Curated playlist
Epic novels
- The Lord of the RingsA Collins contact told Tolkien that The Lord of the Rings "urgently wanted cutting."
- Moby-DickMoby-Dick sold poorly and Melville died in 1891 without seeing it celebrated. Its fame came entirely after his death.
- The Three MusketeersIn The Three Musketeers, a broke young Gascon picks fights with three swordsmen and ends up fighting beside them.
- Gone with the Wind (novel)Margaret Mitchell began writing Gone with the Wind to pass time while recovering from a car crash injury.
- Les MisérablesLes Misérables spends 14 chapters on a bishop before Jean Valjean appears. The 1862 French novel starts with Myriel.
- Dune (novel)Dune, Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel, was first printed by a company better known for auto repair manuals. More than twenty publishers had already turned the manuscript down. Chilton Books accepted it in August 1965 and priced…
- The Count of Monte CristoOn the 24th of February 1815, the merchant ship Pharaon glides into the port of Marseille, and the adventure novel The Count of Monte Cristo begins on the very day Napoleon escapes from his exile on Elba. Aboard is Edmond Dantès, a young…
- Blood MeridianBlood Meridian, a 1985 novel from Random House, begins with a birth under a meteor storm. Its hero is born in Tennessee in 1833, during the Leonids meteor shower, and he is never given a name. Cormac McCarthy calls him only "the kid." His…
- War and PeaceLeo Tolstoy insisted War and Peace was not a novel. He also said it was not a poem or a historical chronicle.
- The Wheel of TimeThe Wheel of Time, a high fantasy series by the American author Robert Jordan, opens with a sentence that sounds like scripture: "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend." Everything that…