The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Steinbeck's Pulit-zer Prize winning novel about migrant farm workers pursuing a happy life that is always just out of reach. During the Great Depression, the Joad family leaves dustbowl Oklahoma for Cali-fornia, where they hope to find a better life.

"The White Quail" (1935) by John Steinbeck, collected in The Long Valley (1938) alongside "The Chrysanthemums." Mary Teller's dream of the perfect garden has such a firm hold on her that she gives all her devotion to it, ignoring even her lonely husband.

"The Snake" (1935), a strange story by Stein-beck, collected in The Long Valley (1938). A woman enters an animal laboratory, buys a male snake, and asks to see it eat a rat. Though critics have interpreted the character differently, Stein-beck claimed "I wrote it just as it happened. I don't know what it means."

Winesburg, Ohio (1919), a...