Books for the
College Bound
*Click on the title to look up a book in our catalog!
- A
Death in the Family
James Agee
The enchanted childhood summer of 1915 suddenly becomes a baffling experience
for Rufus Follet when his father dies.
- In
the Time of Butterflies
Julia Alvarez
Dede, the only survivor of the four Mirabel sisters, code named Mariposas or butterflies,
reveals their role in the liberation of the Dominican Republic from the dictator
Trujillo.
- Bless
Me, Ultima
Rudolfo Anaya
Ultima, a wise old mystic, helps a young Hispanic boy resolve personal dilemmas
caused by the differing backgrounds and aspirations of his parents and society.
- The
Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
In Gilead, a Christian fundamentalist dystopia, fertile lower-class women serve
as birth-mothers for the upper class.
- Crime
and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A sensitive intellectual is driven by poverty to believe himself exempt from moral
law.
- Invisible
Man
Ralph Ellison
A young African American seeking identity during his high school and college days,
and later in New York's Harlem, relates his terrifying experiences.
- Cold
Mountain
Charles Frazier
A wounded Civil War soldier endures the elements, The Guard, and his own weakness
and infirmity to return to his sweetheart who is fighting her own battle to survive
while farming the mountainous North Carolina terrain.
- Catch-22
Joseph Heller
In this satirical novel, Captain Yossarian confronts the hypocrisy of war and
bureaucracy as he frantically attempts to survive.
- A
Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
World War I is the setting for this love story of an English nurse and a wounded
American ambulance officer.
- Brave
New World
Aldous Huxley
In a chilling vision of the future, babies are produced in bottles and exist in
a mechanized world without soul.
- To
Kill A Mockingbird
Harper Lee
A young girl tells of life in a small Alabama town in the 1930s and her father's
defense in court of an African American accused of raping a white woman.
- Beloved
Toni Morrison
Preferring death over slavery for her children, Sethe murders her infant daughter
who later mysteriously returns and almost destroys the lives of her mother and
sister.
- The
Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
An Oklahoma farmer and his family leave the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression
to go to the promised land of California.
- Native
Son
Richard Wright
For Bigger Thomas, an African American man accused of a crime in the white man's
world, there could be no extenuating circumstances, no explanations and only death.