Banned Books

Publisher Annotation: Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer...

Presents summaries and censorship accounts of books that have been banned throughout history for political, religious, sexual, and social reasons.

Lewis Carroll's classic tale began as a story told to a group of children on a boating picnic in 1862 and was first published as Alice's Adventures Under Ground three years later. Its curious effect of half-dream, half-nightmare instantly captured the imagination of both children and adults, and it has been a favourite ever since. Alice's adventures down the rabbit hole, in particular the strange characters she meets there – the constantly grinning...

A political satire in which the animals take over running the farm, but find their utopian state turning into a dictatorship.

A nineteenth-century boy, floating down the Mississippi on a raft with a runaway slave, becomes involved with a feuding family, two scoundrels pretending to be royalty, and Tom Sawyer's aunt, who mistakes him for Tom.

In the Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition within a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook. Rich and diverse,...

A satirical novel about the utopia of the future, a world in which babies are decanted from bottles and the great Ford is worshipped.

A murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ. The victim is a high-ranking agent of this ancient society who, in the moments before his death, manages to leave gruesome clues at the scene that only his daughter, noted cryptographer Sophie Neveu, and Robert Langdon, a famed symbologist, can untangle. The duo become both...

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms. Shocked yet thrilled...