A Brief Description: Northanger Abbey, though not the first Jane Austen novel to be published, was the first finished, written approx. 1798-1799. It's more openly a parody of the gothic romance novels that were popular at the time. The heroine is a naive young clergyman's daughter who goes to Bath for the first time, only to fall into the society of unscrupulous fortune-hunters, and in love with the the son of a dark, old house, easily imagined to have closets simply bursting with skeletons.
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Lord of the Rings
A Brief Description: Written by Professor Tolkien between 1937 and 1949, the epic fantasy that all fantasy since then must be measured against, Lord of the Rings follows the hobbit Frodo Baggins as he struggles to destroy the weapon that could only be used by the Dark Lord Sauron, who, while it exists, is threatening to spread his rule over all of Middle-Earth. While he travels on through desperate lands with his companions, who dwindle into one, battles are fought, last stands made, and heroic deeds accomplished to slow the tide only he can stop.
The Aubrey/Maturin novels, or the Master and Commander movie
A Brief Description: Spanning 20 books, the novels follow the adventurous lives of Captain Jack Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Dr. Stephen Maturin. The characters were filmed in 2003 as Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (combining two novels' names but bearing little resemblance to book canon, though lauded by the books' fans). Jack is large, jolly and an excellent leader and tactician; Stephen is small, disagreeable, and an exceptional physician and spy for the British government, despite his Irish-Catalan descent. They share an unlikely friendship and many adventures in exotic locations, as Stephen travels as Jack's on-board surgeon. The novels are much too intelligent and well-researched to be dismissed as just another historical boys' adventure, and they are littered with dark subjects of loss, mass violence, torture and addiction as well as comic episodes and marital mishaps. In all they build a fascinating portrait of an era and life in extreme conditions.