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The title is the name of a fictional eccentric electronic travel guide, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, prominently featured in the series.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[3] is often abbreviated "HHGTTG" (as used on fan websites) or "H2G2" (first used by Neil Gaiman as a chapter title in Don't Panic and later by the online guide run by the BBC). The series is also often referred to as "The Hitchhiker's Guide", "Hitchhiker's", or simply "[The] Guide". This title can refer to any of the various incarnations of the story of which the books are the most widely distributed, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005.[4]

The novel chronicles the history of the Buendía family in the town founded by their patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía Macondo. It is built on multiple time frames, playing on ideas presented earlier by Jorge Luis Borges in stories such as "The Garden of Forking Paths."

The novel has been adapted for cinema in a controversial movie by Stanley Kubrick, and also by Andy Warhol; adaptations have also been made for television, radio, and the stage. As well as inspiring a concept album, the novel and films are referred to in, and have inspired, a number of songs and bands.

The story concerns a disfigured woman whose real name is not initially disclosed, frequently referred to by other names given to her by Brandy Alexander, a transsexual, with whom she spends the majority of the book. The novel opens on the wedding day of Ms. Evie Cottrell, whose house is burning to the ground.

Brandy has been shot by Evie, and asks the narrator to tell her life story. She remembers how she first met Brandy, and the story is told in a non-linear sequence of memories.

The narrator is the daughter of a farmer. Her older brother, Shane, garnered most of her parents' attention so in an effort to have some attention for herself, our narrator seeks out a career in modeling. Throughout the novel, we learn that Shane is actually a homosexual which is highly disapproved of by the parents.

Her best friend in modeling school is Evelyn "Evie" Cottrell. They participate in an infomercial together and "perform" in front of customers in department store displays. It is about this time that Evie begins a secret relationship with the narrator's boyfriend, Manus Kelley.

Two migrant field workers in California during the Great Depression—George Milton, an intelligent and cynical man, and Lennie Small, an ironically-named man of large stature and immense strength but limited mental abilities—come to a ranch near Soledad southeast of Salinas, California to "work up a stake." They hope to one day attain their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream, which he never tires of hearing George describe, is merely to tend to (and touch) soft rabbits on the farm. George protects Lennie at the beginning by telling him that if Lennie gets into trouble George won't let him "tend them rabbits." They are fleeing from their previous employment in Weed where they were run out of town after Lennie's love of stroking soft things resulted in an accusation of attempted rape when he touched a young woman's dress.

At the ranch, the dream appears to move closer to reality. Candy, the aged, one-handed ranch-hand, even offers to pitch in with Lennie and George so they can buy the farm by the end of the month. The dream crashes when Lennie accidentally kills the young and attractive wife of Curley, the ranch owner's son, while trying to stroke her hair. A lynch mob led by Curley gathers. George, realizing he is doomed to a life of loneliness and despair like the rest of the migrant workers and wanting to spare Lennie a painful death at the hands of the vengeful and violent Curley, shoots Lennie in the back of the head before the mob can find him after George gives him one last retelling of their dream of owning their own land.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a direct product of Kesey's time working the graveyard shift as an orderly at a mental health facility in Menlo Park, California.[3] Not only did he speak to the patients and witness the workings of the institution, he took psychoactive drugs (Peyote and LSD) as part of Project MKULTRA.[4] From this, he became sympathetic toward the patients.[5] Kesey claimed he wrote the first three pages of the novel after ingesting eight peyote plants, and that these pages remained almost completely unchanged through all the book's rewrites.

Like Ishiguro's previous two novels, the story is told from the first person point of view with the narrator recalling his life through a letter to an unknown person, perhaps another butler, while progressing through the present. Events in the narrator's contemporary life remind him of events from his past.

The novel was Ishiguro's first not based in Japan or told from the point of view of a Japanese person, although his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, was told from the point of view of an elderly Japanese woman living in Britain and recalling her past in Japan.

he novel chronicles the chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and led to an increase in organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamor of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and the lack of morality that went with it, a kind of decadence.

Although it was adapted into both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was not popular upon initial printing, selling fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life. It was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paragon of the Great American Novel, and a literary classic. The Great Gatsby has become a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world, and is ranked second in the Modern Library's lists of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.

One night in a Parisian nightclub and the aftermath of a marriage provide the stories for these two novels by Frederic Beigbeder, award-winning author of 'Windows on the World'. Both novels, translated into English for the first time here, are narrated by Marc Marronier, a shallow, superficial, rich Parisian who works as an advertising executive, but concentrates much of his energy on frequenting the demimonde of Parisian clubs and bars. It's a world Beigbeder is all too familiar with, and his caustic observations are all the more accurate for it. In 'Holiday in a Coma', Marc Marronier is invited by his old friend, an American DJ, to the opening of a new nightclub called The Shitter (a satirical take on the famous Paris nightclub, Les Bains Douche). Taking place over a single unforgettable night, the novel documents everything from the pit-bull bouncer on the door, to the drugs, cocktails and wannabes who frequent the club. Marc has set his sights on seducing a catwak model -- any one will do -- and is trying to keep a clear head while all around are paying good money to lose theirs. A catalogue of degeneracy, drugs, sex and decibels, 'Holiday in a Coma' is written with a fury and passion that reflect the author's own relationship with a world and he both loves and loathes. In 'Love Lasts Three Years', our hero Marc has just been divorced and -- shallow opportunist that he is -- has decided to write a book about it. He has a theory that love lasts no more than three years, and here -- while recounting the highs and lows of his marriage and taking us through brash nightclubs, vainglorious offices and soulless designer apartments -- he brings to bear the theoretical and the empirical to prove his point. Both frightening and funny, the book reads like a diary: sometimes tender and real, sometimes fantastical and cruel, peppered with Beigbeder's acerbic one-liners and trademark wit.

Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his novice Adso of Melk travel to a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological disputation. As they arrive, the monastery is disturbed by a murder. As the plot unfolds, several other people mysteriously die. The protagonists explore a labyrinthine medieval library, the subversive power of laughter, and come face to face with the Inquisition. It is left primarily to William's enormous powers of logic and deduction to solve the mysteries of the abbey.

On one level, the book is an exposition of the scholastic method which was very popular in the 14th century. William demonstrates the power of deductive reasoning, especially syllogisms. He refuses to accept the diagnosis of simple demonic possession despite demonology being the traditional monastic explanation. Although the abbey is under the apprehension that they are experiencing the last days before the coming of Antichrist (a topic closely examined in the book), William, through his empirical mindset, manages to show that the murders are, in fact, committed by a more corporeal instrument. By keeping an open mind, collecting facts and observations, following pure intuition, and the dialectic method, he makes decisions as to what he should investigate, exactly as a scholastic would do. However, the simple use of reason does not suffice. The various signs and happenings only have meaning in their given contexts, and William must constantly be wary of which context he interprets the mystery. Indeed, the entire story challenges the narrator, William's young apprentice Adso, and the reader to continually recognize the context he is using to interpret, bringing the whole text to various levels which can all have different hermeneutical meanings. The narrative ties in many varied plot lines, all of which consider various interpretations and sources of meanings. Many of the interpretations and sources were highly volatile controversies in the medieval religious setting, all while spiraling towards what seems to be the key to understanding and truly interpreting the case. Although William's final theorems do not exactly match the actual events as written, those theorems do allow him to solve the abbey's mystery.

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Talking in Basil's garden, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfilment of the senses. Realizing that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out, expressing his desire to sell his soul to ensure the portrait Basil has painted would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, plunging him into debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or through a sign of aging.

In the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), protagonist Winston Smith is a civil servant responsible for perpetuating the Party's propaganda by revising historical records to render the Party omniscient and always correct, yet his meagre existence disillusions him into rebellion against Big Brother, which leads to his arrest, torture, and conversion.

As literary science fiction, 1984 is a classic novel of the social science fiction sub-genre, thus, since its publication in 1949, the terms and concepts of Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Memory hole et cetera, became contemporary vernacular, including the adjective Orwellian, denoting George Orwell's writings and totalitarianism as exposited in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm (1945).

Not long after Mr. Glebsky's arrival, an avalanche blocks the entrance to the valley, thus cutting the heroes off from outside world. At the same time, Olaf Andvarafors is found dead in his room, his door locked and his neck impossibly twisted. Mr. Glebsky is forced to start an investigation, but the more he searches for a logical explanation for the murder, the more he realises that the guests are not who they appear to be.