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Recommended Reading for the College-Bound

Maxwell Anderson

• Mary of Scotland
  Historical play about Mary Queen of Scots, cousin to Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Anton Chekhov

• The Cherry Orchard
  The story of a group of Russians in the months after the serfs were liberated.

• Three Sisters
  Three orphaned sisters dream of moving to Moscow.

Marc Connelly

• Green Pastures
  Bible stories retold by a group of black schoolchildren.

T.S. Eliot

• The Cocktail Party
  A married couple and their friends entertain an uninvited guest at a cocktail party.

• Murder in the Cathedral
  Henry II of England has Archbishop Thomas Beckett murdered.

Christopher Fry

• The Lady's Not for Burning
  A man who wants to be hanged, and a woman who doesn't, fall in love.

Lillian Hellman

• The Little Foxes
  The members of a southern family scheme and try to outwit each other for financial gain.

Henrik Ibsen

• The Doll's House
  A woman borrows money without her husband's knowledge and has trouble repaying the loan.

• Hedda Gabler
  A woman, bored in her new marriage, encourages a man to commit suicide.

Archibald MacLeish

• J.B.
  A modern retelling of the Book of Job.

Christopher Marlowe

• Doctor Faustus
  A man sells his soul to the Devil in exhange for power and magic.

Arthur Miller

• The Crucible
  The story of the Salem Witch Trials.

• Death of a Salesman
  The last day of Willy Loman's life.

Eugene O'Neill

• Ah, Wilderness!
  A young man, despondent in love, goes to a bar to forget his sorrows.

• The Emperor Jones
  A railway porter becomes ruler of a Caribbean island.

• Mourning Becomes Electra
  A contorted family drama about adultery, murder, revenge and incest.

Edmond Rostand

• Cyrano de Bergerac
  Cyrano helps a friend court the beautiful Roxanne, the woman he loves himself.

William Shakespeare

• Antony and Cleopatra
  Octavius (Caesar Augustus) goes to war in Egypt against his brother-in-law, Mark Antony.

• Hamlet
  A prince suspects his uncle murdered his father in order to become king.

• King Henry IV
  A sequel to Richard II, King Henry IV faces and defeats a rebellion.

• King Henry V
  King Henry V goes to war against France.

• King Lear
  King Lear divides his kingdom amongst his daughter. Two of them, jealous and greedy, stage a rebellion, resulting in tragedy and death for all.

• Macbeth
  Macbeth and his wife commit murder so that Macbeth can become king.

• The Merchant of Venice
  A man borrows money from a moneylender, who depends a pound of his flesh in lieu of cash payment.

• A Midsummer Night's Dream
  A group of young people get lost in the forest where they are enchanted and reenchanted by quarreling fairies.

• Othello
  A man is deceived into thinking his wife has betrayed him and he kills her.

• Richard II
  Richard II is overthrown by the man who becomes Henry IV.

• Romeo and Juliet
  Two children of feuding families fall in love and secretly marry.

• The Tempest
  A magician shipwrecks the King of Naples and a group of noblemen on his private island.

• Twelfth Night
  A woman disguises herself as a male servant in Duke Orsino's household, resulting in much confusion.

George Bernard Shaw

• Arms and the Man
  A young woman shelters a fugitive soldier.

• Caesar and Cleopatra
  Caesar teaches a young Cleopatra to be a better queen.

• Candida
  A marriage is shaken by the arrival of a poet who adores the wife.

• The Devil's Disciple
  A farmer's son returns home to claim his inheritence, and is mistaken for the local preacher and arrested by the British during the American Revolutionary War.

• Man and Superman
  An inverted Don Juan story in which the man is pursued by a relentless woman.

• Pygmalion
  A linguistics expert tutors a poor flower girl in speech and manners so that she can pass as a duchess.

• St. Joan
  Joan of Arc leads France's armies to victory against the English, is tried by the Catholic Church for heresy, and put to death.

Sophocles

• Antigone
  Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, resolves to bury her brother in violation of her king's edict.

• Oedipus Rex
  A disease ravages a country because the murderer of the king is in hiding. Oedipus to find the murderer.

Fat Books for Sophisticated Teen Readers
A list of good books for mature teen readers who like really thick books.

Highschool Fiction
An extensive list of fiction books recommended for preparation for college.

Highschool Non-Fiction
An extensive list of non-fiction books recommended for preparation for college.

Homeschooling Books
Essential reading for anyone who homeschools or who is considering homeschooling.

Homeschooling Magazines
A list of homeschool magazines.

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If any one finds that he never reads serious literature, if all his reading is frothy and trashy, he would do well to try to train himself to like books that the general agreement of cultivated and sound-thinking persons has placed among the classics. - Theodore Roosevelt

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