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The Beauty (comics)
The Beauty is a comic series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley about an STD that makes people beautiful, then kills them. Published by Image Comics 2015-2021, relaunched by Ignition Press in 2025, adapted for FX by Ryan Murphy in 2026.
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is Ayi Kwei Armah's first novel, published in 1968, following an unnamed railway clerk through the corruption of postcolonial Ghana.
The Bedbug
The Bedbug (Клоп) is a satirical two-part play by Vladimir Mayakovsky, premiered at Vsevolod Meyerhold's State Theatre in Moscow in 1929 with sets by Rodchenko and music by Shostakovich.
The Beggar
The Beggar (al-Shahhādh, الشحاذ) is a 1965 novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz following Omar al-Hamzawi, a former revolutionary who sacrifices work and family in his search for meaning in 1950s Cairo.
The Beggars' Strike
The Beggars' Strike (La Grève des bàttu) is a 1979 French-language novel by Senegalese writer Aminata Sow Fall, in which expelled beggars go on strike.
The Beginning After the End
The Beginning After the End (TBATE) is an American action-fantasy web novel and webcomic by Brandon Lee (TurtleMe, Tae Ha Lee) on Tapas since 2017, about King Grey reincarnated as Arthur Leywin; its Studio A-Cat anime premiered April 2, 2025 on Crunchyroll, the first American web novel/comic anime adaptation.
The Beginning and the End
The Beginning and the End (بداية ونهاية) is a 1949 novel by Naguib Mahfouz tracing the collapse of a poor Cairo family after the death of its breadwinner.
The Beguiled (novel)
The Beguiled (A Painted Devil) is Thomas Cullinan's 1966 Southern Gothic novel, published by Horizon Press, in which wounded Union soldier John McBurney disrupts the Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies during the Civil War; adapted to film by Siegel in 1971 and Coppola in 2017.
The Belgariad
The Belgariad, David Eddings' five-volume epic fantasy series (Del Rey, 1982-1984, with uncredited co-author Leigh Eddings), follows farm boy Garion's quest for the stolen Orb of Aldur against the god Torak; followed by The Malloreon.
The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, following Esther Greenwood's mental health crisis in 1953; republished under Plath's name in 1966 and in the US in 1971.
The Belly of the Atlantic
The Belly of the Atlantic (Le ventre de l'Atlantique) is a 2003 novel by Senegalese writer Fatou Diome, contrasting emigrant dreams with migrant reality in France.
The Best American Short Stories
The Best American Short Stories (BASS) is an annual anthology series, founded in 1915 by Edward J. O'Brien, collecting the year's best American and Canadian magazine short fiction; since 1978 a rotating guest editor selects about 20 stories from a series editor's shortlist, published by Houghton Mifflin, then Mariner Books.
The Bet (Пари") (short story)
Chekhov's short story The Bet (Пари, first titled Сказка), written late December 1888 and published 1 January 1889 in Novoye Vremya: a banker bets two million rubles that a lawyer cannot endure fifteen years of solitary confinement; revised and retitled in 1901.
The Betrothal in Santo Domingo
The Betrothal in Santo Domingo (Die Verlobung in St. Domingo) is an 1811 novella by Heinrich von Kleist set in Saint-Domingue in 1803 during the Haitian Revolution.
The Betrothed
The Betrothed (I promessi sposi), Alessandro Manzoni's historical novel set in 17th-century Spanish-ruled Lombardy; first published 1827 (Ventisettana), definitive 1840–1842 Quarantana edition; founded the modern Italian novel.
The BFG
The BFG is Roald Dahl's 1982 children's fantasy novel, illustrated by Quentin Blake, about orphan Sophie and a dream-catching vegetarian giant; adapted as a 1989 animated film and Spielberg's 2016 live-action film.
The Big Four (novel)
The Big Four (1927) by Agatha Christie is the fifth Hercule Poirot novel, a fix-up of twelve 1924 Sketch serials in which Poirot battles a world-dominating conspiracy led by Li Chang Yen; Christie called it 'that rotten book'.
The Big House
The Big House (La grande maison; الدار الكبيرة) is a 1952 novel by the Algerian writer Mohammed Dib, the first volume of his Algérie trilogy about colonial Tlemcen.
The Big Read
The Big Read was a 2003 BBC survey of the UK's best-loved novel, drawing over 750,000 votes and won by Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep: Raymond Chandler's 1939 debut novel and first Philip Marlowe detective story, published by Knopf, adapted by Howard Hawks in 1946 with Bogart and Bacall; famous for its tangled plot and the unexplained chauffeur murder.
The Big Water
The Big Water (Macedonian: Golemata voda) is a 1971 lyrical novel by the Macedonian writer Živko Čingo, narrated through the orphan Lem Nikodinovski in a postwar home for war orphans.
The Bird of Time
The Bird of Time is a 1912 poetry collection by the Indian poet Sarojini Naidu, her second book of verse, containing 46 poems and including "In the Bazaars of Hyderabad".
The Birds (story)
The Birds (story): Daphne du Maurier's 1952 short story from The Apple Tree, in which birds attack humans in Cornwall; protagonist Nat Hocken; source of Hitchcock's 1963 film set in Bodega Bay.
The Black Castle of Olshany
The Black Castle of Olshany (Чорны замак Альшанскі) is a historical detective novel by Uladzimir Karatkievich, finished in 1979 and awarded the Yakub Kolas State Prize in 1984.
The Black Cat (short story)
Poe's 1843 short story "The Black Cat," first printed in the United States Saturday Post: a condemned narrator's confession of animal cruelty, his wife's murder, and the entombed body betrayed by a cat's wail; known for its unreliable narrator and Pluto.
The Black Company
The Black Company is Glen Cook's military fantasy series begun in 1984, narrated by the Annalist Croaker of the last Free Company of Khatovar. Ten original novels through Soldiers Live (2000), the 2018 interquel Port of Shadows, and the 2025 A Pitiless Rain arc; foundational to grimdark.
The Black Council
The Black Council (Chorna rada) is a historical novel by Panteleimon Kulish, published in 1857 and recognized as the first historical novel in the Ukrainian language.
The Black Docker
The Black Docker (Le Docker noir) is the 1956 first novel of Senegalese writer Ousmane Sembène, drawing on his own dock work in Marseille to portray race, labor, and colonial injustice in France.
The Black Heralds
The Black Heralds (Los heraldos negros) is the first poetry collection of the Peruvian poet César Vallejo, printed in Lima in 1918 and often dated 1919.
The Black Insider
The Black Insider is a posthumously published 1990 novella by Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera, following a narrator through exile in England during a chaotic, purposeless war.