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Creative written works and worlds

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The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl

The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl is an 1895 epistolary novel by the Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, told in letters between a hapless speculator and his wife.

The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom

The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom (Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki) is a 1776 novel by the Polish Enlightenment writer Ignacy Krasicki, generally regarded as the first Polish novel.

The Adventures of Ngunga

The Adventures of Ngunga (As aventuras de Ngunga) is a short 1973 novel by the Angolan writer Pepetela, his first book, about an orphan boy who wants to become a guerrilla.

The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle is a picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett, published in London in 1751, following the misadventures of the egotistical Peregrine Pickle.

The Adventures of Pinocchio

The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio) is Carlo Collodi's 1883 children's novel, first serialized as Storia di un burattino in Giornale per i bambini from July 1881, extended after reader protests, translated into 669 versions across 192 languages.

The Adventures of Roderick Random

The Adventures of Roderick Random is a picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett, published in 1748, whose hero, a cast-out Scotsman, is pressed into the Royal Navy.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) is Arthur Conan Doyle's first Holmes short-story collection: twelve tales from the Strand Magazine, July 1891 to June 1892, illustrated by Sidney Paget, opening with A Scandal in Bohemia.

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book is J.R.R. Tolkien's 1962 collection of 16 poems, illustrated by Pauline Baynes, framed as hobbit verses from the Red Book of Westmarch, distinct from the 1934 Oxford Magazine title poem.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain's 1876 novel about a mischievous Mississippi River boy in Hannibal, Missouri; predecessor to Huckleberry Finn, illustrated by True W. Williams, an American childhood classic.

The Afrikaans novel tradition

The Afrikaans novel tradition is long-form fiction in Afrikaans since the late nineteenth century, beginning with Di koningin fan Skeba (1898) and spanning farm, historical, crime, and romance genres.

The Age of Goodbyes

The Age of Goodbyes is the English translation of 告别的年代, the first novel by Malaysian Chinese writer Li Zishu, a poetic, magical-realist treatment of Malaysian Chinese history translated by YZ Chin.

The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton's 1920 novel of 1870s New York high society, following Newland Archer's love triangle with May Welland and Ellen Olenska; it won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, making Wharton the first woman to win it.

The AI Con

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, 2025 book by linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna arguing AI is a marketing term, critiquing hype, labor harms, and data theft; also known as a skeptical counterpoint to AI Snake Oil.

The Alchemist (novel)

The Alchemist (O Alquimista), Paulo Coelho's 1988 allegorical novel about Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd seeking treasure at the Egyptian pyramids; first printing of 900 copies, later over 65 million sold and a Guinness record for most translations by a living author.

The Aleph (short story)

The Aleph (El Aleph) is Jorge Luis Borges's 1945 short story, published in Sur and collected in 1949, about a point in a Buenos Aires cellar containing every point of the universe simultaneously, seen by the narrator Borges in his dead love Beatriz Viterbo's house.

The Alienist

The Alienist is Caleb Carr's 1994 historical crime novel set in 1896 New York, in which Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, police reporter John Schuyler Moore, and Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt profile a serial killer of boy prostitutes; adapted by TNT in 2018.

The Alienist (TV series)

The Alienist is a TNT period psychological thriller (2018–2020) adapted from Caleb Carr's 1994 novel, starring Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning as investigators hunting a serial killer in 1896 New York; season 2 was Angel of Darkness.

The Alliterative Morte Arthure

The Alliterative Morte Arthure is an anonymous Middle English poem of 4,346 alliterative lines, composed around 1400, telling of Arthur's war against Rome and his fall through Mordred's treachery.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is Michael Chabon's 2000 historical novel about two Jewish cousins who create a hit superhero comic in New York.

The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man is Marvel's flagship Spider-Man comic series, launched March 1963 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko after Amazing Fantasy #15, running #1–441 to 1998 with later relaunches, and also the name of the 2012 Andrew Garfield film.

The Ambassadors (novel)

Henry James's 1903 novel The Ambassadors, one of his three late masterpieces: aging envoy Lambert Strether, sent from Woollett, Massachusetts to retrieve Chad Newsome from Paris, instead learns to "live all you can." Notable for its single-focus narration and its famous printing error swapping chapters 28 and 29.

The Amber Spyglass

The Amber Spyglass is Philip Pullman's 2000 concluding volume of His Dark Materials, following Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry as Mary Malone builds the Dust-seeing amber spyglass; first children's novel longlisted for the Booker Prize and 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year winner.

The American Scholar

The American Scholar is an address by Ralph Waldo Emerson, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard in 1837, calling for American intellectual and cultural independence from Europe.

The Amory Wars

The Amory Wars is a science fiction space opera by Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez, told through the band's concept albums and comics set in Heaven's Fence, 78 planets linked by the Keywork, concluding with the No World for Tomorrow comic series in 2025.

The Anarchist Cookbook

The Anarchist Cookbook, William Powell's 1971 Lyle Stuart-published manual of explosives, weapons, and drug instructions written at 19 as Vietnam War protest; over 2 million copies sold, banned or restricted in several countries, and repudiated by its author.

The Anatomy of Evil

The Anatomy of Evil is Michael H. Stone's 2009 Prometheus Books forensic-psychiatry study of violent criminals, presenting his 22-level Gradations of Evil scale (Whitman 8, Manson 15, Bundy 17) based on 600+ cases, distinct from Will Thomas's 2015 novel of the same title.

The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy is an encyclopedic study of melancholy by the English scholar Robert Burton, published in Oxford in 1621 under the pseudonym Democritus Junior.

The Ancient History of the Maori

The Ancient History of the Maori is a six-volume bilingual collection of Māori mythology, songs, and traditions compiled by New Zealand ethnographer John White, published 1887–1890.

The Ancient Ship

The Ancient Ship (Guchuan, 古船) is a 1986 novel by Chinese writer Zhang Wei, following three families in the fictional town of Wali through forty years of rural history.

The Angel in the House

The Angel in the House is a narrative poem by Coventry Patmore celebrating love and marriage; its title became shorthand for the Victorian ideal of the self-sacrificing wife.