American Literature

When the young Ishmael gets on board Captain Ahab’s whaling ship, little does he suspect that the mission on which he is about to embark is the fulfilment of his master’s obsessive desire for revenge on Moby Dick, a white whale who has already...
By: Herman Melville

A murderer is forced to reveal his crime by the sound of a beating heart, a mysterious figure wreaks havoc among a party of noblemen during the time of the plague, a grieving lover awakens to find himself clutching a box of his beloved blood-stained...
By: Edgar Allan Poe

While holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in their social circle and exposes the cracks in their fragile marriage. As their...
By: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Widely considered one of the greatest American novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of Huck Finn and his companion, the slave Jim, as they journey down the Mississippi river, after running away from Huck’s alcoholic father and...
By: Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer charts the escapades of a thirteen-year-old boy growing up on the banks of the Mississippi. Testing the patience of his Aunt Polly, the bold and sharp-witted Tom Sawyer frequently skips school in search of excitement,...
By: Mark Twain

The heir to his grandfather’s considerable fortune, Anthony Patch is led astray from the path to gainful employment by the temptations of the 1920s Jazz Age. His descent into dissolution and profligacy is accelerated by his marriage to the...
By: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host, Jay Gatsby, a flamboyant but reserved self-made man with murky...
By: F. Scott Fitzgerald

On arriving at a rural monastery, the monk Ambrosius meets a young girl, Benedicta. She is shunned by the local community for being the daughter of the local hangman, but Ambrosius is drawn into a dangerous sympathy with her, and in defiance of the...
By: Ambrose Bierce

This Side of Paradise charts the life of Amory Blaine, an ambitious young man loosely based on Fitzgerald himself, as he moves from his well-heeled Midwest home to study at Princeton and then starts frequenting the circles of high society as an...
By: F. Scott Fitzgerald