1881 Best Seller.

The first of a series of books about the Pepper children. The story of their impoverished lives with their widowed mother. The book was part of a fantastically popular series of 12.

1888 Best Seller.

A utopian novel. Julian West falls into an hypnotic trance near the end of the 19th Century and awakens more than 100 years later (right around now) to find America transformed into a socialist utopia. Bellamy uses the conceit to explore his ideas of how to improve society.

An heroic epic poem where Beowulf, a hero of a Germanic tribe from southern Sweden, travels to Denmark to help defeat a monster named Grendel. It is sometimes called "England's national epic". J. R. R. Tolkien of Lord of the Rings fame was a Beowulf scholar and many parallels can also be drawn between Beowulf and The Hobbit. The work has served as the inspiration for many books and films including Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead.

The books tells the true story of attacks by man-eating lions on the Uganda railway in Tsavo Kenya in 1898. Over one hundred people were killed in under a year. The attacks stopped only after the all the lions had been tracked down and killed by Patterson.

In the 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness Val Kilmer played Patterson.

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1919.

A short time before the outbreak of WWI the Desnoyers family move from Argentina to France. The family includes both French and German elements and the war only amplifies existing tensions. Argentine son Julio must choose between his current dissolute lifestyle and stepping up to the responsibilities the war brings, and then live with the consequences...

"...of all the books I've read, Ginny Good is the only book that had me simultaneously crying my eyeballs out and laughing my head off. Several times throughout, in fact. In a word: WOW"

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1921.

Sinclair Lewis is the first American to receive a Nobel Price for literature. Main Street was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Price, but the Board of Trustees overturned the jury decision and awarded the prize to Edith Wharton for Age of Innocence.

The novel is an indictment of the 'vacuous respectability' of small town America and an exploration of the conflict between those who strive for intensity and those who are content with a routine existence. Lewis's characters are skillfully drawn and he shows subtle and compelling insights into their psychology. In spite of it's critical stance the initial publication of the book was a political and and social event.