forgive other people, when I can't even forgive myself.
He called me today. Twice. He told me "everything will be alright."
He's so perceptive.
If someone else were to tell me that phrase, it
wouldn't have the same effect at all.
And so everything will be alright.
I don't want to express myself here too much, because that's not the point of my regained interest in myspace.
It's weird, though. Other people.
And it's weird, because what they think
matters so much to me.
And even though I say it doesn't, I can't help but
feel that it does.
I would like to close my eyes and fall asleep, not opening
them until he comes home.
I need to be someone I can trust, and enjoy.
My first plunge into prescription pills... will it end?
There must be a resolution. I know I can't blame it all on the state of my mind, but I'm certain a lot of it can be. I think far too much, but not before I speak. Not before I act. My thoughts are as deep as love and hate. As birth and death.
But things like yellow and orange don't even phase me... I need something more.
I seek something more than the perimeters of my mind. I seek him. I seek the smooth contours of his body. I seek the sharpness in his eyes, and the softness in his mouth. I seek his mind, and I need to realize that it only exists inside of him. And though you might think you know what I'm talking about, the truth is, you don't.
But everything is alright.
It's time I sigh, and let it be.
Hello, moon, and goodbye sun.
Your rays are no longer an interest to me.
My life has ended to sacrifice the instinct that will no longer exist in me.
I am new, and brave. A calming breeze that the ocean brings.
And if I fail at my new mission, I'll fall into the sun.
And I'll burn to death. My instinct left as ashes at her feet.
For the one who comes next? Weakness rests at her feet.
The curse will carry on, but it has ended with me.
This moment, right now, will forever change my life.
I'm just not sure how I'll end.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Once upon a time, there lived a girl. Well, actually, the time is now, and she’s still living. I never did like attention grabbers, I mean, wouldn’t it make more sense for the reader to all ready be interested? They are the ones who are reading the words. Okay, okay. You want your attention grabber, fine. Right now, there lives a girl named Amron. She was born in the planet Euchre, on the year 1991. So, you’re probably thinking two things. One, “how the hell do you live IN a planet and ON a year” and two, “Isn’t Euchre a card game”? To be perfectly honest, I’m quite relieved you didn’t say anything about the lame introduction. As for the IN and ON thing, Amron lives underground on numbers. Furthermore, Euchre must have gotten its name from somewhere. Duh.
Anyways, Amron is your average girl, in a sort of abnormal way. She has reddish hair that was clearly cut by some weirdo. The hair drapes over her head, and almost covers her hideous freckled face. She has freckles that dot her large, crooked nose and her sharp cheekbones. She looks like the offspring of a cheetah and a rabid bamboo, minus the colourful butt. She doesn’t really even have a butt. It’s actually just her tail folded in her pants. It’s a clever, clever illusion. Amron has large breasts, and a deformed waist. Wide hips stick out, and gigantic thighs jiggle like fresh guacamole in the winter time. Somehow, feet and calves sprouted from the guacamole mess. Amron isn’t really all that confident in her skin. Not really, anyways. I mean, sometimes she is, but who isn’t? You can’t really blame her.
Anyways, again, on with the little introduction. Amron was born and raised on the planet Euchre, but moved to Earth in the year 2004. It was the year of puberty. The year where Austin was the greatest boy in history. (Now that I think about it, those two statements look a bit odd together) You see, Austin Is Amron’s best friend. They met in 7th grade when the evil Basketballs attacked her. Amron is usually pretty swell at protecting herself, but in this occasion, she could not defeat the beast and Austin rescued her from the nightmare. In this short year, Amron met a wonderful lady named Kana, and many other wonderful unmentionables. They helped her defeat the monsters that lived in her mind, and they helped her with a most lovely passion. By the beginning of freshman year, Kana had changed schools, and Austin had grown his hair out. That year was filled with interesting Mormon boys, and a few wonderful theater buddies.
The funny thing about this story, is that the beginning hasn’t even really started yet. You see, this is all a recap of what had happened in the past. Now, in the present, Amron is sitting on a computer chair in the living room of her new home. It feels like life is beginning, again, for her. Almost like seventh grade, but entirely different. No longer is she alone. Even though, Amron is going to a new school, her friends from years ago are still hers.
Now, you may be wondering how I know so much about Amron. The truth is, I am Amron. I am the one with the blue eyes, and reddish hair. This is my story, and you are just the reader. If you know Amron personally, then you might understand her story. It might even be about you. Chances are, you have some role in this story. Will this story end? Who knows. Perhaps this is the end. Perhaps, this is the middle? There really is no way to tell. Everyday is just another page in her story.
Anyways, Amron is your average girl, in a sort of abnormal way. She has reddish hair that was clearly cut by some weirdo. The hair drapes over her head, and almost covers her hideous freckled face. She has freckles that dot her large, crooked nose and her sharp cheekbones. She looks like the offspring of a cheetah and a rabid bamboo, minus the colourful butt. She doesn’t really even have a butt. It’s actually just her tail folded in her pants. It’s a clever, clever illusion. Amron has large breasts, and a deformed waist. Wide hips stick out, and gigantic thighs jiggle like fresh guacamole in the winter time. Somehow, feet and calves sprouted from the guacamole mess. Amron isn’t really all that confident in her skin. Not really, anyways. I mean, sometimes she is, but who isn’t? You can’t really blame her.
Anyways, again, on with the little introduction. Amron was born and raised on the planet Euchre, but moved to Earth in the year 2004. It was the year of puberty. The year where Austin was the greatest boy in history. (Now that I think about it, those two statements look a bit odd together) You see, Austin Is Amron’s best friend. They met in 7th grade when the evil Basketballs attacked her. Amron is usually pretty swell at protecting herself, but in this occasion, she could not defeat the beast and Austin rescued her from the nightmare. In this short year, Amron met a wonderful lady named Kana, and many other wonderful unmentionables. They helped her defeat the monsters that lived in her mind, and they helped her with a most lovely passion. By the beginning of freshman year, Kana had changed schools, and Austin had grown his hair out. That year was filled with interesting Mormon boys, and a few wonderful theater buddies.
The funny thing about this story, is that the beginning hasn’t even really started yet. You see, this is all a recap of what had happened in the past. Now, in the present, Amron is sitting on a computer chair in the living room of her new home. It feels like life is beginning, again, for her. Almost like seventh grade, but entirely different. No longer is she alone. Even though, Amron is going to a new school, her friends from years ago are still hers.
Now, you may be wondering how I know so much about Amron. The truth is, I am Amron. I am the one with the blue eyes, and reddish hair. This is my story, and you are just the reader. If you know Amron personally, then you might understand her story. It might even be about you. Chances are, you have some role in this story. Will this story end? Who knows. Perhaps this is the end. Perhaps, this is the middle? There really is no way to tell. Everyday is just another page in her story.
Friday, May 16, 2008
To see the end sail to you.
To see it gather speed, and momentum, and even the taunting mirror that it is.
And if I could, I would let myself drop to the ground.
I'd let it overwhelm my entire being, and go with it wherever it might go.
But there's something else, now.
Something that caused me to build a great wall of Norma.
And sometimes it hurts, to see what I must do, but other times it's so thrilling.
I am going to become something.
I am going to be someone.
I am absolutely sure of it.
No doubt is resting in my mind.
Hobey, ho.
_____
Sunday, May 11, 2008
I just realized that
Current mood: cold
I don't really matter.
I'm certain I do, in some kind of way, but it's never the way I want to matter. I can't help but feel this strange overwhelming loneliness. I'm not sure how this summer is going to go... I'll be stuck at my house the whole time, and loneliness will surely envelope me. Even worse than I feel it now. Maybe I'll stay with my mom? At least I have a few friends nearby, and I could hang out with them.
I really don't know.
I think I am thinking too much.
Just for once, I want to feel important to someone. Truly important.
I'll always just be a temp. Just until someone better comes along.
I'm sorry.
_________
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
And breathe.
Now I hesitate, a cool weight has rested in my stomach. I clasp my hand around my wrist, and remember the feeling from before. My veins swell, and I cry. But not for the pain.
That pain isn't as sudden as the first time I've felt it.
It's now only a dull throbbing, announcing itself to every inch of my being.
My breathing is choking in my throat. I cough, but nothing is dislodging the memory. I'm light headed as I dance through the flowers. Their soft petals brush against my skirt, reminding me finally of the release.
And so I let go.
Apprehensive at first, but I quickly grow more confident as I watch the ribbon fall from around my neck.
It hits the ground in a quiet thud, heavier than I had known.
And now it's gone, and I am free.
Breathe.
_________
Saturday, April 19, 2008
I wouldn't know anything else besides the feeling of both my feet planted flimsly on the ground below me.
And that's when it begins to hurt.
Realising that, in fact, the earth I happen to be on is not really there. That every rock and stone. That every - being and every blade of grass in a lawn full of duplicates, it isn't mine. It'll never be mine. I carry on in a blur so blurry, that the world is nothing more than a smear of paint across a canvas. And though I sigh deeply at the connotation that this dark blue smear has announced, I am in fact proud of this place.
One cannot stand forever, especially when this place is lacking everything essential for a human being to live in.
No, I won't be standing forever. When I hit the ground, (a known effect to the cause of falling) my body will emit such silence, that not one life will hear nor feel the end of me.
So now I ask... if I canvas falls in a gallery, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
________
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Unsure.
I hate feeling like my thoughts mean nothing. That my words, don't really matter. I've never questioned the way I felt or acted. I've never even thought about how to act.
And now, I sit here and scrutinize everything I am thinking and saying. Everything I'm doing, shouldn't be done because it isn't meant to be done. But what if this is really how I feel? What if... this isn't just a way to describe how I am?
This is how I was meant to be.
I guess. If you don't like the way I think I should be, I'm sorry. It isn't that I'm crazy or anything. That isn't me at all. This is just natural to me. Honestly, I don't think I could feel anything else.
The end.
gjshtiuerstgjk
Just let me act how I'm acting. Let me think like I am thinking.
I don't want to be anything else.
__________
Friday, April 18, 2008
Morning.
She's sitting in the dark, but she can't tell what time it is. She remembers when there was light still streaming between the clouds, and she remembers feeling the light slide out from around her. It's been hours since she's moved, but she isn't aware of the aching in her limbs. She stares straight ahead, almost seemingly dead, except for the occasional blinking of her eyes. The world seems to move around her, even in the cool darkness. She's aware, however, that she isn't apart of it. The sun is beginning to peak over the horizon, illuminating the world in an orange glow. Morning has come, officially ending the darkness that the night had brought. A single tear falls from her face. Morning has taken away the night, and with one last breath from the girl herself, the morning has taken her too.
_______
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Sweetness.
I'm suicidal. I have my suicide all planned out. I know how I will do it, relatively when I'm going to do it. Everything is planned out. It's weird though, because usually I dwell on things about my suicide. I've made several lists, and I've written letters. Hah. But for once, I'm not doing that. I've met a really great guy, and I don't want to die right now. Everything about him is just amazing. I can't explain it, even if I tried. I want to spend a lot of my life with him, no matter how short it is turning out to be. But that's the thing. I know I'm going to do it next year. Probably during the winter. That way, I can wait at least half way through the year. Something might change my mind. I know this guy has changed my mind a bit. I'm really easily molded, I think. No one knows about this, and it's exciting. I can't help but wonder what people will think once I'm gone? Will they miss me? Will they be relieved? I'm such a happy person. Always happy. Always singing, always smiling, always laughing, but my mind is so different. I hate myself. My confidence is lower than imaginable. I hate everything about myself. I want to waste away, and die a horrible painful death. It's a good sign, though, that I started cutting again. Not my wrists. I only did that a few years ago when I tried to kill myself. No, no, no. I'm back to my hipbones. Beautiful wonderful pain. Plus, it doesn't show, and even if I cut too deep, I'll live. Oh god, I'm losing my mind. I like this. It's so pleasurable thinking of suicide... soo amazing
______________________
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The End.
Current mood: depressed
I don't know what I'm going to do next.
I can't see myself doing anything.
I hate the perputual silence. It gets me every time.
I really need someone. More than I've ever needed anyone. And know one is nearby. Not one soul really cares.
And that's why it's the end.
I hate my life.
I fucking hate it more than amything.
I hate me.
I want to die.
I need to die.
I don't want to be here anymore.
I never thought I'd make it through highschool, and I think I'm pretty sure now.
I feel as though I'm always there for other people, and they never give back.
It's so one sided.
No one cares.
No one cares.
I don't know when, and I don't know how, but I will end.
You won't miss me.
_____________
Thursday, December 20, 2007
-insert cheesy title here-
Current mood: luminous
When the sun is shy, and the clouds are low,
I am the quiet winter snow.
When the ocean is angry, and the rocks are still,
I am the seagull with an empty bill.
When the grass is thirsty, and the weeds are tall,
I am the bird with a long sweet call.
When the flowers are proud, and the rain is heavy,
I am the rhythm; slow and steady.
When the trees are shivering, and the wind is strong,
I am the crickets, chirping my song.
Throughout the night, it's all around.
The music of nature; is what you've found.
_______________
Friday, August 24, 2007
More Words.
It was quiet, and loud at the same time. The clock ticked mockingly as the boy tapped his pencil gently against the paper. With every second, he grew more and more annoyed with the steadiness of the clock. Each tick was inevitable, and the clock wasn't afraid to keep ticking. Like a heart. he thought. Shortly after the thought, he shifted his mind to the sound of the ocean below his balcony, and the crying seagulls searching for food in the cold morning. It's too early. It's far to early. His thoughts rang on, like an echo through the empty canyon that was his mind. I bet the seagulls are even having trouble getting their work done.
In his mind, he sat back in his hard, sturdy chair. In his mind he closed his eyes and let the peacefulness of completion wash over him. In reality, however, he sat hunched over a piece of paper with a few words scribbled across it. Is it too early, or too late? It seemed as though every thought he didn't want to have crossed through his mind. The obnoxious clock's shorter hand stretched out to the five, and the longer hand at the thirty. The boy seemed uninterested in the time, and continued tapping his pencil against the paper. Outside his window and to the front end of the house, a road stretched out. A few houses connected themselves to the road, but not many. The soft hum of a car traveled through the boy's window, and into his ears. He let the pencil fall to the desk as he got up out of his chair. Through the door, he ran and finally to the room across the hall from his own. The room was currently empty, except for a bed with and a rather large dresser. He ran to the window, and moved aside the curtain to the street below. As he expected, a black shiny car pulled into the long driveway below. He groaned out at the sight of his father stepping out of the car. The boy watched as his father opened the door to the back seat and quickly pull out a girl who looked his age. The boy took a deep breath and began moving back into his own room where he ought to keep writing.
He's up all night kidnaping girls, and I'm up all night writing a damn paper for English. he smiled as soon as he sat down on the chair in front of his desk.
_______________________
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Yes, Please
Current mood: hopeful
I'm sorry I didn't call you back. That night, when I said I had back pains, it was true and as soon as I got off the phone with you the pain increased. I hunched over and screamed a bit in agony. I couldn't move. Before long, I noticed my shirt was starting to constrict around my lungs like something was pulling the shirt from behind. So then, I was having trouble breathing and the searing pain increased still in my back. With a force not my own, I pulled the shirt off and over my head as I gasped for air. I sat in my same hunched over position with tears streaming out my eyes ,creating puddles on my bed. As soon as it began, it was over. The pain I had endured had suddenly ended. I carefully got up and off my bed. I tiptoed to the bathroom as if I was trying to sneak around the horrid pain monster. I found my eyes in the mirror. They opened wide with the conclusion they found on my back; wings. They were great white feathery wings that protruded out of my shoulder blades. Towards the skin, a red sticky liquid stained the snow white feathers of the wings. My wings.
I'm sorry friend, I didn't call you back. As a human would I ran outside, careful to keep my wings stretched out and over my side so I wouldn't break the treasures in my path. Like a bird I stretched my wings out . They glittered at me in a silent tempting way. Cursing my patience, I took off. I flew into the blue sky which was powdered with clouds. I broke into a smile as I soared through the beautiful sky; leaving the house behind. I flew and flew for what seemed like hours until I found myself at a small house in a quiet neighbourhood.
I'm sorry I didn't call you back, but I found you're house instead. You wouldn't believe what happened if I told you. Some things, you just have to see to believe.
____________
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
:)
The moon shone brightly in the night sky as its light streaked into the forest in blades of silver. Pools of the bright light surrounded me as I leaned against a large rock. The forest was beautifully calm. The trees that surrounded me bent gently in the soft breeze. I was alone for the first time in my sixteen years of life. I breathed in deeply. I had never been in the forest before, and It smelled amazingly sweet. It smelled like how things used to be, before it all changed. I can still remember the look on my mother's face. Fear, sadness, and regret. Never anger. My clenched fist slowly unfurled as I realized this. Never anger.
Using the rock next to me, I dragged myself up. There was no possible way they were coming now that night had fallen. I smiled to myself. I was finally free. My pale legs began picking up speed, as I ran away from where I once was. The further away from where I came, the better. My white dress waved gently with my movements. The soft cotton material gently caressing my bare legs. I felt my heart beat gently in my chest. Very suddenly, I felt something sharp stab into my lower back. My running ceased and I hit the ground. My skin stung and I felt liquid dribble out of me. The crunching of leaves erupted somewhere near behind me. I was no longer alone. My fear escalated when the man's legs appeared in front of my head. On his boots, his symbol bore into my mind. The peace I felt earlier evaporated and I began shaking uncontrollably. His hands clasped around my small shoulders as he drew me up. My eyes remained fixated upon the symbol on his boots.
Dawn is fast approaching. I recommend you cooperate with me, and let me led you to safety. my eyes rose up to meet his which held a curious expression. I was slightly relieved by the kindness in his voice, but an element about him still made me nervous. He knew what I was.
If you're caught, he breathed, it'll be the end for us both. I'm here to help you. he sensed my fear. This was bad. I considered my options. I nodded my head. Death wasn't the worst of my fears.
Sorry about the gun dear. I'm Peter.
I'm Megan.
He hid his smile and nodded his head. His large hand clasped carefully around both of mine before he dragged me deeper into the forest.
__________
Monday, June 04, 2007
Inertia
Wonderland.
I'm pushing all the stupid irrelevant thoughts out of my mind. They don't belong. I don't belong. In Wonderland, there are trees whose leaves are words. And with each breeze, the words become mine. I can't use them. I don't know how. This isn't a happy place. I try to scream, but the wind strangles me and I'm forced to stop. My favourite things become my enemies. I'm surrounded by ghosts as well. They are candles lit with fire. The excess feelings they don't want collect on a plate at their feet. I'm left motionless in the puddle of their wax. They don't remember the things I've told them. They don't remember the things we've experienced together. Now I have to carry their burden wherever I go, even though they aren't my secrets.
Everything is a numbing blur. I don't know how to get out of Wonderland. I've been on this pedestal for as long as I can remember. A simple bump can bring me down, but why isn't it happening? Why am I forced to remain in my own land, when no one in here even wants me here? My thoughts are betraying me, and I'm even more alone than ever. Everything keeps building. I hear the pounding of their angry fists upon my door. I won't let them in, and I won't let them out, but won't can't last forever can it? There's more pressure on the outside of this land, and I can no longer exert what I used to. Everything is being sucked into this vacuum called Wonderland. And I can't get out.
_____________________
Friday, March 23, 2007
evening brings
But it isn't you, it's me.
I'm sorry I'm not old enough. I don't think I ever will be. I will still be stuck in my two coloured mind until the day I die. I expect too much from people and it's not fair. The truth hurts, even me. I was so ready to let people in. To let myself feel comfortable, but I need to grow up. Is that what hurts the most? Or is it just the last word that brought me down? I'm not sure. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not the person I thought. I'm sorry I'm not the person you thought. I'm sorry I'm not the person she thought. I'm sorry I'm not like a person at all. I really wish that I was like a real person. I might not ever grow up, and maybe that's bad. But maybe, that's a good thing. I think I'll always be able to judge people and know when I can't take it anymore. Maybe, this is why I've never grown up? Maybe it's because everyone shot me down and I've had no choice. Or maybe, this is me growing up. Maybe, since I have gone through this, and learned that my mother is perhaps the greatest person in existence.
Did you know that about my mother? Probably not, but she is. She knows when to ask questions and she knows when I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to talk about it. That's pretty important when it comes to people. My mother told me that it's okay I'm not grown up. She says that I'm fifteen and I have an entire life to grow up. Hmm. I guess I don't want to grow up. If I grow up, then what? Will I let myself break? Will I ignore all the flashing signs and all the blinking lights? No. I can't let myself do something unnatural. I think I'm going to just live. I'm going to hold my own hand and pack my mother on my back. I'm going to grow up in a real way. A real way to me. I'm going to fear, hell yeah, and I'm going to cry. I'm not going to let myself get hurt, and I won't lose the pieces that flake off when I let go of reality. My mother will be on my back, and she'll show me the way.
I'm sorry.
It really isn't you at all.
I'm not going to grow up, I'm going to be afraid and I'm going to be cautious.
I don't care what your friends think or what your mother thinks or even what you think.
I'm just going to live and leave when it feels right.
Hate me.
I dare you.
At least I'll be me.
To see the end sail to you.
To see it gather speed, and momentum, and even the taunting mirror that it is.
And if I could, I would let myself drop to the ground.
I'd let it overwhelm my entire being, and go with it wherever it might go.
But there's something else, now.
Something that caused me to build a great wall of Norma.
And sometimes it hurts, to see what I must do, but other times it's so thrilling.
I am going to become something.
I am going to be someone.
I am absolutely sure of it.
No doubt is resting in my mind.
Hobey, ho.
_____
Sunday, May 11, 2008
I just realized that
Current mood: cold
I don't really matter.
I'm certain I do, in some kind of way, but it's never the way I want to matter. I can't help but feel this strange overwhelming loneliness. I'm not sure how this summer is going to go... I'll be stuck at my house the whole time, and loneliness will surely envelope me. Even worse than I feel it now. Maybe I'll stay with my mom? At least I have a few friends nearby, and I could hang out with them.
I really don't know.
I think I am thinking too much.
Just for once, I want to feel important to someone. Truly important.
I'll always just be a temp. Just until someone better comes along.
I'm sorry.
_________
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
And breathe.
Now I hesitate, a cool weight has rested in my stomach. I clasp my hand around my wrist, and remember the feeling from before. My veins swell, and I cry. But not for the pain.
That pain isn't as sudden as the first time I've felt it.
It's now only a dull throbbing, announcing itself to every inch of my being.
My breathing is choking in my throat. I cough, but nothing is dislodging the memory. I'm light headed as I dance through the flowers. Their soft petals brush against my skirt, reminding me finally of the release.
And so I let go.
Apprehensive at first, but I quickly grow more confident as I watch the ribbon fall from around my neck.
It hits the ground in a quiet thud, heavier than I had known.
And now it's gone, and I am free.
Breathe.
_________
Saturday, April 19, 2008
I wouldn't know anything else besides the feeling of both my feet planted flimsly on the ground below me.
And that's when it begins to hurt.
Realising that, in fact, the earth I happen to be on is not really there. That every rock and stone. That every - being and every blade of grass in a lawn full of duplicates, it isn't mine. It'll never be mine. I carry on in a blur so blurry, that the world is nothing more than a smear of paint across a canvas. And though I sigh deeply at the connotation that this dark blue smear has announced, I am in fact proud of this place.
One cannot stand forever, especially when this place is lacking everything essential for a human being to live in.
No, I won't be standing forever. When I hit the ground, (a known effect to the cause of falling) my body will emit such silence, that not one life will hear nor feel the end of me.
So now I ask... if I canvas falls in a gallery, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
________
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Unsure.
I hate feeling like my thoughts mean nothing. That my words, don't really matter. I've never questioned the way I felt or acted. I've never even thought about how to act.
And now, I sit here and scrutinize everything I am thinking and saying. Everything I'm doing, shouldn't be done because it isn't meant to be done. But what if this is really how I feel? What if... this isn't just a way to describe how I am?
This is how I was meant to be.
I guess. If you don't like the way I think I should be, I'm sorry. It isn't that I'm crazy or anything. That isn't me at all. This is just natural to me. Honestly, I don't think I could feel anything else.
The end.
gjshtiuerstgjk
Just let me act how I'm acting. Let me think like I am thinking.
I don't want to be anything else.
__________
Friday, April 18, 2008
Morning.
She's sitting in the dark, but she can't tell what time it is. She remembers when there was light still streaming between the clouds, and she remembers feeling the light slide out from around her. It's been hours since she's moved, but she isn't aware of the aching in her limbs. She stares straight ahead, almost seemingly dead, except for the occasional blinking of her eyes. The world seems to move around her, even in the cool darkness. She's aware, however, that she isn't apart of it. The sun is beginning to peak over the horizon, illuminating the world in an orange glow. Morning has come, officially ending the darkness that the night had brought. A single tear falls from her face. Morning has taken away the night, and with one last breath from the girl herself, the morning has taken her too.
_______
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Sweetness.
I'm suicidal. I have my suicide all planned out. I know how I will do it, relatively when I'm going to do it. Everything is planned out. It's weird though, because usually I dwell on things about my suicide. I've made several lists, and I've written letters. Hah. But for once, I'm not doing that. I've met a really great guy, and I don't want to die right now. Everything about him is just amazing. I can't explain it, even if I tried. I want to spend a lot of my life with him, no matter how short it is turning out to be. But that's the thing. I know I'm going to do it next year. Probably during the winter. That way, I can wait at least half way through the year. Something might change my mind. I know this guy has changed my mind a bit. I'm really easily molded, I think. No one knows about this, and it's exciting. I can't help but wonder what people will think once I'm gone? Will they miss me? Will they be relieved? I'm such a happy person. Always happy. Always singing, always smiling, always laughing, but my mind is so different. I hate myself. My confidence is lower than imaginable. I hate everything about myself. I want to waste away, and die a horrible painful death. It's a good sign, though, that I started cutting again. Not my wrists. I only did that a few years ago when I tried to kill myself. No, no, no. I'm back to my hipbones. Beautiful wonderful pain. Plus, it doesn't show, and even if I cut too deep, I'll live. Oh god, I'm losing my mind. I like this. It's so pleasurable thinking of suicide... soo amazing
______________________
Thursday, January 24, 2008
The End.
Current mood: depressed
I don't know what I'm going to do next.
I can't see myself doing anything.
I hate the perputual silence. It gets me every time.
I really need someone. More than I've ever needed anyone. And know one is nearby. Not one soul really cares.
And that's why it's the end.
I hate my life.
I fucking hate it more than amything.
I hate me.
I want to die.
I need to die.
I don't want to be here anymore.
I never thought I'd make it through highschool, and I think I'm pretty sure now.
I feel as though I'm always there for other people, and they never give back.
It's so one sided.
No one cares.
No one cares.
I don't know when, and I don't know how, but I will end.
You won't miss me.
_____________
Thursday, December 20, 2007
-insert cheesy title here-
Current mood: luminous
When the sun is shy, and the clouds are low,
I am the quiet winter snow.
When the ocean is angry, and the rocks are still,
I am the seagull with an empty bill.
When the grass is thirsty, and the weeds are tall,
I am the bird with a long sweet call.
When the flowers are proud, and the rain is heavy,
I am the rhythm; slow and steady.
When the trees are shivering, and the wind is strong,
I am the crickets, chirping my song.
Throughout the night, it's all around.
The music of nature; is what you've found.
_______________
Friday, August 24, 2007
More Words.
It was quiet, and loud at the same time. The clock ticked mockingly as the boy tapped his pencil gently against the paper. With every second, he grew more and more annoyed with the steadiness of the clock. Each tick was inevitable, and the clock wasn't afraid to keep ticking. Like a heart. he thought. Shortly after the thought, he shifted his mind to the sound of the ocean below his balcony, and the crying seagulls searching for food in the cold morning. It's too early. It's far to early. His thoughts rang on, like an echo through the empty canyon that was his mind. I bet the seagulls are even having trouble getting their work done.
In his mind, he sat back in his hard, sturdy chair. In his mind he closed his eyes and let the peacefulness of completion wash over him. In reality, however, he sat hunched over a piece of paper with a few words scribbled across it. Is it too early, or too late? It seemed as though every thought he didn't want to have crossed through his mind. The obnoxious clock's shorter hand stretched out to the five, and the longer hand at the thirty. The boy seemed uninterested in the time, and continued tapping his pencil against the paper. Outside his window and to the front end of the house, a road stretched out. A few houses connected themselves to the road, but not many. The soft hum of a car traveled through the boy's window, and into his ears. He let the pencil fall to the desk as he got up out of his chair. Through the door, he ran and finally to the room across the hall from his own. The room was currently empty, except for a bed with and a rather large dresser. He ran to the window, and moved aside the curtain to the street below. As he expected, a black shiny car pulled into the long driveway below. He groaned out at the sight of his father stepping out of the car. The boy watched as his father opened the door to the back seat and quickly pull out a girl who looked his age. The boy took a deep breath and began moving back into his own room where he ought to keep writing.
He's up all night kidnaping girls, and I'm up all night writing a damn paper for English. he smiled as soon as he sat down on the chair in front of his desk.
_______________________
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Yes, Please
Current mood: hopeful
I'm sorry I didn't call you back. That night, when I said I had back pains, it was true and as soon as I got off the phone with you the pain increased. I hunched over and screamed a bit in agony. I couldn't move. Before long, I noticed my shirt was starting to constrict around my lungs like something was pulling the shirt from behind. So then, I was having trouble breathing and the searing pain increased still in my back. With a force not my own, I pulled the shirt off and over my head as I gasped for air. I sat in my same hunched over position with tears streaming out my eyes ,creating puddles on my bed. As soon as it began, it was over. The pain I had endured had suddenly ended. I carefully got up and off my bed. I tiptoed to the bathroom as if I was trying to sneak around the horrid pain monster. I found my eyes in the mirror. They opened wide with the conclusion they found on my back; wings. They were great white feathery wings that protruded out of my shoulder blades. Towards the skin, a red sticky liquid stained the snow white feathers of the wings. My wings.
I'm sorry friend, I didn't call you back. As a human would I ran outside, careful to keep my wings stretched out and over my side so I wouldn't break the treasures in my path. Like a bird I stretched my wings out . They glittered at me in a silent tempting way. Cursing my patience, I took off. I flew into the blue sky which was powdered with clouds. I broke into a smile as I soared through the beautiful sky; leaving the house behind. I flew and flew for what seemed like hours until I found myself at a small house in a quiet neighbourhood.
I'm sorry I didn't call you back, but I found you're house instead. You wouldn't believe what happened if I told you. Some things, you just have to see to believe.
____________
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
:)
The moon shone brightly in the night sky as its light streaked into the forest in blades of silver. Pools of the bright light surrounded me as I leaned against a large rock. The forest was beautifully calm. The trees that surrounded me bent gently in the soft breeze. I was alone for the first time in my sixteen years of life. I breathed in deeply. I had never been in the forest before, and It smelled amazingly sweet. It smelled like how things used to be, before it all changed. I can still remember the look on my mother's face. Fear, sadness, and regret. Never anger. My clenched fist slowly unfurled as I realized this. Never anger.
Using the rock next to me, I dragged myself up. There was no possible way they were coming now that night had fallen. I smiled to myself. I was finally free. My pale legs began picking up speed, as I ran away from where I once was. The further away from where I came, the better. My white dress waved gently with my movements. The soft cotton material gently caressing my bare legs. I felt my heart beat gently in my chest. Very suddenly, I felt something sharp stab into my lower back. My running ceased and I hit the ground. My skin stung and I felt liquid dribble out of me. The crunching of leaves erupted somewhere near behind me. I was no longer alone. My fear escalated when the man's legs appeared in front of my head. On his boots, his symbol bore into my mind. The peace I felt earlier evaporated and I began shaking uncontrollably. His hands clasped around my small shoulders as he drew me up. My eyes remained fixated upon the symbol on his boots.
Dawn is fast approaching. I recommend you cooperate with me, and let me led you to safety. my eyes rose up to meet his which held a curious expression. I was slightly relieved by the kindness in his voice, but an element about him still made me nervous. He knew what I was.
If you're caught, he breathed, it'll be the end for us both. I'm here to help you. he sensed my fear. This was bad. I considered my options. I nodded my head. Death wasn't the worst of my fears.
Sorry about the gun dear. I'm Peter.
I'm Megan.
He hid his smile and nodded his head. His large hand clasped carefully around both of mine before he dragged me deeper into the forest.
__________
Monday, June 04, 2007
Inertia
Wonderland.
I'm pushing all the stupid irrelevant thoughts out of my mind. They don't belong. I don't belong. In Wonderland, there are trees whose leaves are words. And with each breeze, the words become mine. I can't use them. I don't know how. This isn't a happy place. I try to scream, but the wind strangles me and I'm forced to stop. My favourite things become my enemies. I'm surrounded by ghosts as well. They are candles lit with fire. The excess feelings they don't want collect on a plate at their feet. I'm left motionless in the puddle of their wax. They don't remember the things I've told them. They don't remember the things we've experienced together. Now I have to carry their burden wherever I go, even though they aren't my secrets.
Everything is a numbing blur. I don't know how to get out of Wonderland. I've been on this pedestal for as long as I can remember. A simple bump can bring me down, but why isn't it happening? Why am I forced to remain in my own land, when no one in here even wants me here? My thoughts are betraying me, and I'm even more alone than ever. Everything keeps building. I hear the pounding of their angry fists upon my door. I won't let them in, and I won't let them out, but won't can't last forever can it? There's more pressure on the outside of this land, and I can no longer exert what I used to. Everything is being sucked into this vacuum called Wonderland. And I can't get out.
_____________________
Friday, March 23, 2007
evening brings
But it isn't you, it's me.
I'm sorry I'm not old enough. I don't think I ever will be. I will still be stuck in my two coloured mind until the day I die. I expect too much from people and it's not fair. The truth hurts, even me. I was so ready to let people in. To let myself feel comfortable, but I need to grow up. Is that what hurts the most? Or is it just the last word that brought me down? I'm not sure. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not the person I thought. I'm sorry I'm not the person you thought. I'm sorry I'm not the person she thought. I'm sorry I'm not like a person at all. I really wish that I was like a real person. I might not ever grow up, and maybe that's bad. But maybe, that's a good thing. I think I'll always be able to judge people and know when I can't take it anymore. Maybe, this is why I've never grown up? Maybe it's because everyone shot me down and I've had no choice. Or maybe, this is me growing up. Maybe, since I have gone through this, and learned that my mother is perhaps the greatest person in existence.
Did you know that about my mother? Probably not, but she is. She knows when to ask questions and she knows when I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to talk about it. That's pretty important when it comes to people. My mother told me that it's okay I'm not grown up. She says that I'm fifteen and I have an entire life to grow up. Hmm. I guess I don't want to grow up. If I grow up, then what? Will I let myself break? Will I ignore all the flashing signs and all the blinking lights? No. I can't let myself do something unnatural. I think I'm going to just live. I'm going to hold my own hand and pack my mother on my back. I'm going to grow up in a real way. A real way to me. I'm going to fear, hell yeah, and I'm going to cry. I'm not going to let myself get hurt, and I won't lose the pieces that flake off when I let go of reality. My mother will be on my back, and she'll show me the way.
I'm sorry.
It really isn't you at all.
I'm not going to grow up, I'm going to be afraid and I'm going to be cautious.
I don't care what your friends think or what your mother thinks or even what you think.
I'm just going to live and leave when it feels right.
Hate me.
I dare you.
At least I'll be me.
Faith to Dark
The sun was low on the horizon. Darkness began to finally settle in, and the day was ending. All around me, I heard the soft sound of nighttime. In the trees, it sifted through the leaves, then flowed through the blades of grass, and over the roof where it seeped underneath the shingles, that shadowed through the remaining sunlight. The impending nighttime almost seemed louder than the not so soft yelling behind me. Slowly, I rocked my body back and forth on the porch swing with my back pressed gently against the rotting wood. I leaned forward and looked up at the sky above the porch. The stars gazed down at me comfortingly. I continued staring, absorbing their comfort. Behind me, the yelling was bone shattering, and I heard a series of startling smashing sounds. As a result, the yelling grew even louder. I clamped my small seven year old hands over my ears, and cried. “Please God,” I said in between gasps, “please make them stop.” Throughout the night, the yelling continued. Being too afraid to go back inside, I cried myself to sleep on the swing. The gentle rock of it calmed me, as did the darkness that had finally taken over everything in sight.
The next morning, I was woken up by my brother. He gently shook my shoulder until my eyes finally opened. “Did you sleep out here?” he asked. Concern dripping from the corners of his mouth. I nodded sleepily. My body was aching from the swing. I hadn’t realized until then how uncomfortable that swing truly was. “I didn’t mean to.” I yawned. He smiled painfully at me before taking my hand in his. “C’mon. Let’s eat something.” I hopped out of the swing, and was led to the sliding glass door. Upon entering the house, I gasped. Broken plates lay forgotten on the tiled floor stretching from the dining room to the kitchen. The brightness from the sun peaked through the curtains, creating blades of light on the mess. Carefully, I walked around the glass and into the kitchen, where I poured myself a bowl of cereal. “Where are they?” I asked after sitting down on the couch with the bowl in my lap. “They left last night. It’s okay.” He smiled up at me, but I could tell it was only a facade. Tears began to form in my eyes, but I forced them back, afraid to look weak in front of my brother. Instead, I stared down at my bowl. “Please God. Please make everything okay.” I thought as a single tear rolled down my check. “Please.”
A week later, the yelling broke out again. I was in my room, trying to sleep in my bed when it happened. She had just gotten home, and was clearly in a bad mood. The warm, dark amber colored liquid, I knew, wasn’t helping her mood much either. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying as hard as I could to ignore the imminent battle between voices. It was useless. After grabbing a flash light from beneath my bed, and then draping a blanket over my head, I played with my dolls. Making up quiet lives for the inanimate objects, was something I was not only fond of, but particularly good at it. This time, my favorite doll, Annette, had just bought a puppy. The problem was, it kept jumping around when Lisa came for a visit, so Annette had to visit Eric, the dog trainer. Unfortunately, the profanities were able to break through my thoughts, even though I tried hard to ignore them. “Well I like you, too.” I made Annette say happily, even though a painful lump formed in my throat. A slam finally erupted outside my door, followed by a scream so sharp, my ears rang. The force rattled my window - startling me. I screamed silently, and got out of my bed. After pulling socks on my feet, I slammed them into my shoes. With the flashlight still in my hand, I climbed out of my window and into the night.
I ran across the street where a small stretch of land held no homes, but instead trees and bushes that are normally found throughout the desert. I looked back at my own home. Shadowy figures danced angrily through the windows; their arms moving animatedly in the soft yellow glow that illuminated the room. The shorter figure picked up the lamp, and chucked it at the other figure. Darkness filled the front room of the house, making the figures disappear. I looked up at the blank sky. I no longer found comfort in the stars that only looked down patronizingly. “Why?” I shouted. “Why aren’t you helping me, God? Why?” My voice echoed through the night, only filling me with more sadness. “Where are you God? You’re supposed to be here You’re supposed to protect me, and love me, and make me feel like everything is okay But you aren’t You just sit up there like a lazy mean person, not caring that I’m hurt and scared.” I felt my face grow red with my anger. Tears stung my eyes, and dripped down steadily onto my shoulders. I rolled over on my side, and hid myself in the dark foliage. A door opened in my home across the street. Angry voices spilled out, as did a figure, who angrily walked to the car, and drove away; not noticing me across the street. A few minutes later, the other figure staggered out to the other car, and also drove away. The dirt below me became muddy with my tears. I took several deep breaths before making my way back into my home.
It seemed as though every Friday night, a fight occurred where I lived. Three years later, however, papers were signed, and a divorce was made. I remember feeling happy about the stability I figured was to come. And it did. It was rough for the first year, and then, there was nothing. I was still angry with God, but also with myself. I always looked to the sky for help. I always looked to God to save me. I thought only he controlled my life, and that he could take away all the pain that had seemed to settle into my bones. I’ve tried to go back to believing in God. The one who I believed loved me, and the one I faithfully turned to when I needed help, but I can’t help to feel that he isn’t there. The thing I realized, though, was that some things can’t be fixed by an outside force. Things like fighting are only resolved by the humans wanting them resolved. It’s unfortunate, though, because now whenever I look to the sky, I find emptiness and darkness. It’s the darkness that usually seems to consume us all.
The sun was low on the horizon. Darkness began to finally settle in, and the day was ending. All around me, I heard the soft sound of nighttime. In the trees, it sifted through the leaves, then flowed through the blades of grass, and over the roof where it seeped underneath the shingles, that shadowed through the remaining sunlight. The impending nighttime almost seemed louder than the not so soft yelling behind me. Slowly, I rocked my body back and forth on the porch swing with my back pressed gently against the rotting wood. I leaned forward and looked up at the sky above the porch. The stars gazed down at me comfortingly. I continued staring, absorbing their comfort. Behind me, the yelling was bone shattering, and I heard a series of startling smashing sounds. As a result, the yelling grew even louder. I clamped my small seven year old hands over my ears, and cried. “Please God,” I said in between gasps, “please make them stop.” Throughout the night, the yelling continued. Being too afraid to go back inside, I cried myself to sleep on the swing. The gentle rock of it calmed me, as did the darkness that had finally taken over everything in sight.
The next morning, I was woken up by my brother. He gently shook my shoulder until my eyes finally opened. “Did you sleep out here?” he asked. Concern dripping from the corners of his mouth. I nodded sleepily. My body was aching from the swing. I hadn’t realized until then how uncomfortable that swing truly was. “I didn’t mean to.” I yawned. He smiled painfully at me before taking my hand in his. “C’mon. Let’s eat something.” I hopped out of the swing, and was led to the sliding glass door. Upon entering the house, I gasped. Broken plates lay forgotten on the tiled floor stretching from the dining room to the kitchen. The brightness from the sun peaked through the curtains, creating blades of light on the mess. Carefully, I walked around the glass and into the kitchen, where I poured myself a bowl of cereal. “Where are they?” I asked after sitting down on the couch with the bowl in my lap. “They left last night. It’s okay.” He smiled up at me, but I could tell it was only a facade. Tears began to form in my eyes, but I forced them back, afraid to look weak in front of my brother. Instead, I stared down at my bowl. “Please God. Please make everything okay.” I thought as a single tear rolled down my check. “Please.”
A week later, the yelling broke out again. I was in my room, trying to sleep in my bed when it happened. She had just gotten home, and was clearly in a bad mood. The warm, dark amber colored liquid, I knew, wasn’t helping her mood much either. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying as hard as I could to ignore the imminent battle between voices. It was useless. After grabbing a flash light from beneath my bed, and then draping a blanket over my head, I played with my dolls. Making up quiet lives for the inanimate objects, was something I was not only fond of, but particularly good at it. This time, my favorite doll, Annette, had just bought a puppy. The problem was, it kept jumping around when Lisa came for a visit, so Annette had to visit Eric, the dog trainer. Unfortunately, the profanities were able to break through my thoughts, even though I tried hard to ignore them. “Well I like you, too.” I made Annette say happily, even though a painful lump formed in my throat. A slam finally erupted outside my door, followed by a scream so sharp, my ears rang. The force rattled my window - startling me. I screamed silently, and got out of my bed. After pulling socks on my feet, I slammed them into my shoes. With the flashlight still in my hand, I climbed out of my window and into the night.
I ran across the street where a small stretch of land held no homes, but instead trees and bushes that are normally found throughout the desert. I looked back at my own home. Shadowy figures danced angrily through the windows; their arms moving animatedly in the soft yellow glow that illuminated the room. The shorter figure picked up the lamp, and chucked it at the other figure. Darkness filled the front room of the house, making the figures disappear. I looked up at the blank sky. I no longer found comfort in the stars that only looked down patronizingly. “Why?” I shouted. “Why aren’t you helping me, God? Why?” My voice echoed through the night, only filling me with more sadness. “Where are you God? You’re supposed to be here You’re supposed to protect me, and love me, and make me feel like everything is okay But you aren’t You just sit up there like a lazy mean person, not caring that I’m hurt and scared.” I felt my face grow red with my anger. Tears stung my eyes, and dripped down steadily onto my shoulders. I rolled over on my side, and hid myself in the dark foliage. A door opened in my home across the street. Angry voices spilled out, as did a figure, who angrily walked to the car, and drove away; not noticing me across the street. A few minutes later, the other figure staggered out to the other car, and also drove away. The dirt below me became muddy with my tears. I took several deep breaths before making my way back into my home.
It seemed as though every Friday night, a fight occurred where I lived. Three years later, however, papers were signed, and a divorce was made. I remember feeling happy about the stability I figured was to come. And it did. It was rough for the first year, and then, there was nothing. I was still angry with God, but also with myself. I always looked to the sky for help. I always looked to God to save me. I thought only he controlled my life, and that he could take away all the pain that had seemed to settle into my bones. I’ve tried to go back to believing in God. The one who I believed loved me, and the one I faithfully turned to when I needed help, but I can’t help to feel that he isn’t there. The thing I realized, though, was that some things can’t be fixed by an outside force. Things like fighting are only resolved by the humans wanting them resolved. It’s unfortunate, though, because now whenever I look to the sky, I find emptiness and darkness. It’s the darkness that usually seems to consume us all.
From outside the window orange, red, yellow, and brown coloured leaves clung onto the trees. A few let go and floated disdainfully down towards the ground, only to be crushed by the car that swiftly drove down the street.
“Oh wow Look at this house It’s so nice and well kept ”
The driver turned the car onto a private road.
A large cobblestone house loomed ahead.
Her eyes swiftly turned to mine to try and catch any expression I had.
She must have been mildly disappointed because there was no amusement in my eyes.
“Isn’t it lovely? ”
My eyes remained fixated on the house before me.
The car followed the road and turned left into a little roundabout in front of the house.
The car came to a stop as I heard Miss. Allen sigh.
The strange petite woman was more nervous that I was.
The driver of the car stepped out of the car and opened Miss. Allen’s door.
Before he could make it around to my door, I opened it.
“I did not expect his house to be so elegant. Did you Raylah?” her eyes instantly flashed towards mine.
My eyes, however remained on the house. If you could even call that a house.
It was as large as the apartment building I used to live in.
“Come on dear, he’s expecting you.”
Her hands grabbed on to my wrist as she led me up the path before the large door.
“Don’t be nervous dear child I’m sure he’ll ADORE you ”
At every word her voice shook with nerves.
“What a lovely door knocky thing It’s such a lovely color ”
Her fingers unwrapped themselves from my wrist and froze in front of the knocker.
“Oh gosh I can’t move my fingers You do it.”
Her eyes glanced back to mine, her fingers still frozen in front of the door.
My fingers reached up and knocked on the door three times.
The name Monroe was etched on the bass of the knocker.
Miss. Allen’s hand reached down to my shoulder comfortingly.
“They’ll love you. I assure you.”
My eyes remained on the little door knocker.
“My, my, MY Kevin said that you would be here at noon, but I knew you would be here sooner I KNEW I said, this is what I told him, I said ‘She’s going to get here before noon ’” The woman who answered the door was a very tall woman. She bent forward a little so she looked a little shorter.
It only made her look like a tall woman bent over.
Out of the corner of my eyes I noticed Miss. Allen looking at her watch.
It was 11:59.
“My dear My dear I’ve never had another female in my house, except for Fe-fe, but you see, she has problems digesting her food so she has a lot of gas. Gassy animals tend to smell.”
In the background I heard a dog whine.
Her eyes looked into mine expectantly.
“Mrs. Monroe, my name is Emma Allen. I am Raylah’s FCA” Miss. Allen said with an outstretched hand.
“Oh what a pleasure it is to meet you ” the woman called Mrs. Monroe said. “ I believe I spoke with you on the phone You’re face matches your voice exactly I was always good at that. Matching voices to faces. I told Kevin that I would be able to find Raylah instantly if I could have a few words with her. I told him, this is what I said, I told him ‘if you let me speak with Raylah on the phone, I will be able to know what she looks like.’ Then I told him, I said, I said ‘We could save Miss. Allen the trouble of flying with Raylah and then driving all the way over here from Detroit’ Of course I didn’t know your name at the time so I said something else. I’m not sure what I said then though. I guess dialogue is what really sticks in my mind, although I’m quite certain that was dialogue... silly me.”
The whole while Miss. Allen nodded her head trying desperately to follow the woman called Mrs. Monroe’s words.
“Yes, I do remember you answering the phone when I called your house.”
Mrs .Monroe’s head shook up and down.
We stood around the doorway for a few more minutes; Mrs. Monroe’s face looked to mine and then back at Miss. Allen’s a few times.
It only seemed awkward for us.
“MOM Who’s at the door?” a small boy said as he came into view.
“Oh Henry This is your brand new sister Raylah ”
“Where did you get her?”
“From California.”
“Oh at Disneyland? ”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Oh.” the boy called Henry said obviously disappointed.
“She’s been to Disneyland.” Miss. Allen said gently.
“Oh really So have I I don’t think I saw you there though...”
“Henry’s been to many amusement parks,” Mrs. Monroe started,”There was that Disneyland in Florida he went to, and of course, Cedar Point down in Ohio. There were others, but they don’t really stick out too much... I told Kevin, I said, ‘I want my children to be able to saw that they have been to every amusement park in the word ’ Kevin and Henry and Peter and Shane, however, they got tired and wanted to go home shortly after. Kevin said, he said, ‘Oh Ellen, the kids can’t handle going around the world in one day ’, but I said, this is what I said exactly, I said ‘Well why not?’ well you can’t imagine what he said. He said ‘We’ve already been to Ohio, California, and Florida. It’s 11:00p.m, the kids are tired.’. That night I assure you, the kids were devastated. Oliver mostly because we forgot him at home. He’s 19, you know, so I thought he should have drove himself.”
“Mrs. Monroe, you drove to Florida, Ohio, and California all in one day?”
“Oh heavens no I’m a slow driver. We took the private jet. Kevin is a slow driver also. Oliver, however, oh boy can he drive. He’s gotten a few speeding tickets. Kevin was so angry, but I said, my exact words were, ‘Oliver drives fast. That’s just how he drives.’ Kevin was a little angry at us by then.”
Miss. Allen’s head moved up and down.
It was obvious she was confused.
“Oh Raylah,” Mrs. Monroe began “you’re going to love it here. Henry here is five. Oh, we have Shane who is thirteen, and then there is Peter who is also thirteen, they’re twins, and then there’s Oliver who’s 17. How old are you Raylah?”
“Mrs Monroe, I’d like to have a few words with you before I leave.” Miss. Allen’s voice broke in before I had time to not answer.
“Oh of course Miss Allen. OLIVER OLIVER OLIVEEEEEER Oh dear, I’m not sure where Oliver is right now. He’d be happy to show you to your room. Oliver? Oh well. Henry here will take you to your room.”
The small boy named Henry gave me a toothy smile as he reached out and grabbed my hand.
He started humming a tune; his head bobbing back and forth to the beat.
“I’ve never had a sister. Mommy said she might get me one for my birthday.”Henry sang
His small hands clasped around my wrist made me smile softly to myself.
There are some things you can imagine yourself doing, or being.
I’ve thought up, a hundred times, that I was in New Zealand petting Zebras, but even that seemed more real than what I was experiencing now.
I can’t say I don’t enjoy it.
I can’t say I don’t like it.
It’s just, something I won’t ever be able to understand.
A family.
“Oh wow Look at this house It’s so nice and well kept ”
The driver turned the car onto a private road.
A large cobblestone house loomed ahead.
Her eyes swiftly turned to mine to try and catch any expression I had.
She must have been mildly disappointed because there was no amusement in my eyes.
“Isn’t it lovely? ”
My eyes remained fixated on the house before me.
The car followed the road and turned left into a little roundabout in front of the house.
The car came to a stop as I heard Miss. Allen sigh.
The strange petite woman was more nervous that I was.
The driver of the car stepped out of the car and opened Miss. Allen’s door.
Before he could make it around to my door, I opened it.
“I did not expect his house to be so elegant. Did you Raylah?” her eyes instantly flashed towards mine.
My eyes, however remained on the house. If you could even call that a house.
It was as large as the apartment building I used to live in.
“Come on dear, he’s expecting you.”
Her hands grabbed on to my wrist as she led me up the path before the large door.
“Don’t be nervous dear child I’m sure he’ll ADORE you ”
At every word her voice shook with nerves.
“What a lovely door knocky thing It’s such a lovely color ”
Her fingers unwrapped themselves from my wrist and froze in front of the knocker.
“Oh gosh I can’t move my fingers You do it.”
Her eyes glanced back to mine, her fingers still frozen in front of the door.
My fingers reached up and knocked on the door three times.
The name Monroe was etched on the bass of the knocker.
Miss. Allen’s hand reached down to my shoulder comfortingly.
“They’ll love you. I assure you.”
My eyes remained on the little door knocker.
“My, my, MY Kevin said that you would be here at noon, but I knew you would be here sooner I KNEW I said, this is what I told him, I said ‘She’s going to get here before noon ’” The woman who answered the door was a very tall woman. She bent forward a little so she looked a little shorter.
It only made her look like a tall woman bent over.
Out of the corner of my eyes I noticed Miss. Allen looking at her watch.
It was 11:59.
“My dear My dear I’ve never had another female in my house, except for Fe-fe, but you see, she has problems digesting her food so she has a lot of gas. Gassy animals tend to smell.”
In the background I heard a dog whine.
Her eyes looked into mine expectantly.
“Mrs. Monroe, my name is Emma Allen. I am Raylah’s FCA” Miss. Allen said with an outstretched hand.
“Oh what a pleasure it is to meet you ” the woman called Mrs. Monroe said. “ I believe I spoke with you on the phone You’re face matches your voice exactly I was always good at that. Matching voices to faces. I told Kevin that I would be able to find Raylah instantly if I could have a few words with her. I told him, this is what I said, I told him ‘if you let me speak with Raylah on the phone, I will be able to know what she looks like.’ Then I told him, I said, I said ‘We could save Miss. Allen the trouble of flying with Raylah and then driving all the way over here from Detroit’ Of course I didn’t know your name at the time so I said something else. I’m not sure what I said then though. I guess dialogue is what really sticks in my mind, although I’m quite certain that was dialogue... silly me.”
The whole while Miss. Allen nodded her head trying desperately to follow the woman called Mrs. Monroe’s words.
“Yes, I do remember you answering the phone when I called your house.”
Mrs .Monroe’s head shook up and down.
We stood around the doorway for a few more minutes; Mrs. Monroe’s face looked to mine and then back at Miss. Allen’s a few times.
It only seemed awkward for us.
“MOM Who’s at the door?” a small boy said as he came into view.
“Oh Henry This is your brand new sister Raylah ”
“Where did you get her?”
“From California.”
“Oh at Disneyland? ”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Oh.” the boy called Henry said obviously disappointed.
“She’s been to Disneyland.” Miss. Allen said gently.
“Oh really So have I I don’t think I saw you there though...”
“Henry’s been to many amusement parks,” Mrs. Monroe started,”There was that Disneyland in Florida he went to, and of course, Cedar Point down in Ohio. There were others, but they don’t really stick out too much... I told Kevin, I said, ‘I want my children to be able to saw that they have been to every amusement park in the word ’ Kevin and Henry and Peter and Shane, however, they got tired and wanted to go home shortly after. Kevin said, he said, ‘Oh Ellen, the kids can’t handle going around the world in one day ’, but I said, this is what I said exactly, I said ‘Well why not?’ well you can’t imagine what he said. He said ‘We’ve already been to Ohio, California, and Florida. It’s 11:00p.m, the kids are tired.’. That night I assure you, the kids were devastated. Oliver mostly because we forgot him at home. He’s 19, you know, so I thought he should have drove himself.”
“Mrs. Monroe, you drove to Florida, Ohio, and California all in one day?”
“Oh heavens no I’m a slow driver. We took the private jet. Kevin is a slow driver also. Oliver, however, oh boy can he drive. He’s gotten a few speeding tickets. Kevin was so angry, but I said, my exact words were, ‘Oliver drives fast. That’s just how he drives.’ Kevin was a little angry at us by then.”
Miss. Allen’s head moved up and down.
It was obvious she was confused.
“Oh Raylah,” Mrs. Monroe began “you’re going to love it here. Henry here is five. Oh, we have Shane who is thirteen, and then there is Peter who is also thirteen, they’re twins, and then there’s Oliver who’s 17. How old are you Raylah?”
“Mrs Monroe, I’d like to have a few words with you before I leave.” Miss. Allen’s voice broke in before I had time to not answer.
“Oh of course Miss Allen. OLIVER OLIVER OLIVEEEEEER Oh dear, I’m not sure where Oliver is right now. He’d be happy to show you to your room. Oliver? Oh well. Henry here will take you to your room.”
The small boy named Henry gave me a toothy smile as he reached out and grabbed my hand.
He started humming a tune; his head bobbing back and forth to the beat.
“I’ve never had a sister. Mommy said she might get me one for my birthday.”Henry sang
His small hands clasped around my wrist made me smile softly to myself.
There are some things you can imagine yourself doing, or being.
I’ve thought up, a hundred times, that I was in New Zealand petting Zebras, but even that seemed more real than what I was experiencing now.
I can’t say I don’t enjoy it.
I can’t say I don’t like it.
It’s just, something I won’t ever be able to understand.
A family.
A tall man could have been seen walking on the sidewalk near the quiet tree that sat next to it. People would have noticed that this man was perhaps the most beautiful man the world has seen. He had black hair that stuck out in different places in different layers that seemed to frame his face while covering his ears in a most flattering way. His eyes were a striking colour blue that seemed too surreal. People could have reported seeing him carrying a small yellow envelope in his hands. They would have told people that he set it down in the middle of the sidewalk and then dusted off his tight blue jeans and plain white t-shirt. The only thing is, no one saw him, and that was exactly his point. The man bent down one final time to straighten out the white ribbon that wrapped the envelope in a graceful manner. After one last pat on the small yellow envelope, the man turned and walked around the corner out of view of the people who did not see him.
The old tree loomed ahead in front of me. My eyes didn’t lock into it, but I felt the shade that radiated off from its branches. The contrast of the dark sky behind it with the gentle breeze sifting through its branches made it almost human. With each little gust, the tree breathed. I sniffled a bit and wiped some of the wetness off my face. “So what” I thought to myself softly “I didn’t even like her”. I thought of all the things I despised about the perfect blonde. “Sure, she was pretty, and my only friend here, but that doesn’t prove anything”. My hopes of cheering myself up weren’t all that great, and I knew it. We had been friends since I moved here. I came to a stop beneath the tree’s branches. A yellow envelope was directly in front of me. I picked my head up and looked around. No one was anywhere in sight. I crouched down over the package as my hand traced over the detail in the soft yellow paper. Carefully, I moved the flimsy white ribbon aside to reveal the name underneath. Evelyn Nance. I froze. Someone must have known I was coming... My head began to throb as I shuddered. I looked around one last time before picking up the envelope. It was very light. I began first walking home, but I broke into a run as soon as I reached the end of the block. My curiosity got the best of me.
My determined feet pounded against the concrete. In my mind, the envelope and its secrets rang through my head. I began to see my house up ahead, and I ran faster still. A car drove by, but I didn’t care to notice who the driver even was. It was only a flash of orange out of the corner of my eyes. I heaved the door open to my home and dashed upstairs to my room, my curiosity was at its greatest. My mind though, continued pounding. I ignored the painful thumps in my head and sat the envelope down on my bed. I sat adjacent to the yellowness on my bed. Slowly, I untied the ribbon around it, still shivering at my name, and put it aside. The thumping in my mind grew still causing me to wince a little. Without a beat I tore the paper at the top. A folded note sat in the envelope, its presence held a formidable air. Upon reading it, my whole body shook. I screamed in agony and threw the words across my room before curling into ball. Tears now stormed out of my eyes in steady currents. I cried because of the pain, I cried because of the party, and I cried because of the things I couldn’t remember.
Good evening Evey. I know you don’t
Remember me, but I have missed you.
I woke up without feeling rested at all. I wanted more than anything to just go back to sleep, but I felt the need to go to school. My head pounded painfully. ‘Damn. I didn’t even drink and I feel hungover.’ My eyes were almost glued together from the eye makeup that was still caked on. I glanced over at the clock on my nightstand. 6:04 am. I groaned to myself and got out of my bed, eyeing the note and yellow paper sprawled out on my floor. I shook my head nervously and trudged over to the bathroom. I was hideous. My eye makeup had smeared all over my cheek, and my hair was a matted knotty mess. I used makeup remover to get my makeup off of my face before I started my shower. I peeled the clothes off of me, which smelled of cigarettes, sweat and beer. Not a nice combination. I stepped into the shower, letting the cool drops soothe my skin. After my shower I toweled off and stood in front of the mirror. My eyes were still red from the night before as were my cheeks which were still flushed with exertion. I sighed and continued getting dressed. I got dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and a vintage red rugby shirt. I parted my long brown hair off to the side and combed my side bangs over. I had to brush it before it dryed, for it was unruly and curly. I put on a little makeup, and grabbed my black hoodie and backpack before I left my room. I skipped downstairs, afraid I would be late to school. I hate Mondays. My mother was at the kitchen table staring out the window. My father disappeared three years ago. The police and community searched for his body for months before they gave up. Detectives couldn’t find any evidence as to what may have happened, so we gave up on finding him too. We figured he left for a reason, and that he didn’t want to be found. She moved on, dating around. None of them stayed, mostly because of me.
“Do you ever think I’ll find the love I shared with your father?” she sighed before taking a sip of her tea in front of her.
“I think you will, but it’ll be a different love.” I smiled gently as I said this, stealing a sip.
She smiled up at me while batting my hands away.
“Hopefully he won’t be addicted to tea.”
I laughed before hugging her.“Bye mom ”
The cool thing about my mom was that she was able to move on easily after breakups, and usually a new guy appeared within a week. They’d meet at the store or somewhere and I knew this wasn’t any different. I smiled as I climbed into my car. I loved my car more than anything. It was an old purple mustang that took forever to start, but it was the first big thing I bought with my own money. School wasn’t too far from where I lived, but I loved driving it there. Usually, when I drive, I find it relaxing. My mind wandered to the letter. ‘Who wrote it?’ I asked myself as I turned my car into the parking lot. Unfortunately, I forgot what happened the night before until just now. ‘I shouldn’t have gotten up...’ I parked my car in my parking spot and looked around, happy to see that no one was on campus yet. Just as I got out of my car, a silver corolla drove into the parking space next to mine. I froze upon realizing who was in the car. Keri. I walked fast towards the school. She hurriedly got out of her own car.
“Evey Wait up Evey ”
I continued walking faster. Her high heels clicked loudly on the pavement.
“Oh come on Evey, let’s have a little chat about last night Let’s talk about Trey ”
Just as I rounded the corner, another frightening face blocked my path. Stacy.
“Morning best friend Evey ”
I swiftly turned around, only to see Keri behind me. Slowly I turned around to face Stacy. Her blonde hair framed her blue eyes which were filled with anger. I was defeated.
“So Evey, what did you do Sunday?” she said sheepishly
“Stacy” I said calmly, “it wasn’t what it looked like.”
“You fucking liar I’m not blind Evey ”
“Stacy, we weren’t doing anything we were just- .”
“Just what? What were you doing? Did you want to make sure he didn’t have testicular cancer?”
“Stacy. You knew I liked him.” my voice began to falter as I tried to hold back my tears.
“Oh that explains why you were on MY bed fucking MY boyfriend ”
“We weren’t having sex. We weren’t even close to doing... any...” my voice trailed off as I noticed a few familiar faces around us.
Before long, a small crowd began to for. People locked their eyes on us. I felt my throat lock in anticipation and I began feeling nauseous. Stacy searched my eyes for the fear that I finally couldn’t hide anymore. Her hand had closed into a fist. Her ring sparkled on her middle finger. Again, she smiled sheepishly and the inevitable happened. Her fist slammed into my face. I fell to the ground. Hot tears spilled out of my eyes betraying my bravery as blood dripped out onto the concrete. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she had a smile plastered on it. She usually did when she one a fight.
“Slut.” she finally said before I heard the receding clicks of her’s and Keri’s heels.
The surrounding crowd began to follow suit, and called me a slut as I lay face down on the concrete. My face was surely red from the humiliation. Slowly, I saw the feet around me get fewer and fewer until I was the only one left on the pavement. I picked up my belongings and walked back to my car. I wouldn’t be at school today.
I drove around aimlessly until I found myself in a parking lot for a park near my house. After I parked, I examined my face and cleaned it up a little bit before I got out of my car. I walked down to where the swings were and sat down, gently swinging with the breeze. My head began buzzing. I looked around and saw a man sitting cross legged a few yards in front of me. He smiled softly before getting up. He stared at me intently, until he turned around and walked towards the parking lot which was hidden from my sight. Fear overwhelmed me, and I ran over to the other side of the park where several people were playing with their dogs. I stretched out on a bench near the people and watched as the dogs happily played with their owners. I watched as many people came and went. I didn’t even notice it was past noon until I saw parents with little kids at the park. I smiled as I remembered what it was like being a little kid. I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my skin. Before I knew it, I was asleep.
I was woken up by someone’s fingers pressing into my cheek.
“Hey lady… are you homeless?” the little voice asked
My eyes opened fully as I looked into the eyes of a boy probably about seven.
“No. I guess I just fell asleep.” I smiled gently as I got up.
I read my cell phone. It was 4:00 pm. The small boy smiled back before running back to the playground. I got up and made my way back to the parking lot to where my car was parked. I smiled in spite of myself. I adored my car. I unlocked my car and climbed in. I had to figure out what to tell my mom. I was sure she knew I wasn’t at school.
As I pulled onto my street, I noticed a burnt orange BMW in front of my house. The same buzzing started up again in my mind. I shook it off and laughed to myself. It had to have been a new man in my mother’s life. Maybe I wouldn’t get scolded tonight. Laughter erupted from outside my house as I stepped into my home.
“Evey ” my mother sang “is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me mum ”
“Come into the den and say hello to our guest ”
She giggled a few more times before I entered the room.
“Hello Evelyn” the new man said. “I’m Keevan.”
A painful warning shot through my mind and I froze. He was the man I saw at the park. His eyes were the iciest colour blue. He had black hair that fell to the sides of his face in a sort of grace. It was layered with pointy strands of hair sticking out like an anime cartoon. His eyes bore into my mind. As I closed my eyes the image of him filled up my mind making me scream and writhe. I opened my eyes and found him directly in front of me. He smiled before turning to my mother who was in standing two feet beside me. My mother was frozen.
“That is quite interesting isn’t it Evey?”
“What did you do to her ”
“That, my dear, was all your doing.”
“Liar What have you done?”
“Evey dear, I wouldn’t lie to you. I’ve missed you.”
“You don’t even know me.” It almost sounded like a question
“You’re wrong. I know you well. Very well.”
“How come I don’t have any idea who you are?”
“I’ve asked you that every night since you left.”
He smirked gently as he closed the distance between us. He bent down and lowered his lips to my ear. He whispered into it making shivers run up and down my spine. “Don’t you miss me?” I gulped down air as he pulled himself even closer to me. I felt his whole body pressed against my own. I looked up into his eyes as he loomed above me. His arms snaked around my waist to the small of my back where they rested. His lips pressed down against my own. I felt my body shudder against his, as his lips tingled against mine. I opened my mouth to let him in. His tongue greedily roamed my mouth. My arms traveled up to his neck to where they clung as I pressed my lips into his harder, deepening the kiss. A loud crash finally tore us apart.
Every window in the room was broken with shards of glass scattered around my floor. As I took it all in, I dragged my fingers through my hair, I was distressed and still short of breath.
“That’s interesting” he breathed as he placed his hand on the small of my back
“What did you do ” I shouted
“That was you.” He laughed softly before stepping towards the window
“What am I going to tell my mom ”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seems quite happy about it all.” He turned back and faced my mom. He smirked at her still happy expression.
Still smiling, he walked back to me caressed my cheek and then walked away and out the window.
“Where are you going?” I called out as I raced towards the window.
“I have to tell someone something important.” He laughed “Don’t fret, I’ll be back before you wake up.” He quickly added as he saw my distressed expression.
Slowly he continued climbing out the window and disappeared from my sight. “How am I going to clean this up?” I asked myself out loud as I looked around at the mess that loomed beneath my feet.
I looked over at my still frozen mother with bewilderment. It was strange how she was frozen…
“Unfreeze ” I shouted
Nothing happened.
“Abra Kadabra ”
Still nothing.
“Alakazam ”
She was still frozen.
“Pikachu?”
I rolled my eyes in frustration. It was no use, my mother was a statue. I frowned slightly before picking her up. Very slowly, I dragged her upstairs and into her bedroom. Softly, I set her on her bed and dragged her eyes shut. I kissed her cheek and headed back downstairs. I hadn’t eaten all day, and I was hungry. I searched my cabinet for something appetizing and found a can of tomato soup. I sighed to myself and began preparing the meal.
By the time I was done eating, it was 6:00pm. I still had the whole night to kill. I trudged upstairs and into my own room. I floated over to my computer desk to where my computer sat. I wiggled the mouse and opened my AIM. As soon as I logged on, someone IMed me.
Treyy: why weren’t you in 7th hour?
I froze. I felt my heart speed up as the realization of who was IMing me.
EveyBean: it’s funny how you pretend like you don’t know
Treyy: i’m sorry. i feel horrible
EveyBean: that’s good
Treyy: i love you more than her
EveyBean: i don’t believe you. leave me alone
Anger bubbled up inside of me as I signed off. I got up and headed into my bathroom. Upon opening my medicine cabinet, a bottle of Benadryl stood out to me. I took of the lid and popped two into my mouth. As tears crawled down my face, I staggered into my bed. “This time, his words don’t mean a thing to me.” I sang a few nursery rhymes before the medicine took effect on me. I sleepily closed my eyes and let sleep envelope me.
“Dammit Ackley, hold on to her ”
“She’s really heavy.” The man called Ackley complained
“She weighs like a hundred pounds.” The first man reasoned
“Fine. You take her.”
My eyes opened as I felt my body being passed between the two men. Ackley was the scrawny looking one with out of proportioned features. He looked human, except for the pair of goat like legs that poked out from under his short skirt like garment. Hooves resided at the bottom of his legs, replacing feet. He had a large nose paired with two beady eyes. Currently, he was shirtless. The other one was taller and he resembled a man entirely. He had honey brown eyes that shone brightly in the early afternoon light. His hands were large and his fingers long and lean. He had high cheek bones that shadowed his cheeks which were each slightly damp with perspiration. His jaw bone was very pronounced, and it held a look of concentration as did his full lips. A bead of sweat dripped down his forehead as he furrowed his eyebrows. As he tightened his grip around me, I felt the pronounced muscles in his chest flex. His brown hair was disheveled and long enough to be tied back at the nape of his neck. Which it was. With an impulse, I reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ears. His eyes met mine and he smiled reassuringly. I heard yelling behind us and turned to see heads bobbing in the distance.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” His voice was smooth like caramel
“What the hell’s happening? I can’t see like you two ” Ackley shrieked
“We’re being followed.” The first man said
He moved me closer against him. I wrapped my arms around his neck. The man’s free hand clasped around Ackley’s as he broke into a run. His feet hit the ground in a quick and silent movement. He glided. Through the thick forest, I could just barely make out a small body of water. We neared it quickly, and before I could process anything, we had jumped in the water, Ackley still being tugged along. The first man let go of my body, and I grabbed onto his leg almost instinctively. Ackley took up the other leg. A cave appeared in front of us as we swam deeper. We swam into it, and swam up. I breathed in the sweet air that resided in the cave. The man quickly scooped me up as he swam to the small island in the center of the cave. He draped me on the land before he pulled himself up. His breathing was irregular and loud. After a few moments of regaining a steady breathing, he sat up and sat me on his lap. Ackley leaned against a rock a few inches away. The other man took my leg in his hands and peeled away the cloth that surrounded it. A large gash resided on my leg. Ackley’s small eyes opened wide in disbelief.
“Shit… I had no idea. She seemed alright.” he announced
“I did what I could to heal myself, it didn’t seem to do much.” I laughed softly.
The man’s eyes filled with sadness. He removed me from his lap and stood up. Slowly, he walked away towards the water in the cave. “Damn Keevan.” he muttered. His hands closed into tight fists before he spun on Ackley and me. “I don’t want you involved anymore Evey. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m in this Avery, just as much as you are if not even more.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care if they need you. I need you alive I couldn’t live if you were to die ”
I stood up slowly to prevent myself from further injuring my leg, and stumbled towards him. He held out his arms, and I used them to support myself.
“Evey.” his eyes searched my eyes, trying to find an answer.
My arms moved up to where his shoulders were, and I wrapped myself around him. His arms gently moved to my lower back, supporting me. I stood up on my tippy toes pressing my lips gently against the protruding bone of his jaw. Slowly, I moved my lips down towards his chin, tracing the curve with my mouth. His breathing became erratic as my lips crashed down on his mouth which was slightly open. We broke apart. My eyes opened to his already opened eyes. Somewhere behind me was where his eyes were fixated on. Solemnly, he nodded. Before I could even turn around, I fell to the ground. Darkness erupted, and everything I saw was gone. All that was left, was darkness.
I sat up and gasped. My head pounded, and I shivered. “That dream. It felt so real.” I thought. As my fingers traced my lips.
“Are you aware of the fact, that you talk in your sleep?” Startled, I turned my face to the voice. Keevan.
“So that’s how I got this scar.” I said mostly to myself as I pulled my legs out of the warm cocoon of the comforter. A large scar rested on my otherwise, smooth leg.
“Heh. Sorry about that.” he sighed as he moved to the edge of my bed where he sat down.
“How did you do that?” I asked, still focused on my scar.
“Magic.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.
“So you’re probably wondering who we all are, aren’t you?” he added, preventing me from questioning him more. I nodded.
“Good, I’d be a bit worried if you weren’t interested.” he laughed as he pulled his dark hair away from the side of his head revealing two pointed ears.
“Intrigued, I see.”
Indeed I was.
“So that makes you-“
“An elf.” he finished. “And an elemental.” he added, not noticing my sceptic look.
“An elf, I think I can believe. That might explain a little, but an elemental? Aren’t those supposed to look earthy?”
“You’re familiar with earth, air, fire, and water elementals. You and I, however, are different kinds of elementals. We’re the keepers of life.”
“We? As in you and I?”
He laughed and nodded his head.
“Then what’s Ackley? And Avery?”
“Ackley’s a satyr. Avery is a human.” his voice dropped when he said Avery.
“And. They’re elementals too?”
“Not Ackley, but Avery is.”
I sat back a little in my bed, still trying to let everything sink in. Keevan moved next to me and began stroking my arm. Our legs were touching.
“I really missed you.” his eyes locked onto mine.
His touch was smooth and calming. Electric currents trickled on my arms to my finger tips.
I smiled back.
“I want you to come with me. I want to show you everything.”
His smile faded into a hopeful stare. His fingers laced into my own. Intrigued by this adventure, I nodded.
“Good,” he smiled, “get dressed then.”
Carefully, I got up not really thinking about what I was getting myself into. Keevan watched as I grabbed a pair of jeans out of my dresser. Opening the closet, I chose a black Doors t-shirt. I wasn’t sure what else to wear in the land of elves. Besides, Keevan was wearing the same thing he wore yesterday. Still feeling his eyes on me, I turned around to face him.
“You’ll have to leave so I can change.” the image of him stretched out on my bed caused me to blush.
“I’ll close my eyes.” he smirked, although his eyes remained open.
“I don’t believe you.” I laughed
“Fine.” with that he covered his eyes with his hand. A smile spread across his face.
“No peaking.” I said, still laughing gently.
Quickly, I changed into my jeans. I turned around and took off my shirt, hopping to my dresser to get a bra. Even more quickly, I clasped it together, spun it around, and flipped it up while pulling the straps to my shoulders. Finally, I put my shirt on. The soft fabric lay gently on me.
“Finished ” I announced excitedly.
“About time.” he laughed, removing his hands from his face. His face scrunched up sightly, showing his disapproval.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“I guess it’s alright. You’ll change when we get to my home.” With that, he stood up and stretched.
My hands pulled my thick, tangled hair into a pony tail. I knew I wouldn’t be able to pull a brush through it. “And so we go.” He grabbed my hand and led me through my home. I wouldn’t be going to school today either.
“Don’t worry about school,” he said as though he read my mind, “you won’t be gone long.”
“Hmm.”
Outside of my house, Keevan’s orange BMW sat in my driveway. “Who would choose an orange BMW?” I thought.
“Orange is my favourite colour, actually.”
I froze. How could he know what I was thinking twice?
“I can read your mind. And you’ll be able to read mine too.”
“You could have told me...” I mumbled.
“I didn’t want to scare you away. Come on.”
We let go of each other’s hands as we went on each side of the car. Inside, it smelled brand new.
“What’s the point in talking anymore...” I said in the same tone.
“I like the sound of your voice.” he said with a grin on his face.
The car silently started after Keevan put his keys in the ignition. The quiet noise was calming, much unlike my own car. Quickly, he picked up speed. Thirty. Fifty. Eighty.
“Don’t you think this is too fast?” my worried emotion cracked my voice. He merely smiled before picking up speed. Ninety. Closing my eyes, I let my the world disappear behind me. That was something I was good at.
“If it’s really making you that nervous, I’ll slow down.” he laughed beside me.
“I’m not even thinking about it. How do you know this?” I whined.
“You’re freaking out about this. I can feel it and it’s driving me crazy.”
“Well now you know how I feel.” I said, trying to hide my smile.
I turned my head away from him and focused on the world outside my window. I felt his smile on the back of my head, and I smiled at the thought. We continued on in silence. I began feeling unfamiliar with the scenery that surrounded us. The thick forests became thicker and thicker the further we drove out. I began to see the Atlantic Ocean in the distance. After about forty five minutes in the car, we began slowing down. I picked my head up and looked at him. His expression was unreadable for a moment before he sensed my own expression.
“Yes. We’re almost there.” He said, clearing trying to shake the thing that occupied his mind previously.
The old tree loomed ahead in front of me. My eyes didn’t lock into it, but I felt the shade that radiated off from its branches. The contrast of the dark sky behind it with the gentle breeze sifting through its branches made it almost human. With each little gust, the tree breathed. I sniffled a bit and wiped some of the wetness off my face. “So what” I thought to myself softly “I didn’t even like her”. I thought of all the things I despised about the perfect blonde. “Sure, she was pretty, and my only friend here, but that doesn’t prove anything”. My hopes of cheering myself up weren’t all that great, and I knew it. We had been friends since I moved here. I came to a stop beneath the tree’s branches. A yellow envelope was directly in front of me. I picked my head up and looked around. No one was anywhere in sight. I crouched down over the package as my hand traced over the detail in the soft yellow paper. Carefully, I moved the flimsy white ribbon aside to reveal the name underneath. Evelyn Nance. I froze. Someone must have known I was coming... My head began to throb as I shuddered. I looked around one last time before picking up the envelope. It was very light. I began first walking home, but I broke into a run as soon as I reached the end of the block. My curiosity got the best of me.
My determined feet pounded against the concrete. In my mind, the envelope and its secrets rang through my head. I began to see my house up ahead, and I ran faster still. A car drove by, but I didn’t care to notice who the driver even was. It was only a flash of orange out of the corner of my eyes. I heaved the door open to my home and dashed upstairs to my room, my curiosity was at its greatest. My mind though, continued pounding. I ignored the painful thumps in my head and sat the envelope down on my bed. I sat adjacent to the yellowness on my bed. Slowly, I untied the ribbon around it, still shivering at my name, and put it aside. The thumping in my mind grew still causing me to wince a little. Without a beat I tore the paper at the top. A folded note sat in the envelope, its presence held a formidable air. Upon reading it, my whole body shook. I screamed in agony and threw the words across my room before curling into ball. Tears now stormed out of my eyes in steady currents. I cried because of the pain, I cried because of the party, and I cried because of the things I couldn’t remember.
Good evening Evey. I know you don’t
Remember me, but I have missed you.
I woke up without feeling rested at all. I wanted more than anything to just go back to sleep, but I felt the need to go to school. My head pounded painfully. ‘Damn. I didn’t even drink and I feel hungover.’ My eyes were almost glued together from the eye makeup that was still caked on. I glanced over at the clock on my nightstand. 6:04 am. I groaned to myself and got out of my bed, eyeing the note and yellow paper sprawled out on my floor. I shook my head nervously and trudged over to the bathroom. I was hideous. My eye makeup had smeared all over my cheek, and my hair was a matted knotty mess. I used makeup remover to get my makeup off of my face before I started my shower. I peeled the clothes off of me, which smelled of cigarettes, sweat and beer. Not a nice combination. I stepped into the shower, letting the cool drops soothe my skin. After my shower I toweled off and stood in front of the mirror. My eyes were still red from the night before as were my cheeks which were still flushed with exertion. I sighed and continued getting dressed. I got dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and a vintage red rugby shirt. I parted my long brown hair off to the side and combed my side bangs over. I had to brush it before it dryed, for it was unruly and curly. I put on a little makeup, and grabbed my black hoodie and backpack before I left my room. I skipped downstairs, afraid I would be late to school. I hate Mondays. My mother was at the kitchen table staring out the window. My father disappeared three years ago. The police and community searched for his body for months before they gave up. Detectives couldn’t find any evidence as to what may have happened, so we gave up on finding him too. We figured he left for a reason, and that he didn’t want to be found. She moved on, dating around. None of them stayed, mostly because of me.
“Do you ever think I’ll find the love I shared with your father?” she sighed before taking a sip of her tea in front of her.
“I think you will, but it’ll be a different love.” I smiled gently as I said this, stealing a sip.
She smiled up at me while batting my hands away.
“Hopefully he won’t be addicted to tea.”
I laughed before hugging her.“Bye mom ”
The cool thing about my mom was that she was able to move on easily after breakups, and usually a new guy appeared within a week. They’d meet at the store or somewhere and I knew this wasn’t any different. I smiled as I climbed into my car. I loved my car more than anything. It was an old purple mustang that took forever to start, but it was the first big thing I bought with my own money. School wasn’t too far from where I lived, but I loved driving it there. Usually, when I drive, I find it relaxing. My mind wandered to the letter. ‘Who wrote it?’ I asked myself as I turned my car into the parking lot. Unfortunately, I forgot what happened the night before until just now. ‘I shouldn’t have gotten up...’ I parked my car in my parking spot and looked around, happy to see that no one was on campus yet. Just as I got out of my car, a silver corolla drove into the parking space next to mine. I froze upon realizing who was in the car. Keri. I walked fast towards the school. She hurriedly got out of her own car.
“Evey Wait up Evey ”
I continued walking faster. Her high heels clicked loudly on the pavement.
“Oh come on Evey, let’s have a little chat about last night Let’s talk about Trey ”
Just as I rounded the corner, another frightening face blocked my path. Stacy.
“Morning best friend Evey ”
I swiftly turned around, only to see Keri behind me. Slowly I turned around to face Stacy. Her blonde hair framed her blue eyes which were filled with anger. I was defeated.
“So Evey, what did you do Sunday?” she said sheepishly
“Stacy” I said calmly, “it wasn’t what it looked like.”
“You fucking liar I’m not blind Evey ”
“Stacy, we weren’t doing anything we were just- .”
“Just what? What were you doing? Did you want to make sure he didn’t have testicular cancer?”
“Stacy. You knew I liked him.” my voice began to falter as I tried to hold back my tears.
“Oh that explains why you were on MY bed fucking MY boyfriend ”
“We weren’t having sex. We weren’t even close to doing... any...” my voice trailed off as I noticed a few familiar faces around us.
Before long, a small crowd began to for. People locked their eyes on us. I felt my throat lock in anticipation and I began feeling nauseous. Stacy searched my eyes for the fear that I finally couldn’t hide anymore. Her hand had closed into a fist. Her ring sparkled on her middle finger. Again, she smiled sheepishly and the inevitable happened. Her fist slammed into my face. I fell to the ground. Hot tears spilled out of my eyes betraying my bravery as blood dripped out onto the concrete. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she had a smile plastered on it. She usually did when she one a fight.
“Slut.” she finally said before I heard the receding clicks of her’s and Keri’s heels.
The surrounding crowd began to follow suit, and called me a slut as I lay face down on the concrete. My face was surely red from the humiliation. Slowly, I saw the feet around me get fewer and fewer until I was the only one left on the pavement. I picked up my belongings and walked back to my car. I wouldn’t be at school today.
I drove around aimlessly until I found myself in a parking lot for a park near my house. After I parked, I examined my face and cleaned it up a little bit before I got out of my car. I walked down to where the swings were and sat down, gently swinging with the breeze. My head began buzzing. I looked around and saw a man sitting cross legged a few yards in front of me. He smiled softly before getting up. He stared at me intently, until he turned around and walked towards the parking lot which was hidden from my sight. Fear overwhelmed me, and I ran over to the other side of the park where several people were playing with their dogs. I stretched out on a bench near the people and watched as the dogs happily played with their owners. I watched as many people came and went. I didn’t even notice it was past noon until I saw parents with little kids at the park. I smiled as I remembered what it was like being a little kid. I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my skin. Before I knew it, I was asleep.
I was woken up by someone’s fingers pressing into my cheek.
“Hey lady… are you homeless?” the little voice asked
My eyes opened fully as I looked into the eyes of a boy probably about seven.
“No. I guess I just fell asleep.” I smiled gently as I got up.
I read my cell phone. It was 4:00 pm. The small boy smiled back before running back to the playground. I got up and made my way back to the parking lot to where my car was parked. I smiled in spite of myself. I adored my car. I unlocked my car and climbed in. I had to figure out what to tell my mom. I was sure she knew I wasn’t at school.
As I pulled onto my street, I noticed a burnt orange BMW in front of my house. The same buzzing started up again in my mind. I shook it off and laughed to myself. It had to have been a new man in my mother’s life. Maybe I wouldn’t get scolded tonight. Laughter erupted from outside my house as I stepped into my home.
“Evey ” my mother sang “is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me mum ”
“Come into the den and say hello to our guest ”
She giggled a few more times before I entered the room.
“Hello Evelyn” the new man said. “I’m Keevan.”
A painful warning shot through my mind and I froze. He was the man I saw at the park. His eyes were the iciest colour blue. He had black hair that fell to the sides of his face in a sort of grace. It was layered with pointy strands of hair sticking out like an anime cartoon. His eyes bore into my mind. As I closed my eyes the image of him filled up my mind making me scream and writhe. I opened my eyes and found him directly in front of me. He smiled before turning to my mother who was in standing two feet beside me. My mother was frozen.
“That is quite interesting isn’t it Evey?”
“What did you do to her ”
“That, my dear, was all your doing.”
“Liar What have you done?”
“Evey dear, I wouldn’t lie to you. I’ve missed you.”
“You don’t even know me.” It almost sounded like a question
“You’re wrong. I know you well. Very well.”
“How come I don’t have any idea who you are?”
“I’ve asked you that every night since you left.”
He smirked gently as he closed the distance between us. He bent down and lowered his lips to my ear. He whispered into it making shivers run up and down my spine. “Don’t you miss me?” I gulped down air as he pulled himself even closer to me. I felt his whole body pressed against my own. I looked up into his eyes as he loomed above me. His arms snaked around my waist to the small of my back where they rested. His lips pressed down against my own. I felt my body shudder against his, as his lips tingled against mine. I opened my mouth to let him in. His tongue greedily roamed my mouth. My arms traveled up to his neck to where they clung as I pressed my lips into his harder, deepening the kiss. A loud crash finally tore us apart.
Every window in the room was broken with shards of glass scattered around my floor. As I took it all in, I dragged my fingers through my hair, I was distressed and still short of breath.
“That’s interesting” he breathed as he placed his hand on the small of my back
“What did you do ” I shouted
“That was you.” He laughed softly before stepping towards the window
“What am I going to tell my mom ”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seems quite happy about it all.” He turned back and faced my mom. He smirked at her still happy expression.
Still smiling, he walked back to me caressed my cheek and then walked away and out the window.
“Where are you going?” I called out as I raced towards the window.
“I have to tell someone something important.” He laughed “Don’t fret, I’ll be back before you wake up.” He quickly added as he saw my distressed expression.
Slowly he continued climbing out the window and disappeared from my sight. “How am I going to clean this up?” I asked myself out loud as I looked around at the mess that loomed beneath my feet.
I looked over at my still frozen mother with bewilderment. It was strange how she was frozen…
“Unfreeze ” I shouted
Nothing happened.
“Abra Kadabra ”
Still nothing.
“Alakazam ”
She was still frozen.
“Pikachu?”
I rolled my eyes in frustration. It was no use, my mother was a statue. I frowned slightly before picking her up. Very slowly, I dragged her upstairs and into her bedroom. Softly, I set her on her bed and dragged her eyes shut. I kissed her cheek and headed back downstairs. I hadn’t eaten all day, and I was hungry. I searched my cabinet for something appetizing and found a can of tomato soup. I sighed to myself and began preparing the meal.
By the time I was done eating, it was 6:00pm. I still had the whole night to kill. I trudged upstairs and into my own room. I floated over to my computer desk to where my computer sat. I wiggled the mouse and opened my AIM. As soon as I logged on, someone IMed me.
Treyy: why weren’t you in 7th hour?
I froze. I felt my heart speed up as the realization of who was IMing me.
EveyBean: it’s funny how you pretend like you don’t know
Treyy: i’m sorry. i feel horrible
EveyBean: that’s good
Treyy: i love you more than her
EveyBean: i don’t believe you. leave me alone
Anger bubbled up inside of me as I signed off. I got up and headed into my bathroom. Upon opening my medicine cabinet, a bottle of Benadryl stood out to me. I took of the lid and popped two into my mouth. As tears crawled down my face, I staggered into my bed. “This time, his words don’t mean a thing to me.” I sang a few nursery rhymes before the medicine took effect on me. I sleepily closed my eyes and let sleep envelope me.
“Dammit Ackley, hold on to her ”
“She’s really heavy.” The man called Ackley complained
“She weighs like a hundred pounds.” The first man reasoned
“Fine. You take her.”
My eyes opened as I felt my body being passed between the two men. Ackley was the scrawny looking one with out of proportioned features. He looked human, except for the pair of goat like legs that poked out from under his short skirt like garment. Hooves resided at the bottom of his legs, replacing feet. He had a large nose paired with two beady eyes. Currently, he was shirtless. The other one was taller and he resembled a man entirely. He had honey brown eyes that shone brightly in the early afternoon light. His hands were large and his fingers long and lean. He had high cheek bones that shadowed his cheeks which were each slightly damp with perspiration. His jaw bone was very pronounced, and it held a look of concentration as did his full lips. A bead of sweat dripped down his forehead as he furrowed his eyebrows. As he tightened his grip around me, I felt the pronounced muscles in his chest flex. His brown hair was disheveled and long enough to be tied back at the nape of his neck. Which it was. With an impulse, I reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ears. His eyes met mine and he smiled reassuringly. I heard yelling behind us and turned to see heads bobbing in the distance.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” His voice was smooth like caramel
“What the hell’s happening? I can’t see like you two ” Ackley shrieked
“We’re being followed.” The first man said
He moved me closer against him. I wrapped my arms around his neck. The man’s free hand clasped around Ackley’s as he broke into a run. His feet hit the ground in a quick and silent movement. He glided. Through the thick forest, I could just barely make out a small body of water. We neared it quickly, and before I could process anything, we had jumped in the water, Ackley still being tugged along. The first man let go of my body, and I grabbed onto his leg almost instinctively. Ackley took up the other leg. A cave appeared in front of us as we swam deeper. We swam into it, and swam up. I breathed in the sweet air that resided in the cave. The man quickly scooped me up as he swam to the small island in the center of the cave. He draped me on the land before he pulled himself up. His breathing was irregular and loud. After a few moments of regaining a steady breathing, he sat up and sat me on his lap. Ackley leaned against a rock a few inches away. The other man took my leg in his hands and peeled away the cloth that surrounded it. A large gash resided on my leg. Ackley’s small eyes opened wide in disbelief.
“Shit… I had no idea. She seemed alright.” he announced
“I did what I could to heal myself, it didn’t seem to do much.” I laughed softly.
The man’s eyes filled with sadness. He removed me from his lap and stood up. Slowly, he walked away towards the water in the cave. “Damn Keevan.” he muttered. His hands closed into tight fists before he spun on Ackley and me. “I don’t want you involved anymore Evey. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m in this Avery, just as much as you are if not even more.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care if they need you. I need you alive I couldn’t live if you were to die ”
I stood up slowly to prevent myself from further injuring my leg, and stumbled towards him. He held out his arms, and I used them to support myself.
“Evey.” his eyes searched my eyes, trying to find an answer.
My arms moved up to where his shoulders were, and I wrapped myself around him. His arms gently moved to my lower back, supporting me. I stood up on my tippy toes pressing my lips gently against the protruding bone of his jaw. Slowly, I moved my lips down towards his chin, tracing the curve with my mouth. His breathing became erratic as my lips crashed down on his mouth which was slightly open. We broke apart. My eyes opened to his already opened eyes. Somewhere behind me was where his eyes were fixated on. Solemnly, he nodded. Before I could even turn around, I fell to the ground. Darkness erupted, and everything I saw was gone. All that was left, was darkness.
I sat up and gasped. My head pounded, and I shivered. “That dream. It felt so real.” I thought. As my fingers traced my lips.
“Are you aware of the fact, that you talk in your sleep?” Startled, I turned my face to the voice. Keevan.
“So that’s how I got this scar.” I said mostly to myself as I pulled my legs out of the warm cocoon of the comforter. A large scar rested on my otherwise, smooth leg.
“Heh. Sorry about that.” he sighed as he moved to the edge of my bed where he sat down.
“How did you do that?” I asked, still focused on my scar.
“Magic.”
I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.
“So you’re probably wondering who we all are, aren’t you?” he added, preventing me from questioning him more. I nodded.
“Good, I’d be a bit worried if you weren’t interested.” he laughed as he pulled his dark hair away from the side of his head revealing two pointed ears.
“Intrigued, I see.”
Indeed I was.
“So that makes you-“
“An elf.” he finished. “And an elemental.” he added, not noticing my sceptic look.
“An elf, I think I can believe. That might explain a little, but an elemental? Aren’t those supposed to look earthy?”
“You’re familiar with earth, air, fire, and water elementals. You and I, however, are different kinds of elementals. We’re the keepers of life.”
“We? As in you and I?”
He laughed and nodded his head.
“Then what’s Ackley? And Avery?”
“Ackley’s a satyr. Avery is a human.” his voice dropped when he said Avery.
“And. They’re elementals too?”
“Not Ackley, but Avery is.”
I sat back a little in my bed, still trying to let everything sink in. Keevan moved next to me and began stroking my arm. Our legs were touching.
“I really missed you.” his eyes locked onto mine.
His touch was smooth and calming. Electric currents trickled on my arms to my finger tips.
I smiled back.
“I want you to come with me. I want to show you everything.”
His smile faded into a hopeful stare. His fingers laced into my own. Intrigued by this adventure, I nodded.
“Good,” he smiled, “get dressed then.”
Carefully, I got up not really thinking about what I was getting myself into. Keevan watched as I grabbed a pair of jeans out of my dresser. Opening the closet, I chose a black Doors t-shirt. I wasn’t sure what else to wear in the land of elves. Besides, Keevan was wearing the same thing he wore yesterday. Still feeling his eyes on me, I turned around to face him.
“You’ll have to leave so I can change.” the image of him stretched out on my bed caused me to blush.
“I’ll close my eyes.” he smirked, although his eyes remained open.
“I don’t believe you.” I laughed
“Fine.” with that he covered his eyes with his hand. A smile spread across his face.
“No peaking.” I said, still laughing gently.
Quickly, I changed into my jeans. I turned around and took off my shirt, hopping to my dresser to get a bra. Even more quickly, I clasped it together, spun it around, and flipped it up while pulling the straps to my shoulders. Finally, I put my shirt on. The soft fabric lay gently on me.
“Finished ” I announced excitedly.
“About time.” he laughed, removing his hands from his face. His face scrunched up sightly, showing his disapproval.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“I guess it’s alright. You’ll change when we get to my home.” With that, he stood up and stretched.
My hands pulled my thick, tangled hair into a pony tail. I knew I wouldn’t be able to pull a brush through it. “And so we go.” He grabbed my hand and led me through my home. I wouldn’t be going to school today either.
“Don’t worry about school,” he said as though he read my mind, “you won’t be gone long.”
“Hmm.”
Outside of my house, Keevan’s orange BMW sat in my driveway. “Who would choose an orange BMW?” I thought.
“Orange is my favourite colour, actually.”
I froze. How could he know what I was thinking twice?
“I can read your mind. And you’ll be able to read mine too.”
“You could have told me...” I mumbled.
“I didn’t want to scare you away. Come on.”
We let go of each other’s hands as we went on each side of the car. Inside, it smelled brand new.
“What’s the point in talking anymore...” I said in the same tone.
“I like the sound of your voice.” he said with a grin on his face.
The car silently started after Keevan put his keys in the ignition. The quiet noise was calming, much unlike my own car. Quickly, he picked up speed. Thirty. Fifty. Eighty.
“Don’t you think this is too fast?” my worried emotion cracked my voice. He merely smiled before picking up speed. Ninety. Closing my eyes, I let my the world disappear behind me. That was something I was good at.
“If it’s really making you that nervous, I’ll slow down.” he laughed beside me.
“I’m not even thinking about it. How do you know this?” I whined.
“You’re freaking out about this. I can feel it and it’s driving me crazy.”
“Well now you know how I feel.” I said, trying to hide my smile.
I turned my head away from him and focused on the world outside my window. I felt his smile on the back of my head, and I smiled at the thought. We continued on in silence. I began feeling unfamiliar with the scenery that surrounded us. The thick forests became thicker and thicker the further we drove out. I began to see the Atlantic Ocean in the distance. After about forty five minutes in the car, we began slowing down. I picked my head up and looked at him. His expression was unreadable for a moment before he sensed my own expression.
“Yes. We’re almost there.” He said, clearing trying to shake the thing that occupied his mind previously.
# Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Saturday – Ian McEwan
# On Beauty – Zadie Smith
# Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
# Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
# The Sea – John Banville
# The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
# The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
# The Master – Colm Tóibín
# Vanishing Point – David Markson
# The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
# Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
# Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
# Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
# The Colour – Rose Tremain
# Thursbitch – Alan Garner
# The Light of Day – Graham Swift
# What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
# The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
# Islands – Dan Sleigh
# Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
# London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
# Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
# Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
# The Double – José Saramago
# Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
# Unless – Carol Shields
# Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
# The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
# That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
# In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
# Shroud – John Banville
# Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
# Youth – J.M. Coetzee
# Dead Air – Iain Banks
# Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
# The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
# Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
# Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
# Platform – Michael Houellebecq
# Schooling – Heather McGowan
# Atonement – Ian McEwan
# The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
# Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
# The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
# Fury – Salman Rushdie
# At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
# Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
# Life of Pi – Yann Martel
# The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
# An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
# The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
# Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
# White Teeth – Zadie Smith
# The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
# Under the Skin – Michel Faber
# Ignorance – Milan Kundera
# Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
# Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
# City of God – E.L. Doctorow
# How the Dead Live – Will Self
# The Human Stain – Philip Roth
# The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
# After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
# Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
# Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
# House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
# Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
# Pastoralia – George Saunders
#
# 1900s
# Timbuktu – Paul Auster
# The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
# Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
# As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
# Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
# Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
# The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
# Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
# Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
# Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
# Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
# Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
# Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
# All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
# The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
# Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
# The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
# Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
# Another World – Pat Barker
# The Hours – Michael Cunningham
# Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
# Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
# The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
# Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
# Great Apes – Will Self
# Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
# Underworld – Don DeLillo
# Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
# The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
# American Pastoral – Philip Roth
# The Untouchable – John Banville
# Silk – Alessandro Baricco
# Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
# Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
# Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
# The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
# Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
# Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
# The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
# Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
# The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
# The Information – Martin Amis
# The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
# Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
# The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
# The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
# A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
# Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
# The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
# Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
# The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
# Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
# Land – Park Kyong-ni
# The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
# The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
# Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
# City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
# How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
# Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
# Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
# Disappearance – David Dabydeen
# The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
# The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
# Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
# Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
# Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
# Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
# Complicity – Iain Banks
# On Love – Alain de Botton
# What a Carve Up – Jonathan Coe
# A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
# The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
# The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
# The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
# The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
# The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
# The Secret History – Donna Tartt
# Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
# The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
# A Heart So White – Javier Marias
# Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
# Indigo – Marina Warner
# The Crow Road – Iain Banks
# Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
# Jazz – Toni Morrison
# The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
# Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
# The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
# Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
# The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
# Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
# Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
# Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
# Arcadia – Jim Crace
# Wild Swans – Jung Chang
# American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
# Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
# Mao II – Don DeLillo
# Typical – Padgett Powell
# Regeneration – Pat Barker
# Downriver – Iain Sinclair
# Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
# Wise Children – Angela Carter
# Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
# Amongst Women – John McGahern
# Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
# Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
# Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
# The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
# The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
# A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
# Like Life – Lorrie Moore
# Possession – A.S. Byatt
# The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
# The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
# A Disaffection – James Kelman
# Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
# Moon Palace – Paul Auster
# Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
# Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
# The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
# The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
# The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
# The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
# Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
# A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
# London Fields – Martin Amis
# The Book of Evidence – John Banville
# Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
# Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
# The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
# Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
# The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
# The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
# Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
# Libra – Don DeLillo
# The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
# Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
# The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
# Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
# The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
# The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
# The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
# The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
# The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
# The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
# Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
# The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
# The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
# World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
# Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
# The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
# Beloved – Toni Morrison
# Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
# Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
# Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
# Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
# The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
# Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
# An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
# Foe – J.M. Coetzee
# The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
# Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
# The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
# Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
# Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
# The Cider House Rules – John Irving
# A Maggot – John Fowles
# Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
# Contact – Carl Sagan
# The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
# Perfume – Patrick Süskind
# Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
# White Noise – Don DeLillo
# Queer – William Burroughs
# Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
# Legend – David Gemmell
# Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
# The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
# The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
# The Lover – Marguerite Duras
# Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
# The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
# Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
# The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
# Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
# Neuromancer – William Gibson
# Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
# Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
# Shame – Salman Rushdie
# Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
# Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
# La Brava – Elmore Leonard
# Waterland – Graham Swift
# The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
# The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
# The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
# The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
# If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
# A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
# The Color Purple – Alice Walker
# Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
# A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
# The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
# The Newton Letter – John Banville
# On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
# Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
# The Names – Don DeLillo
# Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
# Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
# The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
# July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
# Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
# Broken April – Ismail Kadare
# Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
# Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
# Rites of Passage – William Golding
# Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
# Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
# City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
# The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
# The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
# Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
# Shikasta – Doris Lessing
# A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
# Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
# The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
# If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
# The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
# The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
# The World According to Garp – John Irving
# Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
# The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
# The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
# Yes – Thomas Bernhard
# The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
# In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
# The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
# Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
# The Shining – Stephen King
# Dispatches – Michael Herr
# Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
# Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
# The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
# The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
# Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
# The Public Burning – Robert Coover
# Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
# Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
# Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
# Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
# Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
# W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
# A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
# Grimus – Salman Rushdie
# The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
# Fateless – Imre Kertész
# Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
# High Rise – J.G. Ballard
# Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
# Dead Babies – Martin Amis
# Correction – Thomas Bernhard
# Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
# The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
# Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
# The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
# Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
# Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
# Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
# A Question of Power – Bessie Head
# The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
# The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
# Crash – J.G. Ballard
# The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
# Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
# The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
# Sula – Toni Morrison
# Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
# The Breast – Philip Roth
# The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
# G – John Berger
# Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
# House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
# In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
# The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
# Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
# Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
# The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
# Rabbit Redux – John Updike
# The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
# The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
# The Ogre – Michael Tournier
# The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
# Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
# I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
# Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
# Troubles – J.G. Farrell
# Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
# The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
# Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
# Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
# Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
# Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
# The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
# The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
# Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
# The Godfather – Mario Puzo
# Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
# Them – Joyce Carol Oates
# A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
# Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
# Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
# The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
# Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
# Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
# Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
# Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
# The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
# In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
# A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
# The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
# Chocky – John Wyndham
# The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
# The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
# One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
# The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
# Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
# The Joke – Milan Kundera
# No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
# The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
# A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
# The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
# Trawl – B.S. Johnson
# In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
# The Magus – John Fowles
# The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
# Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
# Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
# The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
# Things – Georges Perec
# The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
# August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
# God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
# Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
# The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
# Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
# Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
# Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
# Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
# The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
# Herzog – Saul Bellow
# V. – Thomas Pynchon
# Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
# The Graduate – Charles Webb
# Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
# The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
# The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
# Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
# The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
# One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# The Collector – John Fowles
# One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
# A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
# Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
# The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
# The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
# Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
# Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
# The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
# Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
# Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
# A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
# Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
# Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
# Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
# The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
# Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
# The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
# How It Is – Samuel Beckett
# Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
# The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
# To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
# Rabbit, Run – John Updike
# Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
# Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
# Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
# Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
# The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
# Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
# Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
# Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
# Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
# Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
# The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
# Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
# A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
# The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
# Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
# Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
# Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
# Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
# The End of the Road – John Barth
# The Once and Future King – T.H. White
# The Bell – Iris Murdoch
# Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
# Voss – Patrick White
# The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
# Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
# Homo Faber – Max Frisch
# On the Road – Jack Kerouac
# Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
# Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
# The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
# Justine – Lawrence Durrell
# Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
# The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
# The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
# Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
# The Floating Opera – John Barth
# The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
# The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
# Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
# A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
# The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
# The Quiet American – Graham Greene
# The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
# The Recognitions – William Gaddis
# The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
# Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
# I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
# Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
# The Story of O – Pauline Réage
# A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
# Lord of the Flies – William Golding
# Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
# The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
# The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
# The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
# Watt – Samuel Beckett
# Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
# Junkie – William Burroughs
# The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
# Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
# Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
# The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
# Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
# The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
# Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
# The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
# Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
# Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
# Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
# Foundation – Isaac Asimov
# The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
# The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
# The Rebel – Albert Camus
# Molloy – Samuel Beckett
# The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
# The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
# The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
# The Third Man – Graham Greene
# The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
# Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
# The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
# I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
# The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
# The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
# Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
# The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
# The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
# Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
# The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
# Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
# All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
# Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
# Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
# The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
# Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
# Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
# The Victim – Saul Bellow
# Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
# If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
# Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
# The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
# The Plague – Albert Camus
# Back – Henry Green
# Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
# The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
# Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
# Animal Farm – George Orwell
# Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
# The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
# Loving – Henry Green
# Arcanum 17 – André Breton
# Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
# The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
# Transit – Anna Seghers
# Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
# Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
# The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
# Caught – Henry Green
# The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
# Embers – Sandor Marai
# Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
# The Outsider – Albert Camus
# In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
# The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
# The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
# Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
# Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
# The Hamlet – William Faulkner
# Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
# For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
# Native Son – Richard Wright
# The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
# The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
# Party Going – Henry Green
# The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
# Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
# At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
# Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
# Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
# Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
# Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
# The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
# After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
# Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
# Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
# Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
# Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
# Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
# U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
# Murphy – Samuel Beckett
# Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
# Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
# The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
# The Years – Virginia Woolf
# In Parenthesis – David Jones
# The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
# Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
# To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
# Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
# Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
# The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
# Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
# Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
# Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
# Absalom, Absalom – William Faulkner
# At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
# Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
# Independent People – Halldór Laxness
# Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
# The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
# They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
# The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
# England Made Me – Graham Greene
# Burmese Days – George Orwell
# The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
# Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
# Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
# The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
# Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
# A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
# Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
# Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
# Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
# Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
# Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
# The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
# Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
# A Day Off – Storm Jameson
# The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
# A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
# Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
# Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
# Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
# To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
# The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
# The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
# The Waves – Virginia Woolf
# The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
# Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
# The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
# Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
# Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
# The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
# Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
# Passing – Nella Larsen
# A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
# Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
# Living – Henry Green
# The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
# All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
# Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
# The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
# Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
# The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
# Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
# Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
# Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
# Orlando – Virginia Woolf
# Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
# The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
# The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
# Quartet – Jean Rhys
# Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
# Quicksand – Nella Larsen
# Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
# Nadja – André Breton
# Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
# Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
# To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
# Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
# Amerika – Franz Kafka
# The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
# Blindness – Henry Green
# The Castle – Franz Kafka
# The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
# The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
# One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
# The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
# The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
# Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
# Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
# The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
# The Counterfeiters – André Gide
# The Trial – Franz Kafka
# The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
# The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
# Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
# The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
# The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
# We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
# A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
# The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
# Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
# Cane – Jean Toomer
# Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
# Amok – Stefan Zweig
# The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
# The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
# Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
# Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
# The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
# Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
# The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
# Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
# Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
# Ulysses – James Joyce
# The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
# Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
# The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
# Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
# Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
# Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
# Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
# The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
# The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
# Summer – Edith Wharton
# Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
# Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
# A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
# Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
# Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
# The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
# The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
# Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
# The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
# The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
# Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
# Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
# Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
# Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
# The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
# Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
# Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
# The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
# Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
# Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
# Howards End – E.M. Forster
# Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
# Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
# Martin Eden – Jack London
# Strait is the Gate – André Gide
# Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
# The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
# A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
# The Iron Heel – Jack London
# The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
# The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
# Mother – Maxim Gorky
# The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
# The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
# Young Törless – Robert Musil
# The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
# The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
# Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
# Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
# Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
# Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
# The Golden Bowl – Henry James
# The Ambassadors – Henry James
# The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
# The Immoralist – André Gide
# The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
# Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
# The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
# Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
# Kim – Rudyard Kipling
# Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
# Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
#
# 1800s
# Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
# The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
# The Awakening – Kate Chopin
# The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
# The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
# The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
# What Maisie Knew – Henry James
# Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
# Dracula – Bram Stoker
# Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
# The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
# The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
# Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
# Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
# The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
# The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
# Born in Exile – George Gissing
# Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
# The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
# News from Nowhere – William Morris
# New Grub Street – George Gissing
# Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
# Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
# The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
# The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
# La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
# By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
# Hunger – Knut Hamsun
# The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
# Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
# Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
# The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
# The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
# She – H. Rider Haggard
# The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
# The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
# Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
# King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
# Germinal – Émile Zola
# The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
# Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
# Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
# Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
# The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
# A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
# Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
# The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
# The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
# Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
# Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
# Nana – Émile Zola
# The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Red Room – August Strindberg
# Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
# Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
# Drunkard – Émile Zola
# Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
# Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
# The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
# The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
# Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
# The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
# Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
# In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
# The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# Erewhon – Samuel Butler
# Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
# Middlemarch – George Eliot
# Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
# King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
# He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
# War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
# Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
# Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
# Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
# The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
# Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
# Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
# The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
# Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
# Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
# Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
# Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
# Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
# Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
# Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
# Silas Marner – George Eliot
# Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
# On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
# Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
# The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
# The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
# The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# Max Havelaar – Multatuli
# A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
# Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
# Adam Bede – George Eliot
# Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
# North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
# Hard Times – Charles Dickens
# Walden – Henry David Thoreau
# Bleak House – Charles Dickens
# Villette – Charlotte Brontë
# Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
# Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
# The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
# The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
# Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
# Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
# The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
# Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
# Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
# Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
# Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
# The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
# La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
# The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
# The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
# Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
# The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
# Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
# A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
# Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
# The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
# The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
# The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
# Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
# The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
# Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
# Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
# The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
# The Red and the Black – Stendhal
# The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
# Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
# The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
# The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
# Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
# The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
# Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
# Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
# Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
# Persuasion – Jane Austen
# Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
# Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
# Emma – Jane Austen
# Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
# Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
# The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
# Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
# Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
#
# 1700s
# Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
# The Nun – Denis Diderot
# Camilla – Fanny Burney
# The Monk – M.G. Lewis
# Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
# The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
# The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
# Justine – Marquis de Sade
# Vathek – William Beckford
# The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
# Cecilia – Fanny Burney
# Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
# Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Evelina – Fanny Burney
# The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
# The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
# A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
# Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
# The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
# The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
# Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
# Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
# Candide – Voltaire
# The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
# Amelia – Henry Fielding
# Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
# Fanny Hill – John Cleland
# Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
# Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
# Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
# Pamela – Samuel Richardson
# Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
# Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
# Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
# A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
# Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
# Roxana – Daniel Defoe
# Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
# Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
# Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
# A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
#
# Pre-1700
# Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
# The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
# The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
# Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
# The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
# Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
# Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
# The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
# The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
# Aithiopika – Heliodorus
# Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
# Metamorphoses – Ovid
# Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus
# Saturday – Ian McEwan
# On Beauty – Zadie Smith
# Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
# Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
# The Sea – John Banville
# The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
# The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
# The Master – Colm Tóibín
# Vanishing Point – David Markson
# The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
# Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
# Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
# Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
# The Colour – Rose Tremain
# Thursbitch – Alan Garner
# The Light of Day – Graham Swift
# What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
# The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
# Islands – Dan Sleigh
# Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
# London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
# Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
# Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
# The Double – José Saramago
# Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
# Unless – Carol Shields
# Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
# The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
# That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
# In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
# Shroud – John Banville
# Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
# Youth – J.M. Coetzee
# Dead Air – Iain Banks
# Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
# The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
# Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
# Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
# Platform – Michael Houellebecq
# Schooling – Heather McGowan
# Atonement – Ian McEwan
# The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
# Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
# The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
# Fury – Salman Rushdie
# At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
# Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
# Life of Pi – Yann Martel
# The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
# An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
# The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
# Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
# White Teeth – Zadie Smith
# The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
# Under the Skin – Michel Faber
# Ignorance – Milan Kundera
# Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
# Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
# City of God – E.L. Doctorow
# How the Dead Live – Will Self
# The Human Stain – Philip Roth
# The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
# After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
# Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
# Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
# House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
# Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
# Pastoralia – George Saunders
#
# 1900s
# Timbuktu – Paul Auster
# The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
# Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
# As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
# Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
# Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
# The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
# Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
# Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
# Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
# Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
# Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
# Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
# All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
# The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
# Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
# The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
# Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
# Another World – Pat Barker
# The Hours – Michael Cunningham
# Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
# Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
# The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
# Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
# Great Apes – Will Self
# Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
# Underworld – Don DeLillo
# Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
# The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
# American Pastoral – Philip Roth
# The Untouchable – John Banville
# Silk – Alessandro Baricco
# Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
# Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
# Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
# The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
# Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
# Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
# The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
# Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
# The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
# The Information – Martin Amis
# The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
# Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
# The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
# The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
# A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
# Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
# The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
# Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
# The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
# Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
# Land – Park Kyong-ni
# The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
# The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
# Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
# City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
# How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
# Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
# Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
# Disappearance – David Dabydeen
# The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
# The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
# Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
# Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
# Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
# Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
# Complicity – Iain Banks
# On Love – Alain de Botton
# What a Carve Up – Jonathan Coe
# A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
# The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
# The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
# The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
# The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
# The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
# The Secret History – Donna Tartt
# Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
# The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
# A Heart So White – Javier Marias
# Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
# Indigo – Marina Warner
# The Crow Road – Iain Banks
# Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
# Jazz – Toni Morrison
# The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
# Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
# The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
# Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
# The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
# Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
# Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
# Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
# Arcadia – Jim Crace
# Wild Swans – Jung Chang
# American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
# Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
# Mao II – Don DeLillo
# Typical – Padgett Powell
# Regeneration – Pat Barker
# Downriver – Iain Sinclair
# Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
# Wise Children – Angela Carter
# Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
# Amongst Women – John McGahern
# Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
# Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
# Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
# The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
# The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
# A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
# Like Life – Lorrie Moore
# Possession – A.S. Byatt
# The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
# The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
# A Disaffection – James Kelman
# Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
# Moon Palace – Paul Auster
# Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
# Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
# The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
# The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
# The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
# The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
# Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
# A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
# London Fields – Martin Amis
# The Book of Evidence – John Banville
# Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
# Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
# The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
# Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
# The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
# The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
# Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
# Libra – Don DeLillo
# The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
# Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
# The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
# Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
# The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
# The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
# The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
# The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
# The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
# The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
# Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
# The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
# The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
# World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
# Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
# The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
# Beloved – Toni Morrison
# Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
# Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
# Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
# Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
# The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
# Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
# An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
# Foe – J.M. Coetzee
# The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
# Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
# The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
# Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
# Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
# The Cider House Rules – John Irving
# A Maggot – John Fowles
# Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
# Contact – Carl Sagan
# The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
# Perfume – Patrick Süskind
# Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
# White Noise – Don DeLillo
# Queer – William Burroughs
# Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
# Legend – David Gemmell
# Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
# The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
# The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
# The Lover – Marguerite Duras
# Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
# The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
# Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
# The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
# Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
# Neuromancer – William Gibson
# Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
# Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
# Shame – Salman Rushdie
# Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
# Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
# La Brava – Elmore Leonard
# Waterland – Graham Swift
# The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
# The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
# The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
# The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
# If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
# A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
# The Color Purple – Alice Walker
# Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
# A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
# Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
# The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
# The Newton Letter – John Banville
# On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
# Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
# The Names – Don DeLillo
# Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
# Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
# The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
# July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
# Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
# Broken April – Ismail Kadare
# Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
# Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
# Rites of Passage – William Golding
# Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
# Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
# City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
# The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
# The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
# Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
# Shikasta – Doris Lessing
# A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
# Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
# The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
# If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
# The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
# The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
# The World According to Garp – John Irving
# Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
# The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
# The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
# Yes – Thomas Bernhard
# The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
# In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
# The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
# Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
# The Shining – Stephen King
# Dispatches – Michael Herr
# Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
# Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
# The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
# The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
# Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
# The Public Burning – Robert Coover
# Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
# Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
# Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
# Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
# Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
# W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
# A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
# Grimus – Salman Rushdie
# The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
# Fateless – Imre Kertész
# Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
# High Rise – J.G. Ballard
# Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
# Dead Babies – Martin Amis
# Correction – Thomas Bernhard
# Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
# The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
# Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
# The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
# Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
# Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
# Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
# A Question of Power – Bessie Head
# The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
# The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
# Crash – J.G. Ballard
# The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
# Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
# The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
# Sula – Toni Morrison
# Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
# The Breast – Philip Roth
# The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
# G – John Berger
# Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
# House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
# In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
# The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
# Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
# Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
# The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
# Rabbit Redux – John Updike
# The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
# The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
# The Ogre – Michael Tournier
# The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
# Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
# I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
# Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
# Troubles – J.G. Farrell
# Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
# The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
# Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
# Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
# Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
# Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
# The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
# The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
# Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
# The Godfather – Mario Puzo
# Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
# Them – Joyce Carol Oates
# A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
# Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
# Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
# The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
# Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
# Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
# Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
# Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
# The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
# In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
# A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
# The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
# Chocky – John Wyndham
# The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
# The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
# One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
# The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
# Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
# The Joke – Milan Kundera
# No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
# The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
# A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
# The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
# Trawl – B.S. Johnson
# In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
# The Magus – John Fowles
# The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
# Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
# Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
# The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
# Things – Georges Perec
# The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
# August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
# God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
# Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
# The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
# Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
# Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
# Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
# Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
# The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
# Herzog – Saul Bellow
# V. – Thomas Pynchon
# Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
# The Graduate – Charles Webb
# Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
# The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
# The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
# Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
# The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
# One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
# The Collector – John Fowles
# One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
# A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
# Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
# The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
# The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
# Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
# Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
# The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
# Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
# Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
# A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
# Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
# Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
# Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
# The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
# Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
# The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
# How It Is – Samuel Beckett
# Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
# The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
# To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
# Rabbit, Run – John Updike
# Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
# Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
# Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
# Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
# The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
# Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
# Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
# Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
# Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
# Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
# The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
# Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
# A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
# The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
# Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
# Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
# Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
# Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
# The End of the Road – John Barth
# The Once and Future King – T.H. White
# The Bell – Iris Murdoch
# Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
# Voss – Patrick White
# The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
# Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
# Homo Faber – Max Frisch
# On the Road – Jack Kerouac
# Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
# Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
# The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
# Justine – Lawrence Durrell
# Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
# The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
# The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
# Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
# The Floating Opera – John Barth
# The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
# The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
# Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
# A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
# The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
# The Quiet American – Graham Greene
# The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
# The Recognitions – William Gaddis
# The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
# Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
# I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
# Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
# The Story of O – Pauline Réage
# A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
# Lord of the Flies – William Golding
# Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
# The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
# The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
# The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
# Watt – Samuel Beckett
# Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
# Junkie – William Burroughs
# The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
# Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
# Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
# The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
# Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
# The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
# Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
# The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
# Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
# Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
# Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
# Foundation – Isaac Asimov
# The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
# The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
# The Rebel – Albert Camus
# Molloy – Samuel Beckett
# The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
# The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
# The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
# The Third Man – Graham Greene
# The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
# Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
# The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
# I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
# The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
# The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
# Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
# The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
# The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
# Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
# The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
# Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
# All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
# Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
# Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
# The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
# Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
# Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
# The Victim – Saul Bellow
# Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
# If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
# Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
# The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
# The Plague – Albert Camus
# Back – Henry Green
# Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
# The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
# Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
# Animal Farm – George Orwell
# Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
# The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
# Loving – Henry Green
# Arcanum 17 – André Breton
# Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
# The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
# Transit – Anna Seghers
# Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
# Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
# The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
# Caught – Henry Green
# The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
# Embers – Sandor Marai
# Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
# The Outsider – Albert Camus
# In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
# The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
# The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
# Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
# Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
# The Hamlet – William Faulkner
# Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
# For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
# Native Son – Richard Wright
# The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
# The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
# Party Going – Henry Green
# The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
# Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
# At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
# Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
# Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
# Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
# Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
# The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
# After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
# Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
# Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
# Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
# Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
# Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
# U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
# Murphy – Samuel Beckett
# Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
# Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
# The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
# The Years – Virginia Woolf
# In Parenthesis – David Jones
# The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
# Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
# To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
# Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
# Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
# The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
# Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
# Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
# Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
# Absalom, Absalom – William Faulkner
# At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
# Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
# Independent People – Halldór Laxness
# Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
# The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
# They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
# The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
# England Made Me – Graham Greene
# Burmese Days – George Orwell
# The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
# Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
# Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
# The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
# Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
# A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
# Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
# Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
# Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
# Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
# Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
# The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
# Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
# A Day Off – Storm Jameson
# The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
# A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
# Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
# Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
# Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
# To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
# The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
# The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
# The Waves – Virginia Woolf
# The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
# Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
# The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
# Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
# Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
# The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
# Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
# Passing – Nella Larsen
# A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
# Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
# Living – Henry Green
# The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
# All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
# Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
# The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
# Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
# The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
# Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
# Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
# Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
# Orlando – Virginia Woolf
# Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
# The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
# The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
# Quartet – Jean Rhys
# Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
# Quicksand – Nella Larsen
# Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
# Nadja – André Breton
# Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
# Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
# To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
# Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
# Amerika – Franz Kafka
# The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
# Blindness – Henry Green
# The Castle – Franz Kafka
# The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
# The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
# One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
# The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
# The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
# Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
# Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
# The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
# The Counterfeiters – André Gide
# The Trial – Franz Kafka
# The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
# The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
# Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
# The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
# The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
# We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
# A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
# The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
# Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
# Cane – Jean Toomer
# Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
# Amok – Stefan Zweig
# The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
# The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
# Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
# Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
# The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
# Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
# The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
# Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
# Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
# Ulysses – James Joyce
# The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
# Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
# The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
# Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
# Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
# Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
# Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
# The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
# The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
# Summer – Edith Wharton
# Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
# Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
# A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
# Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
# Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
# The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
# The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
# Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
# The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
# The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
# Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
# Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
# Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
# Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
# The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
# Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
# Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
# The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
# Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
# Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
# Howards End – E.M. Forster
# Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
# Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
# Martin Eden – Jack London
# Strait is the Gate – André Gide
# Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
# The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
# A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
# The Iron Heel – Jack London
# The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
# The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
# Mother – Maxim Gorky
# The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
# The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
# Young Törless – Robert Musil
# The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
# The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
# Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
# Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
# Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
# Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
# The Golden Bowl – Henry James
# The Ambassadors – Henry James
# The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
# The Immoralist – André Gide
# The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
# Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
# The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
# Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
# Kim – Rudyard Kipling
# Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
# Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
#
# 1800s
# Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
# The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
# The Awakening – Kate Chopin
# The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
# The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
# The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
# What Maisie Knew – Henry James
# Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
# Dracula – Bram Stoker
# Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
# The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
# The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
# Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
# Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
# The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
# The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
# Born in Exile – George Gissing
# Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
# The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
# News from Nowhere – William Morris
# New Grub Street – George Gissing
# Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
# Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
# The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
# The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
# La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
# By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
# Hunger – Knut Hamsun
# The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
# Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
# Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
# The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
# The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
# She – H. Rider Haggard
# The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
# The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
# Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
# King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
# Germinal – Émile Zola
# The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
# Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
# Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
# Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
# The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
# A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
# Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
# The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
# The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
# Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
# Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
# Nana – Émile Zola
# The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Red Room – August Strindberg
# Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
# Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
# Drunkard – Émile Zola
# Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
# Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
# The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
# The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
# Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
# The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
# Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
# In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
# The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# Erewhon – Samuel Butler
# Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
# Middlemarch – George Eliot
# Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
# King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
# He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
# War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
# Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
# Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
# Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
# The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
# Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
# Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
# The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
# Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
# Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
# Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
# Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
# Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
# The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
# Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
# Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
# Silas Marner – George Eliot
# Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
# On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
# Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
# The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
# The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
# The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# Max Havelaar – Multatuli
# A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
# Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
# Adam Bede – George Eliot
# Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
# North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
# Hard Times – Charles Dickens
# Walden – Henry David Thoreau
# Bleak House – Charles Dickens
# Villette – Charlotte Brontë
# Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
# Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
# The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
# The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
# David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
# Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
# Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
# The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
# Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
# Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
# Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
# Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
# The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
# La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
# The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
# The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
# Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
# The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
# Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
# A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
# Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
# The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
# The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
# The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
# Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
# The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
# Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
# Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
# The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
# The Red and the Black – Stendhal
# The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
# Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
# The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
# The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
# Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
# The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
# Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
# Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
# Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
# Persuasion – Jane Austen
# Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
# Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
# Emma – Jane Austen
# Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
# Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
# The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
# Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
# Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
#
# 1700s
# Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
# The Nun – Denis Diderot
# Camilla – Fanny Burney
# The Monk – M.G. Lewis
# Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
# The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
# The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
# Justine – Marquis de Sade
# Vathek – William Beckford
# The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
# Cecilia – Fanny Burney
# Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
# Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Evelina – Fanny Burney
# The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
# Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
# The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
# A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
# Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
# The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
# The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
# Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
# Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
# Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
# Candide – Voltaire
# The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
# Amelia – Henry Fielding
# Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
# Fanny Hill – John Cleland
# Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
# Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
# Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
# Pamela – Samuel Richardson
# Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
# Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
# Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
# A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
# Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
# Roxana – Daniel Defoe
# Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
# Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
# Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
# A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
#
# Pre-1700
# Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
# The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
# The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
# Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
# The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
# Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
# Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
# The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
# The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
# Aithiopika – Heliodorus
# Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
# Metamorphoses – Ovid
# Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus
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