The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N

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Conrad Richter

St. Louis woman travels to New Mexico to wed rancher, only to find that his first love is "sea of grass" where thousands of cattle roam and open-range cattlemen fight against small-town farmers. "That lusty pioneer blood is tamed now, broken and gelded like the wild horse and the frontier settlement." From that first poignant line to the glowing passage at the end, this novel is a work of art, enchanting the reader by the beauty of its prose at the same time that it rouses him by its passionate drama. A love-story, full of tenderness and sorrow, it is also a picture of a time forever lost and a way of life that now exists only in the memories of garrulous oldsters. Here is the Southwest in all its bravado and brutality, its color and violence, eternally fascinating even when filtered through the tale of a woman who hated it. Mr. Richter in this book confirms the high promise of his superb short stories of the Southwest published last year in the volume called Early Americana. The tragic conflict is laid bare immediately when James Brewton, lord of the greatest ranch in all Texas, bold, inexhaustible, and merciless, brings to his lawless land the girl he will marry--a girl of incomparable loveliness, gentle, soft, cultivated. yet strong and willful in her own fragile way. The very morning of her arrival she witnessed an episode in the cruel battle between the herdsmen, led by her bridegroom, and the settlers, whole families of starvelings who had migrated to the virgin territory, led by a young lawyer driven half by ambition and half by gallantry. The lines were drawn then, and there could be no truce until time had cooled the blood and history itself resolved the war. But how much they lived through until that truce, how many sleepless nights, how many regrets, how much pain! The reader turns the last page secure in the knowledge that he, too, has lived through something profound in the unfolding of this story--and the emotion it has evoked will haunt him for more than a day.--Jacket.

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Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell's monumental epic of the South won a Pulitzer Prize, gave rise to the most popular motion picture of our time, and inspired a sequel that became the fastest selling novel of the century. It is one of the most popular books ever written: more than 28 million copies of the book have been sold in more than 37 countries. Today, more than 60 years after its initial publication, its achievements are unparalleled, and it remains the most revered American saga and the most beloved work by an American writer...

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John Steinbeck

Steinbeck’s classic novel of the Great Depression is as vivid now as ever. The story focuses on a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, farmers who work another man’s land for a share of the crops. Driven from their home by drought and poverty they take to the road in a battered old truck and make their way to California to look for work. When they arrive they find hundreds of others like them being forced to work for breadline wages. they begin working as fruit pickers, strike-breakers replacing the people who have been trying to establish a union but their consciences force them to leave.

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Samuel Beckett

More pricks than kicks is a celebrated work by Samuel Beckett (Nobel Laureate), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.