By George Orwell
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, September 27, 2016. 1:30 PM.

Portrays a terrifying vision of life in the future when a totalitarian government, considered a "Negative Utopia," watches over all citizens and directs all activities, becoming more powerful as time goes by.

By Arthur C. Clarke

Two astronauts find their journey into space and their very lives jeopardized by the jealousy of an extraordinary computer named Hal. 

By Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn, an abused outcast, rafts with Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River, where they have a variety of experiences.

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This story, the first of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, includes an explanation of how Watson and Holmes come to share rooms at 221B Baker Street, and an introduction of Scotland Yard detectives Gregson and Lestrade.

Became the TV shows: Elementary, Sherlock, and more shows titles Sherlock.

By Mark Twain

The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century.

Became numerous movies: Tom Sawyer (1907, 1917, 1930, 1936, 1973. 1973-TV movie, 1984, and 2000), Huck and Tom (1918), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944 and 1985), Back to Hannibal: The Return of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1990-TV movie), and Tom and Huck (1995).

By Edith Wharton
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, February 23, 2016. 1:30 PM.

An elegant portrait of desire and betrayal in Old New York. In the highest circle of New York social life during the 1870's, Newland Archer, a young lawyer, prepares to marry the docile May Welland. Before their engagement is announced, he meets May's cousin, the mysterious, nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska, who has returned to New York after a long absence. 

By Lewis Carroll

Alice in Wonderland (also known as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), from 1865, is the peculiar and imaginative tale of a girl who falls down a rabbit-hole into a bizarre world of eccentric and unusual creatures. Lewis Carroll's prominent example of the genre of "literary nonsense" has endured in popularity with its clever way of playing with logic and a narrative structure that has influence generations of fiction writing.

By Agatha Christie
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
With Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian

Tuesday, March 12, 2013.  7:30 PM.

When ten people arrive on private Indian Island off England's southwest coast, lured to a mansion by invitations from a mysterious host, terror mounts as one guest after another is murdered, in a classic whodunit that is an elaboration of the famous children's rhyme "Ten Little Indians."

By George Orwell
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, July 14, 2015. 7:30 PM.

A satire on totalitarianism in which farm animals overthrow their human owner and set up their own government.

Became the movie: Animal Farm.

By L.M. Montgomery

Anne, an eleven–year–old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle–aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an incredible impression on everyone around her.

By Sylvia Plath
Recommended By Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian , Kaye Spurrell, Readers' Services Librarian

Esther Greenwood, a talented and successful writer, finally succumbs to madness when the world around her begins to falter.

By Anna Sewell

Originally published in 1877, this classic story, told from the animal's perspective, captures the struggles and triumphs of this magnificent creature from his early days as a free colt to an owned creature poorly treated by evil men.

By Walter Farley
Series The Black Stallion

Young Alec Ramsay is shipwrecked on a desert island with a horse destined to play an important part in his life. Following their rescue, their adventure continues in America.

By Mary Norton

Miniature people who live in an old country house by borrowing things from the humans are forced to emigrate from their home under the clock.

By Thorton Wilder

After Brother Juniper witnesses the death of five people when a rope suspension bridge collapses, he goes about seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die.

By Katherine Paterson

Jess and Leslie become fast friends and create a secret world where they spend the summer sharing stories and dreams until a tragedy strikes.

By Jack London

The adventures of an unusual dog, part St. Bernard, part Scotch Shepherd, that was kidnapped and shipped off to Alaska to work on the Klondike Gold Rush. Buck the dog quickly learns how to survive in the wild and also learns the call of the wolf.

By Kurt Vonnegut

A young writer decides to interview the children of a scientist primarily responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb. This is an apocalyptic tale of the planet's ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikely heroes.

By J.D. Salinger
Recommended By Amy B., Children's Librarian

In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen–year–old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City.

By E.B. White
Grade(s): 4+

Some Pig, These are the words in Charlotte's web, high in the barn. Her spider web tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, as well as the feelings of a little girl named Fern ... who loves Wilbur, too. Their love has been shared by millions of readers.

By Ian Fleming

Two children persuade their father, an inventor, to purchase and restore an old car which turns out to have magical powers.

By Robert Cormier

A high–school freshman who refuses to participate in the annual fund–raising chocolate sale is forced to defend his convictions.

By Chaim Potok

In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship.

By Anthony Burgess

In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom.

Became the movie: A Clockwork Orange.

By Mark Twain

A blow on the head transports a Yankee to 528 A.D. where he proceeds to modernize King Arthur's kingdom by organizing a school system, constructing telephone lines, and inventing the printing press.

Became numerous movies: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1921, 1949, 1989-TV movie), A Connecticut Yankee (1931, 1955-TV movie), A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur’s Court (1978- TV movie), Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979), A Kid in King Arthur’s Court (1995), A Kid in Aladdin’s Palace (1998-TV movie) *spin-off*, A Young Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1996), A Knight in Camelot (1998-TV movie), and Black Knight (2001).

By Robert Lipsyte

Alfred’s life is going nowhere fast. He’s a high–school dropout working at a grocery store. His best friend is drifting behind a haze of drugs and violence, and now some street punks are harassing him for something he didn’t do. Feeling powerless and afraid, Alfred gathers up the courage to visit Donatelli’s Gym, the neighborhood’s boxing club. He wants to be a champion––on the streets and in his own life.

By Charles Dickens

The story of an abandoned waif who discovers life and love in an indifferent world, this classic tale of childhood is populated with a cast of eccentrics, innocents, and villains who number among the author's greatest creation.

By James Agee

The tragedy of Jay Follet's sudden death destroys his family's secure and loving world. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – The bottle imp – Markheim – The Body–snatcher. A collection of spooky stories including one about a good doctor who is transformed into a vicious, violent and deformed monster.

By Bram Stoker

Having discovered the double identity of the wealthy Transylvanian nobleman, Count Dracula, a small group of people vow to rid the world of the evil vampire.

By Laurence Yep

In the early twentieth century a young Chinese boy joins his father in San Francisco and helps him realize his dream of making a flying machine. 

By Frank Herbert
Series Dune Saga
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family - and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

Became the movie: Dune and Mini-Series: Dune.

By Orson Scott Card
Series Ender Wiggin
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager

An expert at simulated war games, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin believes that he is engaged in one more computer war game when, in truth, he is commanding the last Earth fleet against an alien race seeking Earth’s complete destruction.

Became the movie: Ender's Game.

By Edith Wharton
Recommended By Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie's vivacious cousin enters their household as a "hired girl", Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. 

By Ray Bradbury
Recommended By Meghan F., Children's Services Librarian

A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit, in a chilling novel of a frightening near-future world.

Became the movie: Fahrenheit 451.

By Daniel Keyes

After being mentally retarted for all of his thiry–two years, Charlie Gordon undergoes an operation designed to change his life.

By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Recommended By Megan Kass, Systems Manager
With Sonia Grgas, Health Reference Librarian

Tuesday, September 25, 2018. 1:30 PM.

A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator. Includes illustrated notes throughout the text explaining the historical background of the story. 

By Lois Lowry

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

Became the movie: The Giver (2014)

By Margaret Mitchell
Recommended By Stacey Mencher, Technology and Applications Manager

The story of the tempestuous romance between Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara is set amid the drama of the Civil War.

Became the movie: Gone with the Wind.

By Pearl S. Buck
Recommended By Neela Vass, Head of Acquisitions, Jackie, Head of Readers' Services

A slave bride of a Chinese laborer devotes herself to her husband's family, but when civil war in China brings wealth to the family, her happiness is endangered as her husband brings home a second wife.

By John Steinbeck
Recommended By Jackie, Head of Readers' Services
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Tuesday, June 24, 2014. 1:30 PM.

The landmark novel about the plight of American farmers who were forced off their farms by drought and foreclosure during the 1930's.

Became the movie: The Grapes of Wrath.

By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Recommended By Josephine Amoia, Children's Librarian
With Jean Simpson, Readers' Services Librarian

Tuesday, September 26, 2017. 1:30 PM.

A classic novel portrays the Jazz Age and all its decadence and excess as it follows the life of Jay Gatsby, a newly rich man obsessed with money, power, and glamour.

Became the movie: The Great Gatsby.

By Douglas Adams
With Jackie Ranaldo, Head of Readers' Services

Monday, August 9, 2010.  7 PM.

Join Douglas Adams’s hapless hero Arthur Dent as he travels the galaxy with his intrepid pal Ford Prefect, gettig into horrible messes and generally wreaking hilarious havoc.

Became the movie: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

By J.R.R. Tolkein

Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well–to–do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit–hole until the day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return.

By Robert Cormier

Through his doctor's questions, Adam struggles out of a world of medicated oblivion and begins a desperate bicycle journey in search of a truth that will destroy him.

By Ray Bradbury

Eighteen science fiction stories dealing with love, madness, and death on Mars, Venus, and in space which attempt to depict man’s nature.

By Sheila Every Burnford

A Siamese cat, an old bull terrier, and a young Laborador retriever travel together 250 miles through the Canadian wilderness to find their family.

By H.G. Wells

"The stranger came early in February ... He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose." After being evicted by his innkeeper, the invisible man reveals his "secret" and escapes without being seen by anyone. This eerie beginning develops into the story behind the "disfigured stranger" as he is hunted through the English countryside.

By H.G. Wells

The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Edward Prendick, a young naturalist, finds himself stranded on a remote Pacific island run by the sinister Dr. Moreau, a mad scientist intent on creating a strain of beast men.

By Scott O'Dell

Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of California, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not only merely surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her solitary life.