Following the tale of Tod Hackett - a brilliant young artist who is brought to an LA studio as a set designer - 'The Day of the Locust' is an exposure of the sordid reality beneath the surface of Hollywood.

The story of a farm family's Depression-era journey from the Dustbowl of Oklahoma to the California migrant labor camps in search of a better life.

With the publication of her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types...

A satire on totalitarianism in which farm animals overthrow their human owner and set up their own government

Loving describes life above and below stairs in an Irish country house during the Second World War. In the absence of their employers the Tennants, the servants enact their own battles and conflict amid rumours about the war in Europe; invading one another's provinces of authority to create an anarchic environment of self-seeking behaviour, pilfering, gossip and love.

The story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac (the Aztec name of Cuernavaca), on the Day of the Dead, November 2, 1938.

Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows a platoon of Marines who are stationed on the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the World War II, "The Naked and the Dead" received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its 1948 publication and has since become part of the American canon.

The story of American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II. Although the couple apear to be smart, independent travelers, they are not equipped to travel into the desert.Thus, each time hardship strikes, pieces of their comfortable lives and the identities they had constructed seem to peel away. The shifting sands and unforgiving sun are metaphors for the shocking and vulgar circumstances that befall them.

Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart...

Describes the life of Augie March, a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Depression, and his search for a career. Augie's nonconformity leads him into an eventful, humorous, and sometimes earthy way of life.