2016-2017 12th Grade English IV AP and Humanities
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Hamlet by William Shakespeare – Available for $6.00 (ISBN:978-0-7434-7712-3) William Shakespeare's tragedy in which Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, struggles with the decision whether to avenge his father's murder. Also includes details on Shakespeare's life, world, and theater; and an essay that offers a modern perspective on the play. Macbeth by William Shakespeare- Available for $6.00 (ISBN: 978-0-7434-7710-9) A drama about a man who kills the King of Scotland in order to claim the throne for himself, and includes discussion of the theatrical world of Shakespeare, an introduction to the play, and a note on the text used. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare- Not required to purchase, classroom will provide
Much Ado About Nothing includes two quite different stories of romantic love. Hero and Claudio fall in love almost at first sight, but an outsider, Don John, strikes out at their happiness. Beatrice and Benedick are kept apart by pride and mutual antagonism until others decide to play Cupid. |
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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Available for $5 (ISBN: 0-553-21310-5) Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen's classic comic romance, in which the five Bennett sisters try to find that most elusive creature: a single man in possession of a large fortune. Sparks fly when sweet, pretty Jane meets their new neighbor, Mr. Bingley, but her sister Elizabeth is most offended by his haughty friend, Mr. Darcy. |
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte– Available for $5.00 (ISBN: 0-553-21258-3) In early nineteenth-century Yorkshire, the passionate attachment between a headstrong young girl and a foundling boy brought up by her father causes tragedy for them and many others, even in the next generation. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens – Available for $5.00 (ISBN: 0-553-21342-3)
Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel, and it is a classic work of Victorian literature. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy– Available for $5.00 (ISBN: 0-553-21168-4) The ne'er-do-well sire of a starving brood suddenly discovers a family connection to the aristocracy, and his selfish scheme to capitalize on their wealth sets a fateful plot in motion. Jack Durbeyfield dispatches his gentle daughter Tess to the home of their noble kin, anticipating a lucrative match between the lovely girl and a titled cousin. Innocent Tess finds the path of the d'Urberville estate paved with ruin in this gripping tale of the inevitability of fate and the tragic nature of existence. Beloved by Toni Morrison– Available for $16.00 (ISBN: 978-1-4000-3341-6 )
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. |
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Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini- Available for $16.00 (ISBN: 978-1-59463-193-1) The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed.
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Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg – Available for $16.00 (ISBN:978-1-4767-9818-9 ) "Clegg is both delicately lyrical and emotionally direct in this masterful novel, which strives to show how people make bearable what is unbearable, offering consolation in small but meaningful gestures. Both ineffably sad and deeply inspiring, this mesmerizing novel makes for a powerful debut." |
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The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout - Available for $16.00 (ISBN:978-0-8129-7951-0) Catalyzed by a nephew's thoughtless prank, a pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives. |
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A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley - Available for $16.00(ISBN:978-1-4000-3383-6)
A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare’sKing Lear cast upon a typical American community in the late twentieth century, A Thousand Acres takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride, and reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity. |
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On Beauty by Zadie Smith– Available for $17.00 (ISBN: 978-0-14-303774-3)
On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent. Snow by Orhan Pamuk– Available for $16.00 (ISBN: 978-0-375-70686-8) The Nobel Prize–winner’s second novel to appear in an Everyman edition is a spellbinding story of a poet seeking his lost love in a remote Turkish town riven by religious conflict and cut off from the world by a blizzard. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Available for $16.00 (ISBN: 978-0-307-45592-5) Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler – Available for $15.00 (ISBN: 978-0-345-51659-6 )
Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn’t bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new and spare condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged. His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is . . . well, something quite different. Saturday by Ian McEwan – Available for $16.00 (ISBN: 978-1-4000-7619-2 )
In his triumphant new novel, Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement, follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish. Henry Perowne–a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children–plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him. Zero K by Don DeLillo – Available for $27.00 (ISBN: 978-1-5011-3539-2 ) The wisest, richest, funniest, and most moving novel in years from Don DeLillo, one of the great American novelists of our time—an ode to language, at the heart of our humanity, a meditation on death, and an embrace of life. Jeffrey Lockhart’s father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau, whose health is failing.… |
