[Penguin Readers Level 4]Winston Smith lives in a society where the government controls people every second of the day. He fights this world with love. But it's dangerous: love for another person can be punished by death - and Big Brother is always watching.Orwell's classic story shows that there is no freedom unless ideas and beliefs can be questioned. This is as true today as when it was written, more than fifty years ago.

The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home.

The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future.Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.--back cover

A wild, inventive ride of a short story collection from a distinctive new American storyteller. The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot- air balloon pilot, parents and children, believers and nonbelievers, the people in these stories are struggling to understand the absurdity and the magnitude of what it means to exist in a family, to exist in the world. In “Shirley Temple Three,” a mother must shoulder her son’s burden—a cloned and resurrected wooly mammoth who wreaks havoc on her house, sanity, and faith. In “The Real Alan Gass,” a physicist in search of a mysterious particle called the “daisy” spends her days with her boyfriend, Walker, and her nights with the husband who only exists in the world of her dreams, Alan Gass.  Like the daisy particle itself—“forever locked in a curious state of existence and nonexistence, sliding back and forth between the two”—the stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals are exquisite, mysterious, and inextricably connected. From this enchanting primordial soup, Pierce’s voice emerges—a distinct and charming testament of the New South, melding contemporary concerns with their prehistoric roots to create a hilarious, deeply moving symphony of stories.

And here it is...the best collection of short stories I've ever read. Where has Carver been all my life? Why did no one slap me over the head with his work fifteen years ago? I mourn that it took me this long to discover him and now I must get my little claws on everything Carver asap.How the heck can a writer capture so much power into super-short stories. I'm talking ten page stories. How?! Each one is a stand alone masterpiece with so much authenticity and sense of reality and yet, they are all small perfect little dreams of sadness. All the characters are mourning themselves, they're all hurting so beautifully.I re-read several of these stories already and will tuck this gem away to re-read forever.Stand outs: “They’re Not your Husband” - Just the imagery alone is so tangible and delightful. I loved this twisted and cruel tale. It felt like a movie, a TV show, a full length novel. I wanted to stay in that diner and watch the dysfunction for hours over a slice of pie.“Nobody Said Anything” - Such melancholy. “Collectors” - Oh strangeness! Is there anything more lonely than a door to door vacuum salesman? No. “Jerry and Molly and Sam” - Trapped trapped trapped. This was a mini Yates story.The writing is haunting and soaked in a sense of foreboding. Heart-breaking. Wonderful.

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