Classic Fiction from I Cannot Live Without Books

Of Human Bondage (Everyman's Library Edition) by W. Somerset Maugham W. Somerset Maugham's masterwork is the coming-of-age story of Philip Carey, a sensitive young man consumed by an unrequited and self-destructive love. Born with a clubfoot, Philip is orphaned as a child and raised by unsympathetic relatives. Sent to a boarding school where he has difficulty fitting in, he grows up with… Read more about this item

Islands in the Stream (Scribner Classics Edition) by Ernest Hemingway First published in 1970, nine years after Ernest Hemingway's death, Islands in the Stream is the story of an artist and adventurer -- a man much like Hemingway himself. Rich with the uncanny sense of life and action characteristic of his writing -- from his earliest stories (In Our Time) to… Read more about this item

Middle Passage (Scribner Classics Edition) by Charles Johnson Lost in the underworld of 1830s New Orleans, Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave and irrepressible rogue, is desperate to escape the city's unscrupulous bill collectors and the pawing hands of a schoolteacher hell-bent on marrying him. Rutherford jumps aboard the first boat leaving New Orleans, the Republic, a slave ship en route… Read more about this item

The Stranger (Everyman's Library Edition) by Albert Camus Albert Camus's spare, laconic masterpiece about a Frenchman who murders an Arab in Algeria is famous for having diagnosed, with a clarity almost scientific, that condision of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. Possessing both the force of a parable and the excitement of a perfectly executed… Read more about this item

Song of Solomon (Everyman's Library Edition) by Toni Morrison Song of Solomon begins with one of the most arresting scenes in our century's literature: a dreamlike tableau depicting a man poised on a roof, about to fly into the air, white cloth rose petals swirl above the snow-covered ground and, in the astonished crowd below, one woman sings as another enters… Read more about this item

Death Comes for the Archbishop (Everyman's Library Edition) by Willa Cather Willa Cather's story of the missionary priest Father Jean Marie Latour and his work of faith in the wilderness of the Southwest is told with a spare but sensuous directness and profound artistry. When Latour arrives in 1851 in the territory of New Mexico, newly acquired by the United States,… Read more about this item

Catch-22 (Everyman's Library Edition) by Joseph Heller As those who belong to its vast readership can testify, Catch-22 is one of the funniest books ever written. It has a gallery of magnificently strange characters seeting with comic energy; it possesses, in the comparable, malingering, bombadier and Everyman, Yossarian, a hero endlessly fertile and inventive in his schemes to save his skin… Read more about this item

A spectacular best seller and now a classic, The Name of the Rose catapulted Umberto Eco, an Italian professor of semiotics, to international prominence. An erudite murder mystery, it is not only a gripping story but also a brilliant exploration of medieval philosophy, history, theology, and logic. In 1327, Brother William of Baskerville arrives at a wealthy Italian abbey on a… Read more about this item