Publisher or vendor item descriptions are provided when available. Cover images may not match those in the library.

SAC = St. Augustine Campus Library | PAL = Palatka Campus Library | OPC = Orange Park Campus Library

2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Publisher's Marketing: "At once brutal and tender, despairing and rashly hopeful, spare of language and profoundly moving, this work is a fierce and haunting meditation on the tenuous divide between civilization and savagery, and the essential, sometimes terrifying power of filial love."

Call number: SAC - PS3563 .C337 R63 2006

Call number: PAL - PS3563.C337 R63 2006

2006: March by Geraldine Brooks

"From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as a renowned author of historical fiction.

"A very great book... It breathes new life into the historical fiction genre [and] honors the best of the imagination." -Chicago Tribune
"A beautifully wrought story about how war dashes ideals, unhinges moral certainties and drives a wedge of bitter experience and unspeakable memories between husband and wife." -Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Inspired... A disturbing, supple, and deeply satisfying story, put together with craft and care and imagery worthy of a poet." -The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Louisa May Alcott would be well pleased." -The Economist

Call number: SAC - PR9619.3 .B7153 M37 2006

2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

"In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.

This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.

Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part."

Call number: SAC - PS3568.O3125 G55 2006

Call number: PAL - PS3568.O3125 G55 2006

2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

"In one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Edward P. Jones, two-time National Book Award finalist, tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order and chaos ensues. In a daring and ambitious novel, Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all of its moral complexities."

Call number: SAC - PS3560.O4813 K58 2004

2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

"A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of "The Virgin Suicides--the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl.
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.
Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker."

Call number: SAC - PS3555.U4 M53

Call number: OPC - PS3555.U4 M53 2003

2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo

"In this droll, unsentimental, and occasionally hilarious novel, Richard Russo tells the story of a big-hearted man who becomes the unlikely hero of a small town with a glorious past but a dubious future.

The one (barely) viable business in Empire Falls, Maine, is the diner where Miles Roby has worked for twenty years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter, Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's shed fifty pounds and taken up with the noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps (most gallingly) it's the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town -- and believes that includes Miles himself. With Empire Falls Richard Russo cements his reputation as one of America's most compelling and compassionate storytellers."

Call number: SAC - PS3568.U812 E4 2002

2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

"The bestselling author of "Wonder Boys" pens a novel in which the tragicomic adventures of a couple of boy geniuses reveal much about what happened to America in the middle of the 20th century."

"This brilliant epic novel set in New York and Prague introduces us to two misfit young men who make it big by creating comic-book superheroes. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America the comic book. Inspired by their own fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the "Escapists, "The Monitor," and "Luna Moth," inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men. "

Call number: SAC - PS3553.H15 A82

2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

"Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice."

Call number: SAC - PS3562.A316 I58 1999

1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham

"A daring, deeply affecting third novel by the author of "A Home at the End of the World and "Flesh and Blood. In "The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Richard, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family."

Call number: SAC - PS3553.U484 H68 2000

1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser

"Young Martin Dressler begins his career as a helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top. His visions grow more and more fantastical as he plans his ultimate creation: the Grand Cosmo, in which he attempts to capture the entire world and its dreams. Accompanied on this journey by two sisters - one a dreamlike shadow, the other a wordly business partner - Martin walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry. The Grand Cosmo is his triumph and his undoing, the bold conclusion to this biography of the twentieth-century notion of progress, this mesmerizing journey to the heart of the American dream."

Call number: SAC - PS3563.I422 M37 1997

1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

"The Stone Diaries is one ordinary woman's story of her journey through life. Born in 1905, Daisy Stone Goodwill drifts through the roles of child, wife, widow, and mother, and finally into her old age. Bewildered by her inability to understand her place in her own life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography. Her life is vivid with incident, and yet she feels a sense of powerlessness. She listens, she observes, and through sheer force of imagination she becomes a witness of her own life: her birth, her death, and the troubling misconnections she discovers between. Daisy's struggle to find a place for herself in her own life is a paradigm of the unsettled decades of our era. A witty and compassionate anatomist of the human heart, Carol Shields has made distinctively her own that place where the domestic collides with the elemental. With irony and humor she weaves the strands of The Stone Diaries together in this, her richest and most poignant novel to date."

Call number: SAC - PR9199.3.S514 S76 1994 and the paperback rack

1994: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

"E. Annie Proulx focuses on a Newfoundland fishing town in a tale about a third-rate newspaperman and the women in his life -- his elderly aunt and two young daughters -- who decide to resettle in their ancestral seaside home. The transformation each of the character undergoes following move is profound. A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News enlightens readers to the powers of E. Annie Proulx's storytelling genius and her expert evocation of time and place. She is truly one of the most gifted and original writers in America today."

Call number: OPC - PS3566.R697 S4 1999

1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

"A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear cast upon a typical American community in the late twentieth century, A Thousand Acres takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride, and reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity."

Call number: SAC - PS3569.M39 T47 2003

1991: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike - In John Updike's fourth and final novel about ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the hero has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild. His son, Nelson, is behaving erratically; his daughter-in-law, Pru, is sending out mixed signals; and his wife, Janice, decides in mid-life to become a working girl. As, though the winter, spring, and summer of 1989, Reagan's debt-ridden, AIDS-plagued America yields to that of George Bush, Rabbit explores the bleak terrain of late middle age, looking for reasons to live."

Call number: SAC - PS3571.P4 R23 1996

1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

"It's 1949. It's the era of the mambo, and two young Cuban musicians make their way up from Havana to the grand stage of New York. The Castillo brothers, workers by day, become by night stars of the dance halls, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth -- a golden time that thirty years later will be remembered with nostalgia and deep affection. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos has created a rich and enthralling novel about passion and loss, memory and desire."

Call number: PAL - PS3558.I376 M36 1989

1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler - ""Breathing Lessons" is the wonderfully moving and surprising story of Ira and Maggie Moran. She's impetuous, harum-scarum, easygoing; he's competent, patient, seemingly infallible. They've been married for 28 years. Now, as they drive from their home in Baltimore to the funeral of Maggie's best friend's husband, Anne Tyler shows us all there is to know about a marriage - the expectations, the disappointments, the way children can create storms in a family, the way a wife and husband can fall in love all over again, the way nothing really changes. Anne Tyler's funny, unpredictable and endearing characterizations make "Breathing Lessons" truly entertaining."

Call number: OPC paperback rack

1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison

"Toni Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel brought the unimaginable experience of slavery into the literature of our time and into our comprehension. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked her life in order to wrench herself from a living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad. Sethe, who now lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing apparition who calls herself Beloved.
Sethe works at "beating back the past, " but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly: in her memory; in Denver's fear of the world outside the house; in the sadness that consumes Baby Suggs; in the arrival of Paul D, a fellow former slave; and, most powerfully, in Beloved, whose childhood belongs to the hideous logic of slavery and who has now come from the "place over there" to claim retribution for what she lost and for what was taken from her. Sethe's struggle to keep Beloved from gaining possession of her present--and to throw off the long-dark legacy of her past--is at the center of this spellbinding novel. But it also moves beyond its particulars, combining imagination and the vision of legend with the unassailable truths of history.
Upon the original publication of Beloved, John Leonard wrote in the "Los Angeles Times": "I can't imagine American literature without it." In fact, more than a decade later, it remains a preeminent novel of our time, speaking with timeless clarity and power to our experience as a nation with a past of both abominable and ennobling circumstance."

Call number: SAC - PS3563 .O8749 B4 2004

Call number: PAL - PS3563.O8749 B4 1987b

1986: Lonesome Dove : A Novel by Larry McMurtry

"Set in the late 19th century, Lonesome Dove is an adventurous story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. The narrative centers around two friends: Augustus McCrae, a reluctant rancher who has a way with women, and W. F. Call, whose talent for leadership conceals a secret sorrow. For Gus, Call, and the others who join the journey, the cattle drive is not only a daring and, perhaps, foolhardy endeavor, it comes to represent American dreams of the West."

Call number: OPC - PS3563.A319 L664

1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

"Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self."

Call number: SAC - PS 3573 .A425 C6 1982

1982: Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

"Ten years after RABBIT REDUX, Harry Angstrom has come to enjoy prosperity as the Chief Sales Representative of Springer Motors. The rest of the world may be falling to pieces, but Harrry's doing all right. That is, until his son returns from the West, and the image of an old love pays a visit to his lot...."

Call number: OPC - PS3571.P4 R25 1981

1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

"Released by Louisiana State University Press in April 1980, A confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Turned down by countless publishers and submitted by the author's mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today there are over 1.5 million copies in print worldwide in eighteen different languages.

Toole's lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, whom Walker Percy dubs "slob extraordinary; a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one -- who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age." Ignatius's ire explodes when his mother backs into an automobile. The owner of the damaged vehicle insists on payment; Mrs. Reilly demands that her son cease watching television and writing in his Big Chief tablet and get a job.

Set in New Orleans, A Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift, one of whose essays gives the book its title. As its characters burst into life, they leave the region and literature forever changed by their presence -- Ignatius and his mother; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levi Pants; inept, wan Patrolman Mancuso; Darlene, the Bourbon Street stripper with a penchant for poultry; Jones, the jivecat in spaceage dark glasses. Satire and farce animate A Confederacy of Dunces; tragic awareness ennobles it."

Call number: PAL - PS3570.O54 C66

1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

"In what is arguably his greatest book, written in 1979, America's most heroically ambitious writer follows the short, blighted career of Gary Gilmore, an intractably violent product of America's prisons who -- after robbing two men and killing them in cold blood -- insisted on dying for his crime. To do so, he had to fight a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.

Norman Mailer tells Gilmore's story -- and those of the men and women caught up in his procession toward the firing squad -- with implacable authority, steely compassion, and a restraint that evokes the parched landscapes and stern theology of Gilmore's Utah. The Executioner's Song is a towering achievement, impossible to put down, impossible to forget."

Call number: OPC - PS3525.A4152 E88

Call number: PAL - PS3525.A4152 E88

1979: The Stories of John Cheever

"When The Stories of John Cheever was originally published, it became an immediate national bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. In the years since, it has become a classic.
Here are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and "The Swimmer," Cheever tells us everything we need to know about "the pain and sweetness of life.""

Call number: SAC - PS 3505 .H6428 S75

Call number: OPC - Reserves/PS 3505 .H6428 S75

1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

"An old friend acts from the grave to give a gentle but resilient middle-aged intellectual an opportunity for triumph over all that makes his life seem staid and superfluous."

Call number: PAL - PS3503.E4488 H8 1975

1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

"In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation's history, two armies fought for two dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Shattered futures, forgotten innocence, and crippled beauty were also the casualties of war. Unique, sweeping, an unforgettable, THE KILLER ANGELS is a dramatic re-creation of the battleground for America's destiny.

Since it was first published in 1974, "The Killer Angels" has become the most beloved, widely-read Civil War novel of the post-World War II era. Shaara's unforgettable novel served as the basis for the acclaimed feature film Gettysburg, has sold millions of copies, and inspired the bestselling Civil War novels Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure by his son, Jeff Shaara."

Call number: SAC - PS3569.H2 K5 1975

Call number: PAL - Civil War Collection PS3569.H2 K5 1975

Call number: OPC - PS3569.H2 K55 2003

1973: The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty - ""The Optimist's Daughter" is the story of Laurel McKelva Hand, a young woman who has left the South and returns, years later, to New Orleans, where her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back still farther, to the small Mississippi town where she grew up. Alone in the old house, Laurel finally comes to an understanding of the past, herself, and her parents."

Call number: SAC - PS3545.E6 A6 1998b

Call number: PAL - PS3545.E6 O6

Call number: OPC - PS3545.E6 A6 1998b

1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner - "the magnificent story of four generations in the life of an American family. A wheelchair-bound retired historian embarks on a monumental quest: to come to know his grandparents, now long dead. The unfolding drama of the story of the American West sets the tone for Stegner's masterpiece."

Call number: PAL - PS3537.T316 A5 1971

1970: The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford - "Winner of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this collection of thirty stories includes some of Jean Stafford's best short fiction from the period 1944-1968. Including such favorites as "In the Zoo," "Children Are Bored on Sunday," and "Beatrice Trueblood's Story," the collection offers the work of this popular writer of the 1940s and 1950s to a new generation of readers and critics."

Call number: PAL - PS3569.T2 A15 1969

1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday - "This 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of a young American Indian struggling to reconcile the traditional ways of his people with the demands of the 20th century."

Call number: PAL - 813.54 M732H

1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron - "Set in 1831, The Confessions Of Nat Turner tells--in his own words--of a black man who awaits death in a Virginia jail cell. His name is Nat Turner and he is a slave, a preacher, and the leader of the only effective slave revolt in the history of that 'peculiar institution."

Call number: PAL - PS3569.T9 C6 1967

1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud - "Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit."

Call number: PAL - PS3563.A4 F5 1966

1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter - "Porter's reputation as one of America's most distinguished writers rests chiefly on her superb short stories. This volume includes the collections Flowering Judas; Pale Horse, Pale Rider; and The Leaning Tower as well as four stories not available elsewhere in book form. Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Call number: PAL - PS3531.0752 A6

Call number: OPC- PS3531.0752 A6

1965: The Keepers Of The House by Shirley Ann Grau - "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1965, The Keepers of the House is Shirley Ann Grau's masterwork, a many-layered indictment of racism and rage that is as terrifying as it is wise.
Entrenched on the same land since the early 1800s, the Howlands have, for seven generations, been pillars of their Southern community. Extraordinary family lore has been passed down to Abigail Howland, but not all of it. When shocking facts come to light about her late grandfather William's relationship with Margaret Carmichael, a black housekeeper, the community is outraged, and quickly gathers to vent its fury on Abigail. Alone in the house the Howlands built, she is at once shaken by those who have betrayed her, and determined to punish the town that has persecuted her and her kin.
Morally intricate, graceful and suspenseful, The Keepers of the House has become a modern classic."

Call number: PAL - PS3557.R283 K3 1965

1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner - "This grand misadventure is the story of three unlikely thieves, or reivers: 11-year-old Lucius Priest and two of his family's retainers. In 1905, these three set out from Mississippi for Memphis in a stolen motorcar. The astonishing and complicated results reveal Faulkner as a master of the picaresque."

Call number: PAL - PS3511.A86 R38 1962

1961: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee - "Lawyer Atticus Finch defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic, Puliter Prize-winning novel--a black man charged with the rape of a white woman. Through the eyes of Atticus's children, Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unanswering honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930's."

Call number: SAC -PS3562.E353 T6 1995

Call number: SAC - PS3562.E353 T6

Call number: PAL - PS3562.E353 T6 1999

Call number: PAL - PS3562.E353 T6 1960

1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury - "Blackmail, suicide and scandal follow the President's appointment of an unpopular Secretary of State, and put the stability of the entire U.S. Government at risk in this highly praised political drama."

Call number: PAL - PS3554.R8 A3 1959

1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor - "Acclaimed as the greatest novel ever written about the War Between the States, this searing Pulitzer Prize-winning book captures all the glory and shame of America's most tragic conflict in the vivid, crowded world of Andersonville, and the people who lived outside its barricades. Based on the author's extensive research and nearly twenty-five years in the making, MacKinlay Kantor's bestselling masterwork tells the heartbreaking story of the notorious Georgia prison where 50,000 Northern soldiers suffered - and 14,000 died - and of the people whose lives were changed by the grim camp where the best and the worst of the Civil War came together. Here is the savagery of the camp commandant, the deep compassion of a nearby planter and his gentle daughter, the merging of valor and viciousness within the stockade itself, and the day-to-day fight for survival among the cowards, cutthroats, innocents, and idealists thrown together by the brutal struggle between North and South. A moving portrait of the bravery of people faced with hopeless tragedy, this is the inspiring American classic of an unforgettable period in American history."

Call number: PAL - PS3521.A47 A53 1955a

1955: A Fable by William Faulkner - "This novel won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award in 1955. An allegorical story of World War I, set in the trenches in France and dealing ostensibly with a mutiny in a French regiment, it was originally considered a sharp departure for Faulkner. Recently it has come to be recognized as one of his major works and an essential part of the Faulkner oeuvre. Faulkner himself fought in the war, and his descriptions of it "rise to Magnificence", according to The New York Times, and include, in Malcolm Cowley's words, "some of the most powerful scenes he ever conceived"."

Call number: PAL - PS3511.A86 F3 1954

1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway - "The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, "The Old Man and the Sea" has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic."

Call number: PAL - PS3515.E37 O4

Call number: OPC - PS3515.E37 O4

1952: The Caine Mutiny, A Novel of World War II by Herman Wouk - "Upon its original publication in 1951, this Pulitzer Prizewinning novel was immediately embraced as one of the first serious works of fiction to help readers grapple with the human consequences of World War II. In the intervening half-century, Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining story of life--and mutiny--on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater has achieved the status of a modern classic."

Call number: SAC - PS 3545 .O98 .C3 1951

Call number: OPC - PS 3545 .O98 .C3 1951

Call number: PAL - PS3545.O98 C28 1992

1951: The Town by Conrad Richter - "In the final novel of Richter's Awakening Land trilogy, Sayward Wheeler completes her mission and lives to see the transition of her family and her friends. The Town, is a much bigger book in every way than its predecessors; it is itself a rich contribution to literature and with the other novels comprises a great American epic."

Call number: PAL - PS3535.I429 T6 1950

1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. - "An enormously entertaining classic, THE WAY WEST brings to life the adventure of the western passage and the pioneer spirit. The sequel to THE BIG SKY, this celebrated novel charts a frontiersman's return to the untamed West in 1846. Dick Summers, as pilot of a wagon train, guides a group of settlers on the difficult journey from Missouri to Oregon. In sensitive but unsentimental prose, Guthrie illuminates the harsh trials and resounding triumphs of pioneer life. With THE WAY WEST, he pays homage to the grandeur of the western wilderness, its stark and beautiful scenery, and its extraordinary people."

Call number: PAL - PS3513.U855 W3 1949

1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens - "James Gould Cozzens was one of America's most famous writers after the Second World War. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel GUARD OF HONOR balances a vast cast of intricately enmeshed characters as they react over the course of three tense days to a racial incident on a U.S. Air Force training base in Florida in 1942."

Call number: PAL - PS3505.O99 G8 1948

1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener - "Enter the exotic world of the South Pacific, meet the men and women caught up in the drama of a big war. The young Marine who falls madly in love with a beautiful Tonkinese girl. Nurse Nellie and her French planter, Emile De Becque. The soldiers, sailors, and nurses playing at war and waiting for love in a tropic paradise."

Call number: PAL - PS3525.I19 T3 1947

1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren - "All the King's Men is a classic novel about American politics. Set in the '30s, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie Stark, a fictional character who resembles the real-life Huey Long of Louisiana."

Call number: OPC - PS3545.A748 A44 1953

Call number: PAL - PS3545.A748 A4 1946

1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey - "The story on an Italian-American major who wins the love and admiration of a small Sicilian village when he tries to repalce the 700-year-old town bell that was melted down by the Fascists."

Call number: PAL - PS3515.E7715 B5 1958

Call number: OPC - PS3515.E7715 B5 1944

1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - "First published in 1939, "The Grapes of Wrath" is a landmark of American literature. This Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm homestead by the "land companies" and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. A portrait of conflict between the powerful and the powerless, the novel captures the horrors of the Depression and probes the very nature of equality in America."

Call number: SAC - PS 3537 .T3234 G8 1939

Call number: OPC- PS3537.T3234 G8 1967

Call number: PAL - PS3537.T3234 G8 1967

1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand - "the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that charts the diminishing fortunes of a distinguished Boston family in the early years of the 20th century. Sweeping us into the inner sanctum of Boston society, into the Beacon Hill town houses and exclusive private clubs where only the city's wealthiest and most powerful congregate, the novel gives us -- through the story of one family and its patriarch, the recently deceased George Apley -- the portrait of an entire society in transition. Gently satirical and rich with drama, the novel moves from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression as it projects George Apley's world -- and subtly reveals a life in which success and accomplishment mask disappointment and regret, a life of extreme and enviable privilege that is nonetheless an imperfect life."

Call number: PAL - PS3525.A6695 L3 1940

1937: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - " A monumental classic considered by many to be not only the greatest love story ever written, but also the greatest Civil War saga."

Call number: SAC - PS3525.I972 G6 1936

Call number: PAL - PS3525.I972 G6 1936

1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis - "In this epic work by award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist H.L. Davis, the virtues of the frontier live again in the lives and characters of Oregon settlers during the homesteading period from 1906-1908."

Call number: PAL - PS3507.A7327 H66 1935

1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson - "Johnson's (1910-1990) Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel, a combination of social protest and naturalism originally published in 1934, is narrated by the second of three daughters in a farming family impoverished by the Depression."

Call number: PAL - PS3519.O2633 N6 1962

1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck - "In "The Good Earth" she presents a graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century.

Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions and rewards. Her brilliant novel -- beloved by millions of readers -- is a universal tale of the destiny of man."

Call number: SAC - PS 3503 .U198 G65 1949

Call number: PAL - PS3503.U198 G66 1949

Call number: OPC - PS3503.U198 G6 1931

1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge - "This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel captures the essence of the Southwest in the early 1900s -- and depicts a young Native American couple experiencing all the uncertainties and joys of first love. Laughing Boy is one of the most powerful novels in American fiction."

Call number: PAL - PS3523.A2663 L3 1929

1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin - "Banned in Boston when it was first published in 1928, Scarlet Sister Mary is the story of a sexy, independent, and outspoken woman who lives to please herself. Abandoned by her husband, the heroine takes many lovers, loses her firstborn son, and eventually "finds peace" as a church member, although she refuses to give up her love charm and her gold hoop earrings. Scarlet Sister Mary shocked readers with its sensual portrayal of a black woman's private life, but it was universally lauded for its honesty and courage. The first edition sold more than one million copies worldwide, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1929."

Call number: PAL - 813.5 P479S

1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder - "On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world.

By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His study leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition."

Call number: PAL - PS3545.I345 B7 1998

1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield - no description available

Call number: PAL - PS3503.R66 L6 1926

1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis - "Possibly the greatest satirist of his age, Lewis wrote novels that present a devastating picture of middle-class American life in the 1920s. Although he ridiculed the values, the lifestyles, and even the speech of his characters, there is often affection behind the irony. Sinclair's most praised novel and the one that won him the Pulitzer Prize (which he refused) Arrowsmith tells the tale of Martin Arrowsmith fulfills a lifelong dream of becoming a physician with a passion for research. Combating the forces of ignorance and greed, he relentlessly pursues scientific truth, even in the face of his own personal tragedy."

Call number: PAL - PS3523.E94 A7 1952

Call number: OPC - PS3523.E94 A7 1990

1925: So Big by Edna Ferber - "Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, "So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber's crowning achievement. A rollicking panorama of Chicago's high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges."

Call number: PAL - PS3511.E46 S6 2000

1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather - "Although it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, this stirring novel about World War I remains far less known than Cather's established classics such as My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop. In the lucid, unadorned prose that was her hallmark, Cather brings to life the simple Nebraska farm folk and their tranquil rural lifestyle, showing how the Great War, seemingly so far away on the Old Continent, eventually touches them all. More than half of the novel is devoted to the Wheeler homestead, the pace following the slow rhythms of the prairie farmland. The novel's protagonist, Claude Wheeler, a strong, healthy, red-headed farm boy, is physically a typical representative of his sturdy sodbuster family and hard-working neighbors. But mentally the boy has little in common with their narrow outlooks, and the limited horizons of his parochial community make him restless and filled with a barely suppressed discontent. Through a series of striking vignettes, Cather brilliantly reveals Claude's search for some greater purpose to his life beyond the routines of farm life. Gradually, the widening war in Europe sneaks up on the rural Nebraska region, as newspaper reports of refugees and German atrocities begin to stir the emotions of the local young men. When the United States finally enters the conflict, Claude is one of the first to enlist, seeing purpose, adventure, and commitment to some larger ideal in the call to arms. Claude's longings for radically new experiences are more than amply realized overseas in sobering encounters with suffering French women and children, the battle-scarred English "Tommies, " and the tenacious German enemy. The novel concludes with a memorable testament to theshattering effects of war on youth and ideals, a powerful depiction of mechanized battle, and its life-changing effects on one Nebraska farm boy and the people he left behind."

Call number: PAL - PS3505.A87 O5 1950

1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington - "This is the story of a middle-class family living in the industrialized "midland country" at the turn of the 20th century. It is against this dingy backdrop that Alice Adams seeks to distinguish herself. She goes to a dance in a used dress, which her mother attempts to renew by changing the lining and adding some lace. She adorns herself not with orchids sent by the florist but with a bouquet of violets she has picked herself. Because her family cannot afford to equip her with the social props or "background" so needed to shine in society. Alice is forced to make do. Ultimately, her ambitions for making a successful marriage must be tempered by the realities of her situation. Alice Adams's resiliency of spirit makes her one of Tarkington's most compelling female characters. A Pulitzer Prize--winning novel that depicts the ambitions and delusions of a middle-class Midwestern family."

Call number: PAL - PS2972 .A4 1921

1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - "Set in gaslit 1870s New York, where society people "dread scandal more than disease," Newland Archer is deeply troubled. Content to wed the beautiful and proper May Welland, Newland is drawn to the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska, a mysterious and challenging woman with a tainted past. To follow such a woman would mean giving up his family, his name, and, most important, his place in New York society."

Call number:SAC paperback rack

1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington - "The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The protagonist of Booth Tarkington's great historical drama is George Amberson Minafer, the spoiled and arrogant grandson of the founder of the family's magnificence. Eclipsed by a new breed of developers, financiers, and manufacturers, this pampered scion begins his gradual descent from the midwestern aristocracy to the working class."

Call number: PAL - PS2972 .M25 1967