If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay, as flamboyant in her love affairs as she was in her art, was its heroine. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Millay was dazzling in the performance of herself. Her voice was likened to an instrument of seduction, and her impact on crowds and on men was legendary. Yet beneath her studied act, all was not well.

Little Women, closely based on Louisa May Alcott’s own experience of family life, was first published in 1869 and follows the lives of the four March sisters and their mother, "Marmee". With the heartrending story of gentle Beth, the humorous adventures of tomboyish Jo, Meg’s vain attempts to cut a fashionable figure in "society", and the artistic ambitions of the youngest sister Amy, it has never lost its extraordinary power to move and delight.

For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

One evening in 1951, an itinerant storyteller arrives unannounced at a house in the Irish countryside. In exchange for a bed and a warm meal, he invites his hosts and their neighbors to join him by the wintry fireside and begins to tell formative stories of Ireland's history. Ronan, a nine-year-old boy, grows so entranced by the storytelling that, when the old man leaves abruptly under mysterious circumstances, the boy devotes himself to finding him again.

This is the most distinguished novel that has come out of South Africa in the 20th century, and it is one of the most important novels of the modern era. Cry, the Beloved Country is in some ways a sad book; it is an indictment of a social system that drives native races into resentment and crime; it is a story of Fate, as inevitable, as relentless, as anything of Thomas Hardy's. Beautifully wrought with high poetic compassion, Cry, the Beloved Country is more than just a story, it is a profound experience of the human spirit.

Jimmy, Gerald, and Cathy discover an enchanted garden and wake a beautiful princess from a hundred-year-sleep - only to have her immediately made invisible by a magic ring. The quest to rescue her from her own magic proves difficult, humorous, and at times very frightening.

If you've ever picked up a hymn book, the chances are that you've sung a song written by a blind girl - and not just any blind girl. As a young child, Fanny Crosby knew nothing of the sighted world around her but that didn't stop her interacting with nature, experiencing the thrill of God's creation. She held her grandmother's hand, but she thought that was because Grandmother needed her help not the other way around.

Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper depression invisible to her husband, who believes he knows what is best for her. Alone in the yellow-wallpapered nursery of a rented house, she descends into madness.

Waiting for his car to be fixed, Mr. Satterthwaite sits in a tea shop called the Harlequin cafe, thinking of his friend Harley Quin, whom he hasn’t seen in many years. Then, in a burst of sunshine, the very same Mr. Quin walks through the door, along with his diligent dog, Hermes. Satterthwaite is telling him the very long history of the family he is off to visit, when their conversation is interrupted by the abrupt entrance of a member of that very same family, intent upon replacing her harlequin cups.

Very few people know that Mark Twain wrote a major work on Joan of Arc. Still fewer know that he considered it not only his most important, but also his best work. He spent 12 years in research and many months in France doing archival work, and then made several attempts until he felt he finally had the story he wanted to tell.

Victoria Gracen's life in middle age has settled into a round of club meetings and faithful attendance at her Presbyterian church. But all that changes when she invites her newly orphaned 16-year-old nephew (whom she's never met) to come live with her.

"Pollyanna" is a best-selling novel by Eleanor H. Porter that is considered a classic of children's literature, with the title character's name becoming a popular term for someone with the same very optimistic outlook. Also, the subconscious bias towards the positive is often described as the Pollyanna principle... The title character is named Pollyanna Whittier, a young orphan who goes to live in Beldingsville, Vermont, with her wealthy but stern and cold spinster Aunt Polly.

Born into a respected Irish-Anglo family in 1860, Charles loves his native land and its long-suffering but irrepressible people. As a healer, he travels the countryside dispensing traditional cures while soaking up stories and legends of bygone times - and witnessing the painful, often violent birth of land-reform measures destined to lead to Irish independence. At the age of 40, summoned to Paris to treat his dying countryman - the infamous Oscar Wilde - Charles experiences the fateful moment of his life.

Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.

They look alike, but they live in very different worlds. Tom Canty, impoverished and abused by his father, is fascinated with royalty. Edward Tudor, heir to the throne of England, is kind and generous but wants to run free and play in the river - just once. How insubstantial their differences truly are becomes clear when a chance encounter leads to an exchange of clothing - and roles. The pauper finds himself caught up in the pomp and folly of the royal court, and the prince wanders horror-stricken through the lower strata of English society.