A criminal feigns insanity and is admitted to a mental hospital, where he challenges the autocratic authority of the head nurse and tries to find the freedom and independence denied him in the outside world. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse Ratched. McMurphy swaggers into...

The Virginian is the quiet, noble foreman of a Wyoming cattle ranch in the 1870s. More comfortable keeping company with his trusted horse than with other people, he nevertheless falls for pretty schoolteacher Molly Wood, who helps him develop an appreciation for Shakespeare, Keats, and the finer things. But when a rival suitor challenges his honor, the Virginian struggles to make his beloved Molly understand the harsh justice of the West.