American Literature: Three Books Project

Author Study

These authors have been approved for the Three Books Project. (If you have a suggestion for another author, please come and talk to me.) Click on an author's name for a list of titles that have been approved. The list of titles is not complete, so if you know of another one for a certain author, please come and talk to me about it.

Sherman Alexie

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (required as one of the three), Reservation Blues, The Toughest Indian in the World, Indian Killer

James Baldwin

Go Tell it on the Mountain, Nobody Knows my Name, The Fire Next Time, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, If Beale Street Could Talk

Willa Cather

O Pioneers!, My Antonia, The Song of the Lark, One of Ours, Lucy Gayheart

Kate Chopin

The Awakening, Bayou Folk, A Night in Acadie

Stephen Crane

The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure

Louise Erdrich

Love Medicine, Tracks, Four Souls, The Bingo Palace, The Antelope Wife, The Master Butcher's Singing Club, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Painted Drum

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby (required as one of the three), This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night

Ernest J. Gaines

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, A Lesson Before Dying

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Twice-Told Tales, The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, Mosses from an Old Manse, The Marble Faun

Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Men Without Women, A Moveable Feast, collected short stories

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God (required for this author), Moses: Man of the Mountain, Jonah's Gourd Wine, Dust Tracks on a Road (autobiography)

Barbara Kingsolver

The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven (sequel to Bean Trees), Animal Dreams, The Poisonwood Bible, The Prodigal Summer

Jack London

The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, short stories

Bernard Malamud

The Natural, The Assistant, The Magic Barrel, short stories

Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, The Road, No Country for Old Men

Carson McCullers

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye, Clock Without Hands, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

N. Scott Momaday

House Made of Dawn, The Ancient Child, The Way to Rainy Mountain (must be third one)

Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Paradise, Love, Jazz

Tim O'Brien

The Things They Carried (required as one of the three), In the Lake of the Woods, Going After Cacciato, July, July, Northern Lights

Edgar Allan Poe

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (novel), selected short stories

Katherine Anne Porter

Flowering Judas, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Noon Wine, Old Mortality, Ship of Fools

John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, The Winter of our Discontent, In Dubious Battle, novellas can be combined to total 200 pages

Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Sense,The Bonesetter's Daughter

Henry David Thoreau

Walden (required), A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, other essays

Mark Twain

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (required), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Roughing It, Puddn'head Wilson, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, Innocents Abroad, short stories and essays (200 pages' worth),

Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five (required), Player Piano, Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Mother Night

Eudora Welty

The Optimist's Daughter, The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles

Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, collected short stories

Updated August 14, 2011.