By Armita Rohani
- The Marriage Portrait; Maggie O’Farrell
The somewhat true story of Lucrezia di Cosimo de’Medici, who, at fifteen, was forced by her parents to marry the older Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, thus merging two dynasties.
- Dinosaurs; Lydia Millet
A heartbroken man named Gil walks from New York to Arizona, becoming entangled with a neighboring family whose lives he can witness through the glass walls of their house.
- Ducks; Kate Beaton
An untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.
- Animal Farm; George Orwell
A book on how farm animals overthrow a farmer in hopes of establishing equality, only to succumb to a communist regime—ran ironically by pigs.
- The Saturday Night Ghost Club; Craig Davidson
Three kids explore the wonders of the “unnatural world” with their distraught uncle, who struggles to build explanations for the memories he reencounters after losing all of his own.
- All Quiet On the Western Front; Erich Maria Remarque
A German soldier’s account of the horrors that occurred during the front lines of WWI, as he loses friends and witnesses how deadly people can be when they are not human.
- Strangers to Ourselves; Rachel Aviv
Incorporating deeply reported portraits of several people, including herself, Aviv’s debut considers the fundamental ways in which we do — and don’t — understand mental disorders.
- The Count of Monte Cristo; Dumas and Maquet
A young man, falsely imprisoned by his jealous “friend,” escapes and uses a hidden treasure to exact his revenge.
- Atonement; Ian McEwan
Set in three time periods — 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England — it covers an upper-class girl’s half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing.
- The Book Thief; Markus Zusak
A story of a young girl in WWII who steals books, learns to read, and finds comfort in books as she and her family navigate the dangers of hiding a Jewish person in an antisemetic world.
- How Much Land Does a Man Need?; Leo Tolstoy
A parable of a Russian peasant’s bargain with the devil — considered by James Joyce to be the world’s greatest story.
- Letters To a Young Poet; Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s classical and lyrical life-changing advice to an aspiring young writer, detailing inspiring expressions of youthful creativity.
- The Tinder Box; Hans Christian Andersen
The bittersweet fairy tales which propelled their troubled author to international fame and revolutionized children’s writing.
- The Night Darkening Round Me; Emily Bronte
Emily Bronte’s most powerful poems on death, nature’s beauty and the passage of time.
- Anthem for Doomed Youth; Wilfred Owen
The great First World War poet portrays firsthand the horror, devastation, and futility of the trenches.
