The Chosen

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Joyce Carol Oates

In A Garden of Earthly Delights, Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole, the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers. Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence and poverty, determined not to repeat her mother’s life, Clara struggles for independence by way of her relationships with four very different men: her father, a family man turned itinerant laborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, who rescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love; Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; and Swan, Clara’s son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burden of his mother’s ambition. A Garden of Earthly Delights is the first novel in the Wonderland Quartet. Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans.

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Donald Barthelme

Simon, a fifty-three-year-old Philadelphia architect, is given a year to do as he wishes. He lives in a bare apartment, thinking back on his life and work. A complex relationship develops when he becomes involved with three younger women.

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Ursula K. Le Guin

The place is Orsinia, a land of medieval keeps standing guard above walled cities, and of railways stretching across karsts to vanish in mountains where the old gods still live.

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V. S. Naipaul

Winner of the Booker Prize in 1971 this book comprises three novellas, set in three very different countries. The stories are about people surviving as best they can in states with varying levels of political, social and economic freedom.