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Bengali travelogue
A Bengali travelogue (ভ্রমণসাহিত্য, brômon-shahitto, "travel literature") is a first-person account of a journey written in Bengali, running from eighteenth-century pilgrimage accounts to modern narratives.
Beniowski
Beniowski is a digressive poem by the Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki, written between 1840 and 1846, inspired by Byron's Don Juan and modeled on adventurer Maurycy Beniowski.
Benito Cereno
Benito Cereno is an 1855 novella by Herman Melville, serialized in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, in which an American captain boards a Spanish slave ship and misreads its mutiny.
Bennet family
The Bennet family of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813): Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, five daughters at Longbourn, Hertfordshire, whose entailed estate passes to Mr. Collins, driving the marriage plot.
Beorn
Beorn is a skin-changer in Tolkien's The Hobbit, a man who becomes a huge black bear, aids Thorin's company, kills Bolg at the Battle of Five Armies, and founds the Beornings.
Beowulf
Beowulf, the Old English epic of the Geatish hero who fights Grendel, Grendel's mother, and a dragon, survives only in the Nowell Codex (Cotton Vitellius A.xv, ca. 1000), burned in 1731, first printed in 1815, with composition dates debated from the seventh to eleventh century.
Beowulf (hero)
Beowulf, hero of the Old English epic poem Beowulf, is a Geatish warrior who kills Grendel and Grendel's mother and dies slaying a dragon; the 3,182-verse poem survives in one manuscript copied around 1000.
Beren and Lúthien
Beren and Lúthien: Tolkien's First Age love story of the mortal Beren and the Elf-maiden Lúthien who steal a Silmaril from Morgoth; chief of the Silmarillion tales, inspired by Edith Tolkien, collected in the 2017 Christopher Tolkien book.
Berenstain Bears
The Berenstain Bears, created by Stan and Jan Berenstain, are a bestselling American children's book series begun with The Big Honey Hunt in 1962 under Dr. Seuss, featuring Papa, Mama, Brother, Sister, and Honey Bear, later run by son Mike Berenstain.
Berkley Books
Berkley Books is a Penguin Random House imprint under the Penguin Publishing Group, publishing commercial romance, women's fiction, mystery, and science fiction/fantasy by authors such as Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood; acquired by Putnam in 1965, merged with NAL in 2015, and parent of Ace Books and the new Berkley XO imprint.
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), Alfred Döblin's modernist big-city novel about ex-convict Franz Biberkopf in Weimar Berlin, published by S. Fischer, serialized in the Frankfurter Zeitung, famed for montage, compared with Ulysses and Manhattan Transfer.
Berliner Roman
The Berliner Roman, or Berlin novel, is a German novel tradition in which Berlin shapes the plot and acts as a character, central work Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929).
Bernice Summerfield
Bernice Summerfield (Benny), fictional archaeology professor created by Paul Cornell in the 1992 Doctor Who novel Love and War; later led Virgin's Doctor-free New Adventures and Big Finish's first licensed audio range, played by Lisa Bowerman since 1998.
Berzanji
Berzanji (برزنجي), also spelled Barzanji, is a Southeast Asian devotional recitation praising the Prophet Muhammad in rhythmic song, based on an Arabic text by Ja'far al-Barzanji, who died in 1766.
Best Offer Wins
Best Offer Wins is Marisa Kashino's 2025 debut thriller (Celadon Books) about Margo Miyake, a publicist who stalks and blackmails her way toward a not-yet-listed Bethesda dream house after 11 lost bidding wars; a GMA Book Club pick optioned by Hulu.
Bestseller
Bestseller: a product, usually a book, ranking among the top sellers of its period on a published list. Covers list methodologies (NYT surveys, BookScan unit data), thresholds, sales effects, and manipulation controversies.
Beta (The Walking Dead)
Beta is a Whisperer antagonist in The Walking Dead comics and TV series, Alpha's towering second-in-command who hides his face. Comic Beta was an NBA player, killed in issue #173; TV Beta, played by Ryan Hurst, was country singer Half Moon.
Betrayed by Rita Hayworth
Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (La traición de Rita Hayworth) is the 1968 debut novel of Argentine writer Manuel Puig, portraying a small-town boy in the pampas.
Betrothed to My Sister's Ex
Betrothed to My Sister's Ex (ずたぼろ令嬢は姉の元婚約者に溺愛される) is a Japanese romance light novel by Tobirano, adapted into a manga by Chikage Nakakura and a 2025 anime; neglected heroine Marie is betrothed to Count Kyros, who loved her, not her sister.
Bettada Jeeva
Bettada Jeeva (ಬೆಟ್ಟದ ಜೀವ), meaning "Life of the Hills," is a 1943 Kannada novel by K. Shivarama Karanth set in the Western Ghats of South Kanara.
Better Than the Movies
Better Than the Movies (2021) is Lynn Painter's YA rom-com novel about Liz Buxbaum and neighbor Wes Bennett. Known for BookTok success, trope-heavy fake-dating plot, 2024 sequel Nothing Like the Movies, and a Netflix film adaptation with Beatrice Kitsos and David Iacono.
Betty Cooper
Betty Cooper (Elizabeth "Betty" Cooper), Archie Comics' blonde girl-next-door, debuted in Pep Comics #22 (December 1941), vies with Veronica Lodge for Archie Andrews, fronts the Betty (1992-2012) series and the Superteen alter ego, and is played by Lili Reinhart in Riverdale.
Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me (2015) is Ta-Nehisi Coates's nonfiction letter to his teenage son Samori about race and the Black body in America; Spiegel & Grau, 176 pages, National Book Award and Kirkus Prize winner, Pulitzer finalist, adapted for HBO in 2020.
Between Tides
Between Tides (French: Entre les eaux) is a 1973 novel by Congolese writer Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, telling of a priest caught between Christianity and the Congolese rebellion.
Between Two Fires
Between Two Fires is the shared English title of two unrelated novels: a 1937 historical novel by Azerbaijani writer Yusif Vəzir Çəmənzəminli and a 2012 horror fantasy by Christopher Buehlman.
Beverly Marsh
Beverly Marsh (Beverly Rogan) is the only female member of the Losers' Club in Stephen King's 1986 novel It, set in Derry, Maine. Known for her marksmanship, abusive father Al and husband Tom Rogan, and screen portrayals by Annette O'Toole, Sophia Lillis, and Jessica Chastain.
Bevis of Hampton
Bevis of Hampton, also known as Sir Beves of Hamtoun, is a popular Middle English romance of about 1300, adapted from the Anglo-Norman Boeve de Haumtone.
Beyblade (manga)
Beyblade, or Bakuten Shoot Beyblade (爆転シュート ベイブレード), is Takao Aoki's manga serialized in Shogakukan's CoroCoro Comic from August 1999, collected in 14 volumes, adapted into anime and followed by the sequel Rising.
Beyblade Burst (ベイブレードバースト)
Beyblades Burst (ベイブレードバースト) is the third generation of Takara Tomy's customizable battling-top franchise, launched July 2015, and includes a seven-season OLM anime, manga, and Hasbro toy line.
Beyond a Boundary
Beyond a Boundary is a 1963 book by C. L. R. James combining memoir of a Trinidadian boyhood with a social history of West Indian cricket.