The Hero With a Thousand Faces is a collection of theoretical essays exploring the idea of the hero in literature, myth, and other media. The book deals with the concept of heroism, with the idea of the Hero's Journey, and with various other staples of Western media. Its driving thesis is the idea of the archetypal hero as a repeating character, many iterations of essentially identical figures in varied settings.
Death of a Red Heroine is the story of inspector Chen Cao, a Shanghai police officer investigating the murder of a Communist Party model worker, Guan Hongying. Chen suspects that the son of a powerful Party member is to blame, but bureaucratic obstacles and political corruption hinder his investigation until finally the preponderance of evidence condemns the suspect. The novel is both a murder mystery and an investigation of the political climate of post-revolutionary China.
A White Heron and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by Sarah Orne Jewett. The title story follows the struggle of a girl named Sylvia, transplanted suddenly from her life in the city to the marshy tranquility of her grandmother's country home. Sylvia sees a rare white heron and is later asked to locate it by a hunter looking to kill and stuff it. He promises friendship and money, but Sylvia ultimately chooses to protect the bird.
A Hero of Our Time is the story of Pechorin, a Byronic Russian military officer serving in the Caucuses and later recuperating in a mountain town. Pechorin is intelligent, handsome, and magnetic but acts arbitrarily and without understanding his own decisions. He is frequently violent, scorns those who seek his affection or approval, and seems incapable of connecting with those closest to him. Eventually Pechorin kills his friend Grushnitsky in a meaningless duel and, his spirit broken, dies several uneventful years later.