Two linked essays presented as letters that question the place of race and religion in American life.

A scientific investigation and public argument about the ecological and human harms of widespread synthetic pesticide use, with sustained attention to DDT.

Billy Pilgrim, an American who served in World War II, experiences a fractured relationship with time after the war. The novel follows episodes of his life — including his capture and survival of the Allied firebombing of Dresden — presented out of chronological order.

A young woman in the early 1950s experiences an increasingly severe depression while navigating academic opportunity, social expectations, and the pressures of adulthood. The novel presents her interior perspective as she struggles with identity, career choices, and the medical responses to her mental illness.

A small ensemble of visitors gather at a large, notorious house where unsettling occurrences and interpersonal fractures intensify around the building itself.

An American living in Paris confronts his feelings for another man while his fiancée is away, forcing him to face desire, social expectations, and his own self-image.

Set in a Midwestern town during the Depression era, the novel follows a young Black girl who internalizes local and cultural standards of beauty and longs for blue eyes as a way to be seen as lovable.

A human envoy arrives on a frigid, isolated planet to persuade its nations to join an interstellar confederation, but finds himself hampered by profound cultural and sexual differences.

A Wizard of Earthsea follows Ged, a gifted youth from the island of Gont, whose early talent leads him to a school of wizardry. After a duel goes wrong and releases a dangerous shadow, he must leave home and undertake a solitary quest to confront and undo the harm he caused.