, and he sometimes wondered
later what caused him to do so one morning in mid-April, 1947. | Buy | |
| The Town | William Faulkner | CHARLES MALLISON
I wasn't born yet so it was Cousin Gowan who was there and big
enough to see and remember and tell me afterward when I was big
enough for it to make sense. That is, it was Cousin Gowan plus
Uncle Gavin or maybe Uncle Gavin rather plus Cousin Gowan.
He--Cousin Gowan--was thirteen. His grandfather was
Grandfather's brother so by the time it got down to us, he and I
didn't know what cousin to each other we were. So he just called
all of us except Grandfather 'cousin' and all of us except
Grandfather called him 'cousin' and let it go at that. | Buy | |
| The Big Money | John Roderigo Dos Passos | Charley Anderson lay in his bunk in a glary red buzz. | Buy | |
| A Man in Full | Tom Wolfe | Charlie Crocker, astride his favorite Tennessee walking horse
pulled his shoulders back to make sure he was erect in the saddle
and took a deep breath . . . Ahhhh, that was the ticket . . . He
loved the way his mighty chest rose and fell beneath his khaki
shirt and imagined that everyone in the hunting party noticed how
powerfully built he was. | Buy | |
| Vein of Iron | Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow | Children were chasing an idiot boy up the village street to the
churchyard. | Buy | |
| Freaky Deaky | Elmore Leonard | Chris Mankowski's last day on the job, two in the afternoon, two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb. | Buy | |
| All Kneeling | Anne Parrish | Christabel Caine sat by her open window writing "A Pleasant
Incident of My Vacation" in the moments when there was nothing to
distract her attention. But a good deal was happening this
afternoon. | Buy | |
| Toilers of the Sea | Victor Hugo | Christmas day in the year 182- was somewhat remarkable in the
island of Guernsey. Snow fell on that day. In the Channel
Islands, a frosty winter is remarkable, and a fall of snow is an
event. | Buy | |
| V. | Thomas Pynchon | Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede
jacket, sneaker and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through
Norfolk, Virginia. | Buy | |
| Around the World with Auntie Mame | Patrick Dennis | Christmas is nearly here and I look forward to it more and more
with loathing. | Buy | |
| Kit Carson, the Pioneer of the West | John S C Abbott | 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 |
| Ceasar's Bicycle | John Barnes | Chrysamen was looking sad, and since she has huge dark eyes, she's good at looking sad. | Buy | |
| The Little Engine that Could | Watty Piper | Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong, ding-dong.
| Buy | |
| Lost Horizon | James Hilton | Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they believed they had. | Buy | |
| One More River | John Galsworthy | Clare, who for seventeen months had been the wife of Sir Gerald
Corven of the Colonial Service, stood on the boat deck of an
Orient liner in the river Thames, waiting for it to dock. | Buy | |
| Hannibal | Thomas A Harris | Clarice Starling's Mustang boomed up the entrance ramp at the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on Massachusetts Avenue,
a headquarters rented from the Reverend Sun Myung Moon in the
interest of economy. | Buy | |
| One of Ours | Willa Sibert Cather | Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and
vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half
of the same bed. | Buy | |
| From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler | E L Konigsburg | Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running-away. | Buy | |
| The Riddle of the Yellow Zuri | Harry Stephen Keeler | Clifford Carson, seated this sunny morning before the mail that covered his desk in the tiny office of his rather unique two-room suite on the twenty-fourth floor of an American skyscraper, found himself for some strange reason reflecting that it was a long, long call indeed from East India Dock Road, London, to this dignified niche high up in the 333 Building on Michigan Boulevard, Chicago. | Buy | |
| The Tiger Snake | Harry Stephen Keeler | Clifford Carson, seated this sunny morning before the mail that covered his desk in the tiny office of his unique two-room suite on the 24th floor of an American skyscraper, found himself for some strange reason reflecting that it was a long, long call indeed from East India Dock Road, London, to this dignified niche high up in the 333 Building on Michigan Boulevard, Chicago. | Buy | |
| The Establishment | Howard Fast | Cohen, a large, heavyset man of forty-three, was gradually losing
his patience, and that would be a prelude to losing his temper
and taking it out on everyone around him, and that had been
happening too often. | Buy | |
| Bargain Basement | Cecil Roberts | Colonel Ankerdine and his wife arrived late for the sale at Tranmore Court. | Buy | |
| The Sulu Sea Murders | F van Wyck Mason | Colonel Hugh North, United States Army, G-2, Criminal Investigation Division, was in Manila when the word was flashed to him straight from the Pentagon. | Buy | |
| Love Is a Bridge | Charles Bracelen Flood | Colonel Pemmerton sat in his favorite armchair, a fairly stiff,
dark red armchair. His eyes dutifully ran down the lines of the
book in his hand and his strong fingers turned the pages, but
today he wasn't seeing the words. | Buy | |
| The Winds Of War | Herman Wouk | Commander Victor Henry rode a taxi-cab home from the Navy building on Constitution Avenue, in a gusty gray March rainstorm that matched his mood. | Buy | |
| The Winds of War | Herman Wouk | Commander Victor Henry rode a taxicab home from the Navy Building
on Constitution Avenue, in a gusty gray March rainstorm that
matched his mood. | Buy | |
| Motherless Brooklyn | Jonathan Allen Lethem | Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I'm a carnival
barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker
in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster. | Buy | |
| Prizzi's Honor | Richard Condon | Corrado Prizzi's granddaughter was being married before the baroque altar of Santa Grazia de Traghetto, the lucky church of the Prizzi family. | Buy | |
| After Noon | Susan Ertz | Crises have a way of thrusting into the limelight hitherto
obscure persons, and giving them, for a long or short period, a
leading role. | Buy | |
| Ancient Evenings | Norman Mailer | Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. | Buy | |
| Wild Animals I Have Known | Ernest Thompson Seton | Currumpaw is a vast cattle range in northern New Mexico. It is a
land of rich pastures and teeming flocks and herds, an land of
rolling mesas and precious running waters that at length unite in
the Currumpay River, from which the whole region is named. And
the king whose despotic power was felt over its entire extent was
an old gray wolf. | Buy | |
| From a Buick 8 | Stephen King (used pseudonym Richard Bachman) | Curt Wilcox's boy came around the barracks a lot the year after
his father died, I mean a lot, but nobody ever told him get out
of the way or asked him what in hail he was doing there
again. | Buy | |
| The Just and the Unjust | Vaughan Kester | Custer felt it his greatest privilege to sit of a Sunday morning
in his mother's clean and burnished kitchen and, while she washed
the breakfast dishes, listen to such reflections as his father
might care to indulge in. | Buy | |
| Marjorie Morningstar | Herman Wouk | Customs of courtship vary greatly in different times and places,
but the way the thing happens to be done here and now always
seems the only natural way to do it. | Buy | |
