Mark Twain

"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away—to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography."

Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion—to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment"—meant

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The adventures of a boy and a runaway slave as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.

Twain's story of an orphan is often cited as the greatest American novel.

In Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Hank Morgan awakes from a blow to the head only to find that he has been mysteriously transported back in time. It is early medieval England, the time of King Arthur and Hank is taken to the Camelot castle by a Knight of the King's. Ridiculed for his funny manner and dress sense, and sentenced to burn at the stake, Hank recovers through an incredible stroke of luck,

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"From Percival Everett -- a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards -- comes JAMES, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide...