"Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of the boys and their world. A bestseller for more than fifty years, A Separate Peace is...

A guide to reading "A Separate Peace" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.

Stunned by his mother's recent death and appalled by the way his father sleepwalks through life, Jerry Renault, a New England high school student, ponders the poster in his locker-Do I dare disturb the universe? Part of his universe is Archie Costello, leader of a secret school society-the Virgils-and master of intimidation. Archie himself is intimidated by a cool, ambitious teacher into having the Virgils spearhead the annual fund-raising event-a...

World War II rages overseas, the prestigious Devon prep school holds a summer session for boys trying to graduate before they are drafted. Among the students are two unlikely new roommates - Gene, a quiet, introspective bookworm; and Finny, a carefree and wildly popular athlete. Charmed by Finny, Gene joins him for a series of exciting escapades. But when Gene's grades decline, he suspects that Finny secretly wants him to fail. Fueled by anger and...

"In 2001, The Little Bookroom published Truman Capote's long-out-of-print homage to Brooklyn, A House in the Heights. In 2014, more than fifty years after they were taken, the original photographs commissioned to illustrate the piece have been discovered by the photographer's son. Also found among the negatives were portraits of Capote taken on that same day; none of the photos have ever been published. Now, in a new edition with a new title, Brooklyn...