Introduction                                       xi
    When Lightning Strikes
      Anna Karenina                                3  (4)
          Leo Tolstoy
      Around the World in Eighty Days              7  (4)
          Jules Verne
      Treasure Island                              11 (4)
          Robert Louis Stevenson
      The Sound and the Fury                       15 (4)
          William Faulkner
      The Hobbit, or There and Back Again          19 (5)
          J.R.R. Tolkien
      Animal Farm                                  24 (5)
          George Orwell
      The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe         29 (4)
          C. S. Lewis
      Charlotte's Web                              33 (4)
          E. B. White
      Catch-22                                     37 (4)
          Joseph Heller
      One Hundred Years of Solitude                41 (6)
          Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    In the Telling
      Frankenstein                                 47 (4)
          Mary Shelley
      "Rip Van Winkle"                             51 (4)
          Washington Irving
      Alice's Adventures in Wonderland             55 (4)
          Lewis Carroll
      The Wonderful Wizard of Oz                   59 (5)
          L. Frank Baum
      The Tale of Peter Rabbit                     64 (3)
          Beatrix Potter
      The Wind in the Willows                      67 (4)
          Kenneth Grahame
      Winnie-the-Pooh                              71 (4)
          A. A. Milne
      Lord of the Flies                            75 (6)
          William Golding
    Catch Me If You Can
      Pride and Prejudice                          81 (4)
          Jane Austen
      "The Raven"                                  85 (4)
          Edgar Allan Poe
      The Adventures of Tom Sawyer                 89 (5)
          Mark Twain
      Sherlock Holmes                              94 (5)
          Arthur Conan Doyle
      Peter and Wendy                              99 (4)
          J. M. Barrie
      The Great Gatsby                             103(5)
          F. Scott Fitzgerald
      Mrs. Dalloway                                108(5)
          Virginia Woolf
      The Old Man and the Sea                      113(4)
          Ernest Hemingway
      Doctor Zhivago                               117(6)
          Boris Pasternak
    These Mean Streets
      Don Quixote                                  123(4)
          Miguel de Cervantes
      The Count of Monte Cristo                    127(4)
          Alexandre Dumas
      Crime and Punishment                         131(4)
          Fyodor Dostoevsky
      Naked Lunch                                  135(5)
          William S. Burroughs
      To Kill a Mockingbird                        140(5)
          Harper Lee
      In Cold Blood                                145(4)
          Truman Capote
      The Outsiders                                149(4)
          S. E. Hinton
      Slaughterhouse-Five                          153(6)
          Kurt Vonnegut
    The Great Chase
      Jane Eyre                                    159(4)
          Charlotte Bronte
      Moby-Dick                                    163(4)
          Herman Melville
      Heart of Darkness                            167(4)
          Joseph Conrad
      The Call of the Wild                         171(4)
          Jack London
      The Magic Mountain                           175(3)
          Thomas Mann
      The Little Prince                            178(5)
          Antoine de Saint-Exupery
      On the Road                                  183(6)
          Jack Kerouac
    On The Job
      Anne of Green Gables                         189(4)
          L. M. Montgomery
      The Phantom of the Opera                     193(3)
          Gaston Leroux
      Red Harvest                                  196(3)
          Dashiell Hammett
      Gone with the Wind                           199(4)
          Margaret Mitchell
      Of Mice and Men                              203(4)
          John Steinbeck
      Casino Royale                                207(4)
          Ian Fleming
      One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest              211(4)
          Ken Kesey
      The Bell Jar                                 215(4)
          Sylvia Plath
Sources                                            219(14)
Acknowledgments                                    233