Full AspenCat Catalog

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely...

Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds. It is also the story of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

For Coleridge the plot of Tom Jones was, along with that of Oedipus The King, the most perfect ever constructed. Fielding used all his art and all the craft he had amassed as a successful playwright for the eighteenth-century London stage to tell this hugely entertaining story of a foundling and how he arrives, through sexual misadventures and elaborate disasters, to claim his legitimacy, his fortune, and his true love. Describes the foundling, Tom,...

Professor Godfrey St. Peter is a man in his fifties who has devoted his life to his work, his wife, his garden and his daughters, and achieved success with all of them. But when St. Peter is called on to move to a new, more comortable house, something in him rebels. And although at first theat rebellion consists of nothing more than mild resistance to his family's wishes, it imperceptibly comes to encompass the entire order of his life.

"In his first novel in ten years, Ernest Gaines, the highly acclaimed author of the best-selling The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, brings us a wrenching story of death and identity in a small Cajun Louisiana community in the late 1940s." "A young black named Jefferson is a reluctant party in a shoot-out in a liquor store in which the three other men involved are all killed, including the white store owner. Jefferson, the only survivor, is accused...

Bigger, a young black man in Chicago, kills his first victim in a moment of panic. He then goes on to kill again. The book describes the feelings of freedom and identity Bigger gains from these acts.

Four bumbling members of a nineteenth-century London social club, known as the legendary Pickwick Club, journey to places outside the city and become involved in romantic foibles, danger, and a few legal scrapes.

Baldwin's 1956 novel, his second, was daring for its time, depicting a young man deep into Paris's second expatriate movement following World War II as he grapples with his sexual identity. He is drawn both to his fiance and to a male Italian bartender with whom he begins an affair.

Weaves three stories about 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement park. Eddie meets 5 individuals in heaven each with a story to share, a secret to reveal and a lesson. They have profound meanings for Eddie on the real purpose of his life.

Through his imaginative journey, Alexander discovers how great men become heroes: a tough president has a soft spot for nature, a proud warrior is also the most peaceful, and sometimes, being brave about what makes you different will not only help you break records, but inspire others.