Pynchon's short novel The Crying Lot of 49 (1967) is more direct and readable than Gravity's Rainbow. Its southern California detective story progresses, though, from clarity to disorder.

Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita is the shocking and enthralling story of a professor's illicit relationship with a pre-pubescent girl.

John Keegan's The Second World War (1989) is an authoritative single-volume resource about World War II.

Catch 22 (1961) by Joseph Heller tells the story of a World War II bombardier named Yossarian who struggles to ensure his own survival in a world in which bureaucracies utterly control people's destiny.