In this 1950s courtroom classic based on a real case, a small-town Michigan lawyer takes on a difficult case against a big-city prosecutor: the defense of a young Army lieutenant accused of murdering the local tavern owner who he believes raped his wife. A gripping, envelope-pushing courtroom potboiler, Anatomy of a Murder was groundbreaking for the frankness of its discussion of sex.

"Published in 1956, Peyton Place became a bestseller and a literary phenomenon. A lurid and gripping story of murder, incest, female desire, and social injustice, it was consumed as avidly by readers as it was condemned by critics and the clergy. Its author, Grace Metalious, a housewife who grew up in poverty in a New Hampshire mill town and had aspired to be a writer from childhood, loosely based the novels setting, characters, and incidents on real-life...

In the decades spanning the nineteenth century, thousands of women entered the literary marketplace. Twelve of the century's most successful women writers provide the focus for Mary Kelley's landmark study: Maria Cummins, Caroline Howard Gilman, Caroline Lee Hentz, Mary Jane Holmes, Maria McIntosh, Sara Parton, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, E.D.E.N. Southworth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Virginia Terhune, Susan Warner, and Augusta Evans Wilson. These...

Chapters on biology for young readers.

The authors examine the best-selling books of the past 16 years, exploring common thematic threads that resonate with American readers.