1. LITTLE HOUSE ON THE JUTTING PRECIPICE
by Laura Ingalls Wilder | Specific House
The Ingalls family relocates yet again, this time to a homestead south of Bryce Canyon, where they toil through triumph and tragedy as they each successively plummet to their deaths.
2. THE INSECTS AND THE HUMIDITY
by William Faulkner | Yoknapatawpha County Historical Society
Written largely at the behest of Universal Studios president William Goetz in an early attempt at what would come to be known as “synergy,” this novel tells the story of Jeremiah Menefee, the last scion of a once powerful family, wasting away his final days in solitude on a decaying plantation, haunted by the ghosts of generations past. But all that changes when Bud Abbott and Lou Costello come to town.
3. HARRY BLACKSTONE
by Charles Dickens | LongWind
Following the death of everyone he has ever met, young Harry has to learn to make his own way while serving time in a Turkish prison, and yada, yada, yada.
4. OF DEITIES OR MORTALS
by Ernest Hemingway | Ivory
Shattered men fall in love with damaged women while dozens of animals die in the process.
5. THE SEPTIC PUMP
by Ayn Rand | Ealing Tertiary
An insufferable douchebag is presented as heroic.
6. INVITATION TO A BETROTHAL
by Vladimir Nabokov | Modern Bookstore
Hoping to discover the true identity of her father, a young bride-to-be invites three possible candidates to her wedding on an island in the Aegean Sea: An agoraphobic chess grandmaster, a bipolar political dissident, and a philandering literature professor. Her hopes for a cathartic revelation, however, are quickly dashed by suicide, sociopathic callousness, and a spiraling descent into madness on the part of her hoped-for father figures.
7. FEAR ME
by Virginia Woolf | Wilmington Thrift Editions
In a pivot towards greater militancy on women's rights, Fear Me shows an author usually known for subtlety and restraint using her three guineas to buy a revolver and embrace a “by any means necessary” philosophy.
8. ADELARD AND HILTRUDE
by J.R.R. Tolkien | Morningstar
The Fourth Age finally gets some love in this erotic thriller about two Hobbits who meet in Annúminas and witness the assassination of an Orc diplomat.
9. SONGS OF AMBIVALENCE
by William Blake | Bartelby
A collection of poems around a central theme, including “The Skunk,” “The Actuary,” and “Little Girl Probably Around Here Somewhere.”
10. RABBIT, ROT
by John Updike | Self & Self
A 603-page description of the title character's decomposition.