Memory

Maile Meloy’s 2011 New York Times bestseller The Apothecary is the first in her young adult trilogy, which also includes The Apprentices (2014) and The After-Room (2017). This novel merges the genres of historical fiction and magical realism, and it was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Children’s Books of 2011. In 2012, The Apothecary also won the E. B. White Read-Aloud Award and the California Book Awards YA Gold Medal. Set in London after... Read The Apothecary Summary

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The Astonishing Color of After, published in 2018, is Emily X.R. Pan’s APALA Honor Award and Walter Honor Award-winning debut young adult fantasy novel. Pan was raised in Illinois by her Taiwanese and Chinese American parents, and closely collaborated with her extended family in Taiwan while researching and writing the novel. Although the novel is not explicitly autobiographical, certain details like Leigh being the only child of a professor and a piano teacher echo the... Read The Astonishing Color of After Summary

The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories (1951) is a collection of short stories and a novella by Carson McCullers. The author, a seminal part of the Southern Gothic Literature genre, rose to fame with her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), which shares many themes with the stories in the collection. Other notable works by McCullers include the novels Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) and The Member of... Read The Ballad of the Sad Cafe Summary

The Basketball Diaries: The Classic About Growing Up Hip On New York’s Mean Streets is an autobiography written by Jim Carroll and published in 1978. The book comprises a series of short diary entries which serve as anecdotes and insights into his daily life as a teenager on the streets of New York City in the 1960s. Jim Carroll became a celebrated writer and poet, overcoming his addiction to heroin in the mid-1970s and publishing... Read The Basketball Diaries Summary

W. D. Wetherell’s short story “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant,” first published in 1983 and later anthologized in 1985’s The Man Who Loved Levittown, has been popular ever since for its gently humorous depiction of youthful infatuations. Wetherell reaches into his own past to present a tale that’s both lyrically beautiful and achingly funny. In the story, a 14-year-old boy gets a crush on an older girl and must make a painful decision... Read The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant Summary

Elif Shafak’s 2006 novel The Bastard of Istanbul weaves together the stories of two rival cultures, those of the Turks and the Armenians—peoples who haven’t yet healed from the wound opened by the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Shafak uses the stories of two families—the Turkish Kazancis and the Armenian Tchakhmakchians—who live seemingly disparate lives on two different continents but are connected by a past that reveals how deeply interconnected these families and historical enemies are. Shafak uses... Read The Bastard of Istanbul Summary

“The Battle of Blenheim,” also known as “After Blenheim,” is a satirical, antiwar poem by English Romantic poet Robert Southey, written in 1798 and published in the Morning Post newspaper on August 9 of that year. The poem, which is in the form of a ballad, looks back at the Battle of Blenheim, which was fought around the Bavarian town of Blindheim, in southern Germany, on August 2, 1704, during the War of the Spanish... Read The Battle of Blenheim Summary

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Daphne du Maurier’s short story “The Birds” was first published in her 1952 collection, The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Several Long Stories. It is a Gothic horror story about a man who must protect his family from the brutal and inexplicably organized attacks perpetrated by the birds. Du Maurier’s tale evokes the social isolation of individuals in 1950s England, the British civilians’ memories of helplessness during the Blitz, and the fear of destructive... Read The Birds Summary

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The Bone Clocks (2014) is a work of literary fantasy and the sixth novel by English author David Mitchell. It was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize, and also received the 2015 World Fantasy Award.Spanning nearly 60 years and featuring five different narrators, The Bone Clocks follows Holly Sykes, a young woman from Kent, England, who becomes embroiled in a secret war between two groups of immortal beings called the Horologists and the Anchorites... Read The Bone Clocks Summary

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The Breakdown (2017) is a psychological thriller and B. A. Paris’s follow-up to her internationally bestselling debut, Behind Closed Doors. The Breakdown was a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Mystery and Thriller in 2017. It has been adapted into a film titled Blackwater Lane, released in 2024 and starring Minka Kelly, Maggie Grace, and Dermot Mulroney. The novel portrays Cass Anderson’s battle with guilt and fear after a woman is murdered near her home... Read The Breakdown Summary