The Lady With the Dog is one of Chekhov's most famous stories. What seems like a brief affair between two married people becomes a threat to their family lives as they find they cannot forget each other. Chekhov is now the most popular playwright in the English-speaking world after Shakespeare, but many think that his short stories are his greatest achievement. Chekhov's stories are ranked No.9 on Time magazine's list of the "10 Greatest Books of all time", January 2007.

Narrative is a memoir written by the famous orator, statesman, and freed slave Frederick Douglass. Along with Uncle Tom's Cabin, it fuelled the abolitionist movement in nineteenth century United States. It is a fascinating account by a man who managed to teach himself to read by observation and eventually escape to freedom. Inspirational.

This was Goethe's first major success, though it also lead to some difficulties. It started "Werther Fever"; some young men so identified with Werther that that they began dress like him. It also lead to more than 2,000 copycat suicides. The problem became so concerning to the authorities that a rival 'happy ending' was published by Friedrich Nicolai, another author. Goethe was incensed and published a poem in which Nicolai defecates on Werther's grave, starting a literary war that lasted all his life.

A novel about the future that's closer than we think.

Mac Tonnies' Cyberpunk/Postmodern Book Reviews calls Metrophage "one of the quintessential 1980s cyberpunk novels," going on to describe "a gritty acid-trip through an ultraviolent L.A. where nothing is what it seems.... Alongside novels such as [William Gibson's] Neuromancer and Lewis Shiner's debut novel Frontera, Metrophage helped establish the cyberpunk aesthetic: relentless, paranoid and playfully cynical."

1864 Best Seller.

Southworth considered Ishmael to be her best work. It's inspirations to wisdom and goodness were drawn from the real life examples of the heroes and statesmen of the American Revolution. The novel tells the story of Ishmael, born into poverty and virtuously climbing to success.