1981

Zen: The Religion of the Samurai, a work by Italian esoteric writer Julius Evola. Published in 1981 by Fondazione Julius Evola; English translation by Holmes Publishing Group, 1993.

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa is a World War II memoir by Eugene Sledge, a United States Marine. Since its first publication in 1981, With the Old Breed has been recognized as one of the best first-hand accounts of combat in the Pacific during World War II. The memoir is based on notes Sledge kept tucked away in a pocket-sized Bible he carried with him during battles.

The Well-Tempered Critic: One man's view of the theatre and letters in Canada is a collection of essays by Canadian novelist and journalist Robertson Davies. The collection was edited by Judith Skelton Grant and published by McClelland and Stewart in 1981.

A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers is a children's picture book written by Nancy Willard and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen, published by Harcourt Brace in 1981. Next year Willard won the annual Newbery Medal and the Provensens were one runner-up for the Caldecott Medal from the professional children's librarians. William Blake's Inn remains the only Newbery-winning book that is also a "Caldecott Honor Book".

Visions of the Universe (ISBN 978-0939540013) is a book written by Kazuaki Iwasaki and Isaac Asimov in 1981.

The Ultimate Resource is a 1981 book written by Julian Lincoln Simon challenging the notion that humanity was running out of natural resources. It was revised in 1996 as The Ultimate Resource 2.

True Stories is a collection of poetry by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1981. The collection is dedicated to poet Carolyn Forché with whom Atwood had discussed her trip to El Salvador as a member of Amnesty International, and the poems both directly and indirectly discuss her views regarding human rights in third-world nations.

Treehorn's Treasure is a book by Florence Parry Heide, illustrated by Edward Gorey and first published in 1981. It belongs to the same series as The Shrinking of Treehorn (1971). In Treehorn's Treasure, the main character Treehorn discovers that money does in fact grow on trees - his tree!

A Treatise on the Family is a book by Nobel-winning economist Gary Becker.

Thy Neighbor's Wife is a non-fiction book by Gay Talese, published in 1981 and updated in 2009.

The Theory of Communicative Action (German: Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns) is a 1981 book by Jürgen Habermas, in which he continues his project set out in On the Logic of the Social Sciences of finding a way to ground "the social sciences in a theory of language." The two volumes are Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung), in which Habermas establishes a concept of communicative rationality, and Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft), in which Habermas creates the two level concept of society and lays out the critical theory for modernity. After writing The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas expanded upon the theory of communicative action by using it as the basis of his theory of morality, democracy, and law. The work was the subject of a collection of critical essays published in 1986, has inspired many responses by social theorists and philosophers, and in 1998 was listed by the International Sociological Association as the eighth most important sociological book of the 20th century.

The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism (ISBN 0030506611) is a 1981 book by Claire Sterling, published by Henry Holt & Company, which argued that the USSR was using terrorists as a proxy force.

The Sun Shines Bright is a collection of seventeen nonfiction science essays written by Isaac Asimov. It was the fifteenth of a series of books collecting essays from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was first published by Doubleday & Company in 1981.

The Soul of a New Machine is a non-fiction book written by Tracy Kidder and published in 1981. It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous pressure. The machine was launched in 1980 as the Data General Eclipse MV/8000. The book won the 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction and a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

Some Desperate Glory is the diary of a British officer (Edwin Campion Vaughan), written during the first eight months of 1917 while he was deployed near the Cambrai sector and then moved up in late July to Ypres at the start of the Battle of Passchendaele. The diary was published posthumously in 1981 by Henry Holt and Company. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2006, James J. Cramer cites Some Desperate Glory as one of the five best books on war: "Vaughan describes the screams of the wounded who had sought refuge in the freshly gouged holes only to find themselves slowly drowning as rain fell and the water level rose. A relentlessly stark account of the war's bloodiest, most futile battle."

Social Studies is a 1981 bestselling collection of comedic essays by writer Fran Lebowitz.

Sixty Stories collects sixty of Donald Barthelme's short stories, several of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. The book was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1981.

Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard seeking to examine the relationships among reality, symbols, and society.

The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube by James G. Nourse is a book that was published in 1981. The book explains how to solve the Rubik's Cube. Most of the solutions to Rubik's Cube that can be found on the internet today seem to be based at least in part on the solution in this book. The book's solution to the cube is considered to be one of the easiest, simplest, and most straightforward solutions to solving the cube. However, this ease and simpliciy involves a tradeoff in that this solution takes longer than other solutions that are harder and more complex.

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is a gamebook published by Sleuth Publications in 1981. In Germany, it won the Spiel des Jahres ("Game of the Year") award in 1985.

Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women is a 1981 book about the development of sexual orientation by psychologist Alan P. Bell and sociologists Martin S. Weinberg and Sue Kiefer Hammersmith, a publication of the Institute for Sex Research. Together with its separately published Statistical Appendix, Sexual Preference was the culmination of a series of books including Homosexuality: An Annotated Bibliography (1972) and Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (1978), both authored jointly by Bell and Weinberg. Based on interviews with subjects in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bell, Weinberg and Hammersmith found almost no correlation between early family experience and adult sexual orientation and therefore concluded that heterosexuality and homosexuality have a biological basis. Though Sexual Preference is one of the most frequently cited retrospective studies relating to sexual orientation, its authors' conclusions and methodology have been criticized on numerous grounds, including their reliance upon path analysis and the difficulty and potential unreliability of adult recall of childhood feeling.

The Second Stage is a 1981 book by American feminist, activist and writer Betty Friedan, best known for her earlier book The Feminine Mystique.

The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology is a compilation of thirty pieces of prose and poetry selected by Italian-Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi as part of an abortive project by his original Italian publisher Einaudi to identify the texts which most influenced major Italian writers.

Saintspeak (1981) is a satirical look at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by LDS author Orson Scott Card. It is modeled after The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.

The Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition (SSBE) is a Sacred Name Bible which uses the names Yahweh and Yahshua in both the Old and New Testaments (Chamberlin p. 51-3). It was produced by Jacob O. Meyer, based on the American Standard Version of 1901 and it contains over 977 pages. The Assemblies of Yahweh printed 5,500 copies of the first edition in 1981. It is also used by some members of the SNM.

Rites of the Gods is an archaeological study of religious belief and ritual practices across prehistoric Britain from the Old Stone Age through to the Iron Age. Written by the prominent English archaeologist and megalithic specialist Aubrey Burl, it was first published in 1981 by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

The Register of the Victoria Cross is a reference work that provides brief information on every Victoria Cross ever awarded: a summary of the deed, along with a photograph of the awardee and the following details where applicable or available; rank, unit, other decorations, date of gazette, place/date of birth, place/date of death, memorials, town/county connections, and any remarks. Nora Buzzell compiled and researched The Register for This England.

Red Shelley is a 1981 work of literary criticism by Paul Foot. In it, the author draws attention to the radical political stance of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, as revealed in poems such as "Queen Mab" and "The Masque of Anarchy".

The Quality of Mercy is the title of several different books. The phrase taken from a speech by Portia in William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice. The speech begins:

Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat is a book, credited to the pseudonym 'Archibald Putt' published in 1981. An updated edition, subtitled How to Win in the Information Age, was published by Wiley-IEEE Press in 2006. The book is based upon a series of articles published in Research/Development Magazine in 1976 and 1977.

Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession is a nonfiction work by Janet Malcolm. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1981.

First published in 1981 by Elsevier, Principles of Neural Science is an influential neuroscience textbook edited by Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, and Thomas M. Jessell. The original edition was 468 pages; now on the fifth edition, the book has grown to 1760 pages. The second edition was published in 1985, third in 1991, fourth in 2000. The fifth and latest edition was published on October 26th, 2012 and includes Steven A. Siegelbaum and A.J. Hudspeth as editors.

The Practical Chinese Reader (Chinese: 实用汉语课本; pinyin: shíyòng hànyŭ kèbĕn) is a two-volume series of Chinese language teaching books developed to teach non-Chinese speakers to speak Chinese, first published in 1981. In fifty lessons, the reader studies a vocabulary of 1,000 words, and basic Chinese phonology and grammar. The lessons tell the story of two foreign students of Chinese, Palanka and Gubo, first in their own country (Book I) and then in China (Book II). They give priority to everyday topics that Gubo and Palanka encounter (e.g. clothing, entertainment, socializing), and also provide background information on Chinese culture, society, and history.

Pornography: Men Possessing Women is a 1981 book by the anti-pornography radical feminist author and activist Andrea Dworkin.

Polysexuality is the tenth issue of the journal Semiotext(e), designed to illustrate "the plural aspects of sexuality." Edited by Canadian psychoanalyst François Peraldi, it was first published in 1981. The work reproduces images of genocide, massacre, and political disaster. According to Sylvére Lotringer, the purpose of these images was not to communicate terror and despair, but rather to connect sexuality to all the other flows that permeate society and to represent the death drive. They were intended to communicate ecstasy or jouissance. Polysexuality was reprinted in 1995, in a new edition noting that Peraldi had died of AIDS in 1993.

The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act is a 1981 book by Fredric Jameson, a Marxist literary theorist. Often cited as a powerful overview and methodological guide, it is the work with which Jameson made his greatest impact. The book has been the subject of a commentary, Jameson, Althusser, Marx (1984), by William C. Dowling, who believes that its main idea had been previously outlined by Terry Eagleton and notes that it is influenced by such thinkers as A. J. Greimas, Northrop Frye, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Jameson's interpretive framework, including his neo-Lacanian idea of unconscious ideology and his invocation of structural causality to reconcile Marxist and post-Marxist perspectives, was largely borrowed from Louis Althusser.

Philosophical Explanations is a 1981 metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical treatise by Robert Nozick.

Peter the Great: His Life and World is a 1980 work written by Robert K. Massie. The book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. The book chronicles the life of Peter I of Russia, and is divided into five parts: "Old Muscovy", "The Great Embassy", "The Great Northern War", "On the European Stage", and "The New Russia".

Outside Over There is a picture book for children written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. It concerns a young girl named Ida, who must rescue her baby sister after the child has been stolen by goblins. Outside Over There has been described by Sendak as part of a type of trilogy based on psychological development from In the Night Kitchen (toddler) to Where the Wild Things Are (pre-school) to Outside Over There (pre-adolescent).

The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European invasion of Australia is a history book published in 1981 by Australian historian Henry Reynolds. It is a study of Aboriginal Australian resistance to the British settlement, or invasion, of Australia from 1788 onwards.

On Disobedience and other essays is a 1981 book by psychologist and social philosopher Erich Fromm, published by Harper & Row. It is a collection of four previously published essays.

On Being a Pagan, originally published in French under the title Comment peut-on être païen? ("How can one be a pagan"), is a book by the French philosopher Alain de Benoist. Originally published in 1981, it was first published in English in 2004. The book is a detailed and in-depth critique of the metaphysical and ethical concepts of Judeo-Christian tradition that have been influencing the Western culture over the past two thousand years. De Benoist details how many of these religious concepts have, over time, transformed into secular concepts and thinking, which in turn have had a great impact on Western ideologies, philosophies and attitudes. He traces the thinking of both Marx and Freud to their Judeo-Christian origins, and theorizes that racial intolerance, among other things, might have its roots in monotheistic thinking. In On Being a Pagan de Benoist argues for the return to the ideals of European Paganism as a cure for the current malaise of the Western society.

Old Glory is a travel book by Jonathan Raban. It is the winner of The Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.

Of Chameleons and Gods is the title of the first collection of poetry by Malawian poet Jack Mapanje, published in 1981 in the United Kingdom, in Heinemann's African Writers Series. Despite critical acclaim, the collection was withdrawn from circulation in Malawi, because it was seen as a critique of the current government and especially the leader Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

Oakland, Hub of the West is a 1981 history book about the city of Oakland, California written by David Ollier Weber and published by Continental Heritage Press. It is now out of print. The historical photographs were edited by Thomas Edward Curran III, a museum researcher at the Oakland Museum of California. The current photographs were by Peter Menzel, whose work appears in National Geographic, Wired, The Atlantic, Mother Jones and the Boston Globe.

The Nine Nations of North America is a book written in 1981 by Joel Garreau. In it, Garreau suggests that North America can be divided into nine nations, which have distinctive economic and cultural features. He also argues that conventional national and state borders are largely artificial and irrelevant, and that his "nations" provide a more accurate way of understanding the true nature of North American society. Paul Meartz of Mayville State University called it "a classic text on the current regionalization of North America". The Nations reflected here are included in a Michael F. Flynn short fictional story, in which all the Nine Nations have gained independence.

Nights of Labor: The Workers Dream in Nineteenth Century France (La Nuit des prolétaires: Archives du rêve ouvrier) is a 1981 non-fiction book by Jacques Rancière, which was based upon his doctoral thesis. The book was re-released in 2012 by Verso under the title Proletarian Nights.

Mornings on Horseback is a 1981 biography of the 26th President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt written by popular historian David McCullough, covering the early part of Roosevelt's life. The book won McCullough's second National Book Award and his first Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography.

Morecambe & Wise: There's No Answer To That! was the second book by Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise and was published in 1981 as a follow up to the earlier book, Eric & Ernie : The Autobiography Of Morecambe & Wise, which had been released in 1973 in paperback form. This second volume was available in both hard and soft back.

The Money Lenders is a 1981 book on finance by British journalist Anthony Sampson. It looks at the history of banking from the Renaissance to a meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC in 1980, with an emphasis on the interaction of finance with international diplomacy.

Moments of Reprieve is a book of autobiographical character studies/vignettes by Primo Levi.

The Minds of Billy Milligan is a non-fiction novel portraying Billy Milligan, the first person in U.S. history acquitted of a major crime by pleading multiple-personality disorder. The novel was originally published in 1981, written by Hugo Award winning author Daniel Keyes, who received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Brooklyn College in 1950.

The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul is a 1981 collection of essays and other texts about the nature of the mind and the self, edited with commentary by popular science writers Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. The texts range from early philosophical and fictional musings on a subject that could seemingly only be examined in the realm of thought, to works from the 20th century where the nature of the self became a viable topic for scientific study.

A Million Wild Acres: 200 years of man and an Australian forest is a non-fiction book written by Eric Charles Rolls (1923–2007). It was first published in Melbourne by Nelson in 1981. A Million Wild Acres is not just a regional history of what is now known as the Pilliga Scrub, but also a history of European settlement in Australia.

The Mathematical Experience (1981) is a book by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh that discusses the practice of modern mathematics from a historical and philosophical perspective. Its first paperback edition won a U.S. National Book Award in Science.

Marathon and Chips is the biography of Scottish athlete Jim Alder written by Arthur McKenzie.

Madras Rediscovered: A Historical Guide to Looking Around is a book on the history of Chennai (previously known as Madras) authored by Chennai historian S. Muthiah. Originally titled Madras Discovered, the first edition was published in 1981. Since then, the book has emerged a bestseller and has run into seven editions. A Tamil translation of the book Chennai Marukandupidippu by C. V. Karthik Narayan was published in 2009.

The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It is generally held by universities and the legal profession to be the authoritative source on English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It is now published by Macquarie Dictionary Publishers an imprint of Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd. In October 2007 it moved its editorial office away from Macquarie University to the University of Sydney.

The Living Torah and The Living Nach are popular, clear and modern English translations of the Tanach based on traditional Jewish sources, along with extensive notes, maps, illustrations, diagrams, charts, bibliography, and index. The series is published by Moznaim Publishers.

A Light in the Attic is a collection of poems by the American poet, writer, and children's author Shel Silverstein. It was first published by Harper & Row in 1981. The poems for children are accompanied by illustrations also created by Shel Silverstein.

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (ISBN 0-618-05699-8) is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkien's letters published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection contains 354 letters, dating between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death.

Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology is a 1981 poetry anthology edited by Elly Bulkin and Joan Larkin.

Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures is a book by American linguist Noam Chomsky, published in 1981. It is based on the lectures Chomsky gave at the GLOW conference and workshop held at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy in 1979. In this book, Chomsky presented his government and binding theory of syntax. It had great influence on the syntactic research in early 1980s, especially among the linguists working within the transformational grammar framework.

The Koren Siddur refers to a family of siddurim published by Koren Publishers Jerusalem beginning in 1981.

Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings by Barbara Strachey is an atlas based on the fictional realm of Middle-earth, which traces the journeys undertaken by the characters in Tolkien's epic.

Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism by Marina Warner (University of California Press, 1981 ISBN 0-520-22464-7) is a book about Joan of Arc, focusing on how she has been perceived by others over the centuries and how that perception has shaped her image.

Jenny lives with Eric and Martin, originally Mette bor hos Morten og Erik, is a black-and-white picture book by the Danish author Susanne Bösche, published in 1981 in Danish and in 1983 in English. It was perhaps the first English-language children's book to discuss homosexuality.

In the Belly of the Beast is a book written by Jack Abbott and published in 1981.

Hymns of the Saints, published in Independence, Missouri by Herald House in 1981, was the official English-language hymnal of the Community of Christ. The hymnal contains 501 Christian hymns representing a variety of musical styles. It was succeeded by Community of Christ Sings which was released in October 2013.

Hume and the Problem of Causation is a book written by Tom Beauchamp and Alexander Rosenberg, published in 1981 by Oxford University Press.

A History of Venice (1981) (ISBN 0394524101) is a non-fiction book by the historian John Julius Norwich. It was originally published by Allen Lane.

History of the Ancient World is a 1981 historical book written by Russian writer Fyodor Korovkin. It was first published by Progress Publishers. Subsequently, it was translated in Bengali and English respectively in 1983 and 1985.

Hello America is a science fiction novel by J. G. Ballard, first published in 1981. The plot follows an expedition to a North America rendered uninhabitable by an ecological disaster.

Hauströkkrið yfir mér is a 1981 poetry collection by Icelandic poet Snorri Hjartarson. It won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1981.

Hairs in the Palm of the Hand is a children's novel by British author Jan Mark, published in 1981. It also became a Chivers Audio book read by Tony Robinson.

A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945 is a 1981 military history book by Russell Spurr about the suicide mission of the Japanese battleship Yamato against the American Pacific Fleet during the Battle of Okinawa near the end of World War II. Yamato was the largest battleship in the world, and Japan sacrificed her in a final, desperate attempt to halt the Allied advance on the Japanese archipelago. The book was published in 1981 in the United States by Newmarket Press, and in the United Kingdom by Sidgwick & Jackson.

Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In is a best-selling 1981 non-fiction book by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury. Reissued in 1991 with additional authorship credit to Bruce Patton, the book made appearances for years on the Business Week "Best Seller" list. The book suggests a method called "principled negotiation or negotiation of merits."

Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (French: Francis Bacon-Logique de la sensation) is a 1981 book by Gilles Deleuze in which he explores the work of the celebrated English painter Francis Bacon. It was translated into English by Daniel W. Smith.

Flaws in the Glass is Australian writer Patrick White's autobiography, published in 1981.

Flashing Swords! #5: Demons and Daggers is an anthology of fantasy stories, edited by Lin Carter. It was first published in hardcover by Nelson Doubleday in December 1981 as a selection in its Science Fiction Book Club, and in paperback by Dell Books simultaneously.

The Five Thousand Year Leap: Twenty-Eight Great Ideas That Are Changing the World is a book that was published in 1981 by author W. Cleon Skousen. The book asserts that the United States prospered because it was established upon universal natural law principles passed down from Common Law and traditional Judeo-Christian morality, as many of the Founding Fathers were guided by the Bible among others, and consequently that the U.S. Constitution incorporates enlightened ideas.

First Voyages is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Damon Knight, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, first published in paperback by Avon Books in May 1981. It is a compilation of the first published stories of twenty prominent authors in the genre, and an expansion of Knight's earlier First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time (Lancer Books, 1963), which covered ten of the same stories and authors.

Fiend Folio is any of three products published for successive editions of the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). All three are collections of monsters, making each Fiend Folio a sequel to that edition's version of the Monster Manual.

The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia is a book written by Eric Jones in 1981 to refer to the sudden rise of Europe during the late Middle Ages. Ahead of the Islamic and Chinese civilizations, Europe steadily rose since the Early Modern period to a complete domination of world trade and politics that remained unchallenged until the early 20th century.

Est: Playing the Game the New Way is a non-fiction book by Carl Frederick, first published in 1976, by Delacorte Press, New York. The book describes in words the basic message of Werner Erhard's Erhard Seminars Training (est) theatrical experience. Erhard/est sued in federal court in the United States to stop the book from publication, but the suit failed. The book takes a 'trainer's' approach to the est experience, in that it essentially duplicates the est training, citing examples and using jargon from the actual experience.

Essence of the Upanishads is a translation and commentary on the Katha Upanishad, an ancient Indian scripture. Written by Eknath Easwaran, the book was originally published in the United States in 1981, entitled Dialogue With Death. Foreign (non-English) editions have also been published in several languages. The book has been reviewed in newspapers, magazines, and elsewhere.

Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917–1961 is a book composed of letters to and from Ernest Hemingway found at his Cuban home after his death, edited by Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker.

Encore for Eleanor is a children's picture book written by Bill Peet about a circus elephant who loves the spotlight even after retirement. It was originally published in 1981 by the Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

Emplumada is the first collection of poetry authored by Lorna Dee Cervantes. It was published in 1981 by University of Pittsburgh Press.

Easy Street: The True Story of a Mob Family (1981) is the first memoir of Susan Berman, daughter of Las Vegas mobster David Berman. In it, Berman chronicles her mother Gladys's and her own obliviousness to what went on around them. When they finally became aware of their Mafia family, Berman's mother ended up dying in a mental institution and Susan endured a lot of psychotherapy.

Dwellers of the Forbidden City is an adventure module, or pre-packaged adventure booklet, ready for use by Dungeon Masters in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. The adventure was first used as a module for tournament play at the 1980 Origins Game Fair, and was later published by TSR in 1981 for use with the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. The module was written by game designer David "Zeb" Cook, who partly ascribes his hiring by TSR to his work on this module. In the adventure, the characters are hired to find an object taken to a lost oriental-style city, which has been taken over by a cult of snake-worshipers, the yuan-ti, and their servants, the mongrelmen and tasloi. The module was ranked as the 13th greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine for the 30th anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game in 2004.

Duties Beyond Borders (full title: Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics) is a book by Stanley Hoffmann published in 1981 which focuses on the application of ethical principles to international relations. The book won the Le Prix Adolphe Bentinck for 1982 for "the book which most contributes to the unity and cause of peace in Europe". The book is based upon a series of lectures which Hoffmann gave at Syracuse University between February and April 1980.

Doomsday 1999: Countdown to a New Apocalypse is a book by Charles Berlitz, published in 1982 that lists scientific, religious, and other common predictions for impending doom from all corners of the world.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church is a 1981 non-fiction book by Catholic priest and author Malachi Martin.

Danse Macabre is a 1981 non-fiction book by Stephen King, about horror fiction in print, radio, film and comics, and the influence of contemporary societal fears and anxieties on the genre. It was republished on February 23, 2010 with an additional new essay entitled "What's Scary".

Cult Movies is a 1981 book by Danny Peary, consisting of a series of essays regarding what Peary described as the 100 most representative examples of the cult film phenomenon. The films are presented in alphabetical order, with each chapter featuring a story synopsis for the covered title, Peary’s response to the film, production and release details, and a brief selection of contemporary critical reviews.

The Crystal Bucket is the second selection of Clive James's television criticism for The Observer, for which the British Press Awards named him 'Critic of the Year' in 1981: "His contribution to the art and enjoyment of TV criticism over the past ten years has been immense. His work is deeply perceptive, often outrageously funny and always compulsively readable."

Critical Path is a book written by US author and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller with the assistance of Kiyoshi Kuromiya. First published in 1981, it is alongside Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth one of Fuller's best-known works. Vast in its scope, it describes Fuller's own vision of the development of human civilization, economic history, and his highly original economic ideology based, amongst other things, on his detailed description of why scarcity of resources need no longer be a decisive factor in global politics.

Creep to Death is a collection of poems by Joseph Payne Brennan. It was published in 1981 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. in an edition of 750 copies, all of which were signed by the author and the artist.

Covering Islam is a 1981 book written by Palestinian author Edward Said about how the Western media distorts the image of Islam. Said describes the book as the third and last in a series of books (the first two were Orientalism and The Question of Palestine) in which he analyzes the relations between the Islamic world, Arabs and East and West, France, Great Britain and the United States.

La Corde du pendu is a Lucky Luke adventure written by Goscinny with Morris and illustrated by Morris. It was originally published in French in the year 1981.

The Complete Anti-Federalist is a seven-volume collection of the scattered Anti-Federalist Papers compiled by Herbert Storing and his former student Murray Dry of the University of Chicago, who oversaw the completion of the project after Storing's death. Michael Lienesch treats Storing's compilation as "definitive," and many of the pamphlets and other materials included had not previously been published in a collection. The collection is noted for its sympathetic portrayal of the Anti-Federalists. The commentary underscores little-known similar positions and arguments made by the birth of the first two-party system in America. Storing points out that many "Anti-Federalists" actually considered themselves Federalists in the sense that a federation is a structure over sovereign states.

Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M is a 1981 book edited by members of the lesbian feminist S/M organisation SAMOIS. It is an anthology of lesbian S/M writings.

Codex Seraphinianus, originally published in 1981, is an illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world, created by the Italian artist, architect, and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and written in a cipher alphabet in an imaginary language.

The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests is a 1981 book by the British classical historian G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, a fellow of New College, Oxford.

The Canadian Establishment is the first reference book published in Canada to catalogue the richest families and individuals in the country. It was published in 1975 by economic journalist, Peter C. Newman. The book was published in two parts, and introduced Canadian and world readers to little-known figures who defined the Canadian economic community of the last quarter of the 20th century.

Build Your Own Z80 Computer: design guidelines and application notes is a book written by Steve Ciarcia, published in 1981 by McGraw-Hill.

The Breaks of the Game is a 1981 sports book written by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter David Halberstam about the Portland Trail Blazers' 1979–1980 season. The Trail Blazers are a professional basketball team which plays in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Aside from a recap of the Blazers' season, the book attempts to give a detailed history of the NBA, the 1976–77 Portland Trail Blazers championship team, the injuries faced by departed star Bill Walton, and the life of Kermit Washington after his two-month suspension for punching Rudy Tomjanovich. The book also puts basketball into a social context and contains extensive discussion on race in the NBA.

Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (MIT Press 1981; ISBN 9780262540377) is a book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett. In these 17 essays, he reflects on the early achievements of artificial intelligence to develop his ideas on consciousness, theory of mind, and free will.

Body Language - How to read others' thoughts by their gestures is a best-selling book by Allan Pease, first published in 1981. It has been superseded by his 2004 book The Definitive Book of Body Language: The Secret Meaning Behind People's Gestures, co-authored this time with his wife Barbara.

The Bicycle Wheel is a treatise on wheelbuilding by Jobst Brandt.

The Beverly Hills Diet is a weight loss regimen developed by author Judy Mazel (1943–2007) in her 1981 bestseller, The Beverly Hills Diet. The six-week-long program, which begins with 10 days of fruit exclusively, has been the target of criticism from the medical community.

The Beetles of the World is a series of books devoted to Coleopterology. Sciences Nat published the 24 first volumes; the following volumes and the supplements were published by Hillside Books, Canterbury.

Barnens lexikon was a series of encyclopedias for children of various ages. It was originally published in 1981 following an idea from Sven Lidman.

The genus Banksia L.f. (Proteaceae) is a 1981 monograph by Alex George on the taxonomy of the plant genus Banksia. Published by the Western Australian Herbarium as Nuytsia 3(3), it presented George's taxonomic arrangement of Banksia, the first major taxonomic revision of the genus since George Bentham published his arrangement in Flora Australiensis in 1870.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.

The Atom Besieged: Extraparliamentary Dissent in France and Germany is a 1981 book by Dorothy Nelkin and Michael Pollak. This book examines the opposition to nuclear power in France and West Germany in the 1970s, which is assessed as being broadly based and widespread. The authors argue that the basic fear which accounted for the vehemence of the opposition is that nuclear power fundamentally alters the makeup of society.

The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad is an atlas of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional realm of Middle-earth. It was published in 1981, after Tolkien's major works The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

Asterix and the Black Gold (original title: L'Odyssée d'Astérix) is the twenty-sixth volume of Asterix comic book series, originally published in 1981. It is the second book to be published after the death of René Goscinny and is thus both written and drawn by Albert Uderzo.

Asimov's Guide to the Bible is a work by Isaac Asimov that was first published in two volumes in 1967 and 1969, covering the Old Testament and the New Testament (including the Catholic Old Testament, or deuterocanonical, books and the Eastern Orthodox Old Testament books, or anagignoskomena, along with the Fourth Book of Ezra), respectively. He combined them into a single 1296-page volume in 1981. They included maps by the artist Rafael Palacios.

The Art of Computer Programming (sometimes known by its initials TAOCP) is a comprehensive monograph written by Donald Knuth that covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis.

Är du feg, Alfons Åberg? is a 1981 children's book by Gunilla Bergström. As an episode of the animated TV series it originally aired over SVT on 14 January 1981.

Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones is an archaeological study of amulets, talismans and curing stones in the burial record of Anglo-Saxon England. Written by the Australian archaeologist Audrey Meaney, it was published by the company British Archaeological Reports as the 96th monograph in their BAR British Series. Prior to writing the work, Meaney had published several books dealing with Anglo-Saxon burials.

Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey is a book by the Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.

Alphabet is one of the most well-known poems of Inger Christensen, who was broadly considered to be Denmark's most prominent poet. The poem was originally published in 1981 in Danish as alfabet. An English language translation by Susanna Nied won the American-Scandinavian PEN Translation Prize in 1982.

Aké: The Years of Childhood is a memoir by Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka that was first published in 1981. It tells the story of Soyinka's boyhood before and during World War II in a Yoruba village in western Nigeria called Aké, where the author spent the first 12 years of his life. When the book was first published, the New York Times reviewer wrote:

Ainge (1981) is an out of print non-fiction book by author Orson Scott Card. It is a biography of star basketball player Danny Ainge. Two thousand copies were printed, distributed only in Provo, Utah, United States.

Ain't I a Woman?: Black women and feminism is a 1981 book by bell hooks titled after Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. hooks examines the effect of racism and sexism on black women, the civil rights movement, and feminist movements from suffrage to the 1970s. She argues that the convergence of sexism and racism during slavery contributed to black women having the lowest status and worst conditions of any group in American society. White female abolitionists and suffragists were often more comfortable with black male abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, while southern segregationalists and stereotypes of black female promiscuity and immorality caused protests whenever black women spoke. hooks points out that these white female reformers were more concerned with white morality than the conditions these morals caused black Americans.

Against the Giants is an adventure module written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1981 for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. It combines the G series of modules previously published in 1978: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, and Hall of the Fire Giant King. All three were produced for use with the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. In 1999, to recognize the 25th anniversary of TSR, the company released an updated version, Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff. Later in 1999, Wizards of the Coast published a novelization of Against the Giants by Ru Emerson.

After Virtue is a book on moral philosophy by Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre provides a bleak view of the state of modern moral discourse, regarding it as failing to be rational, and failing to admit to being irrational. He claims that older forms of moral discourse were in better shape, particularly singling out Aristotle's moral philosophy as an exemplar. After Virtue is among the most important texts in the recent revival of virtue ethics.

After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981, ISBN 978-0312011635) is a 1981 speculative evolution book by the Scottish geologist and author, Dougal Dixon. In it, he presents his hypothesis of various organisms apparent after a mass extinction succeeding our own time.

An African in Greenland is a 1981 book by the Togolese author Tété-Michel Kpomassie.

Princeton physicist Gerard K. O'Neill's 1981 book, 2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future was an attempt to predict the technological and social state of humanity 100 years in the future. O'Neill's positive attitude towards both technology and human potential distinguished this book from gloomy predictions of a Malthusian catastrophe by contemporary scientists. Paul R. Ehrlich wrote in 1968 in The Population Bomb, "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death". The Club of Rome's 1972 Limits to Growth predicted a catastrophic end to the Industrial Revolution within 100 years from resource exhaustion and pollution.

1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (Chinese: 萬曆十五年; pinyin: Wanli Shiwunian) is Chinese historian Ray Huang's most famous work. First published by Yale University Press in 1981, it examines how a number of seemingly insignificant events in 1587 might have caused the downfall of the Ming empire.

'The Snow Queen' (Danish: Snedronningen) is an original fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). The tale was first published 21 December 1844 in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection. 1845. (Danish: Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Anden Samling. 1845.) The story centers on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by Gerda and her friend, Kay.

A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which appeared in 1980, eleven years after Toole's suicide. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a foreword) and Toole's mother, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, and is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.

Crimes of the Heart is a play by American playwright Beth Henley. It is set in Hazlehurst, Mississippi in the mid-20th century. The play won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Jacob Have I Loved is a children's novel by Katherine Paterson. It was published by Crowell in 1980 and it won the annual Newbery Medal next year. The title refers to the sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau in the Jewish and Christian Bible, and comes directly from Romans 9:13: "As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells.

The Mosquito Coast is a 1986 American drama film directed by Peter Weir and starring Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Andre Gregory, and River Phoenix. It is based on the novel of the same name by Paul Theroux. The film tells the story of a family that leaves the United States and tries to find a happier and simpler life in the jungles of Central America. However, their jungle paradise quickly turns into a dystopia as their stubborn father's behavior becomes increasingly erratic and aggressive. It was shot in the cities of Cartersville and Rome in Georgia, in addition to Baltimore, Maryland, and Belize.

An Open Swimmer is the first novel by acclaimed Australian author, Tim Winton. Winton wrote this novel while attending a creative writing course at Curtin University. In 1981 it won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, and thereby kick-started Tim Winton's successful writing career.

The Liberators by Viktor Suvorov (original Russian title: Освободитель) is a partly autobiographical description of life in the Soviet Army during the 1960s and 1970s. Told through anecdote, it provides insight into the brutality of a military machine where soldiers are treated with no regard whatsoever.

The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith is a 1997 autobiography written by Ian Smith, focusing on his time as Prime Minister of the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia, later Rhodesia (April 13, 1964 - June 1, 1979).

Jefferson and His Time is a six-volume biography of US President Thomas Jefferson by American historian Dumas Malone, published between 1948 and 1981.

The Mismeasure of Man is a 1981 book by evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould, who was then a professor of geology at Harvard. The book is both a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that "the social and economic differences between human groups—primarily races, classes, and sexes—arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society, in this sense, is an accurate reflection of biology." The principal theme of biological determinism—that "worth can be assigned to individuals and groups by measuring intelligence as a single quantity"—is analyzed in discussions of craniometry and psychological testing, the two methods used to measure and establish intelligence as a single quantity. According to Gould, the methods harbor "two deep fallacies." The first is the fallacy of "reification", which is "our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities" such as the intelligence quotient (IQ) and the general intelligence factor (g factor), which have been the cornerstones of much research into human intelligence. The second fallacy is "ranking", which is the "propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale."

Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde (written in 1981) is a book dedicated to peculiarities of the Dutch language. It was written by 'Battus', one of many pseudonyms of Hugo Brandt Corstius. The title means "Upperlandic Language and Linguistics", where "Upperlandic" is word play on "Netherlandic". The book has ten chapters, numbered 0 through 9, that humoristically use the Dutch language. Chapters are interleaved, with all odd pages belonging to different chapters than the adjacent even pages. This confusion is, of course, intentional. Different fonts are used for both sets of pages.

Mary Chesnut's Civil War is an annotated collection of the diaries of Mary Boykin Chesnut, an upper-class planter who lived in South Carolina during the American Civil War. The diaries were extensively annotated by historian C. Vann Woodward and published by Yale University Press in 1981. For his work on the book, Woodward was awarded the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for History.

The Heart of a Woman (1981) is an autobiography by American writer Maya Angelou. The book is the fourth installment in Angelou's series of seven autobiographies. The Heart of a Woman recounts events in Angelou's life between 1957 and 1962 and follows her travels to California, New York City, Cairo, and Ghana as she raises her teenage son, becomes a published author, becomes active in the US civil rights movement, and becomes romantically involved with a South African freedom fighter. One of the most important themes of The Heart of a Woman is motherhood, as Angelou continues to raise her teenage son. The book ends with Angelou's son leaving for college and Angelou looking forward to newfound independence and freedom.

Collected Poems: Nightmares and Visions is a collection of poems by Richard L. Tierney. It was released in 1981 by Arkham House in an edition of 1,030 copies. The book is illustrated by Jason Van Hollander. The poems had previously appeared in The Arkham Collector, Whispers, Nyctalops, Macabre and other magazines.]

Heroes and Hobgoblins is a 1981 collection of poetry by science fiction and fantasy author L. Sprague de Camp, illustrated by Tim Kirk. It was published by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc..

The Notebook of Trigorin is a play by American playwright Tennessee Williams, adapted from Anton Chekhov's drama The Seagull (1895). Williams based his adaptation primarily on Ann Dunnigan's 1960 translation.

Der Kontrabaß (The Double Bass) is a play by Patrick Süskind. The monologue in one act premiered in 1981.

Woza Albert! is a political satire that imagines the second coming of Christ in apartheid-ridden South Africa.

The Nerd is a two-act comedy written by the American actor/playwright Larry Shue. Actors who have taken on the title role include acclaimed British comedian Rowan Atkinson. It was the top grossing American play in London's West End in 1986.

Tamara is a play of 1981 by John Krizanc about the painter Tamara de Lempicka. The play is based on the historical meeting of Gabriele d'Annunzio and Lempicka, who was hoping to be commissioned by D'Annunzio to paint his portrait. He had invited her to his villa at Gardone Riviera, on the southwest shore of Lake Garda, a villa now known as Il Vittoriale degli Italiani.

Rockaby is a short one-woman play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1980, at the request of Daniel Labeille, who produced it on behalf of Programs in the Arts, State University of New York, for a festival and symposium in commemoration of Beckett's 75th birthday. The play premiered on April 8, 1981 at the State University of New York at Buffalo, starring Billie Whitelaw and directed by Alan Schneider. A documentary film, Rockaby, by D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus records the rehearsal process and the first performance. This production went on to be performed at the Annex at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and, in December 1982, at the Cottesloe, Royal National Theatre, London.

Masquerade is a picture book, written and illustrated by Kit Williams, published in August 1979, that sparked a treasure hunt by concealing clues to the location of a jeweled golden hare, created and hidden somewhere in Britain by Williams. It became the inspiration for a genre of books known today as armchair treasure hunts.

The Glitter Dome is a 1984 made-for-HBO film starring James Garner, Margot Kidder and John Lithgow. The film, based on the 1981 Joseph Wambaugh Hollywood-set homicide novel, was directed by Stuart Margolin, who also scored the film and played a supporting part. The movie was filmed in Victoria, British Columbia and co-starred Colleen Dewhurst. It was subsequently released on video in 1985. The film was also the last film for John Marley.

The Book of Dreams is a science fiction book by American author Jack Vance, the fifth and last novel (1981) in the "Demon Princes" series.

Arabian Nights and Days (1979) is a novel by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel serves as a sequel and companion piece for One Thousand and One Nights and includes many of the same characters that appeared in the original work such as Shahryar, Scheherazade, and Aladdin.

The File on H. is a novel by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare. It first appeared in Albanian in 1981 under the title Dosja H.

The Flame Knife is a 1955 fantasy novella written by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was revised by de Camp from Howard's original story, a then-unpublished non-fantasy Oriental tale that featured Francis X. Gordon titled "Three-Bladed Doom". De Camp changed the names of the characters, added the fantastic element, and recast the setting into Howard's Hyborian Age. The story was first published in the hardbound collection Tales of Conan (Gnome Press, 1955), and subsequently appeared in the paperback collection Conan the Wanderer (Lancer Books, 1968), as part of which it has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch and Italian. It was published by itself in paperback book form by Ace Books in 1981, in an edition profusely illustrated by Esteban Maroto.

The Last Legionary series is a series of five books written by Douglas Hill. The books are Young Legionary, Galactic Warlord, Deathwing Over Veynaa, Day of the Starwind and Planet of the Warlord. The series has been described as a simplified version of E. E. Smith's Lensman series.

Ondskan ("The Evil") is a Swedish novel by Jan Guillou.

Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian surrealist depictions of his home city of Glasgow.

The Hand of Zei is a science fiction novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, the second book of his Viagens Interplanetarias series and its subseries of stories set on the fictional planet Krishna. The book has a convoluted publication history.

A Good Man in Africa is a 1994 film, based on William Boyd's 1981 novel A Good Man in Africa and directed by Bruce Beresford.

101 Uses for a Dead Cat, by Simon Bond, was a bestselling collection of macabre cartoons. The book was promoted with the tag line, "Since time immemorial mankind has been plagued by the question, 'What do you do with a dead cat?'" It consisted of cartoons depicting the bodies of dead cats being used for various purposes, including anchoring boats, sharpening pencils and holding bottles of wine.

Ill Seen Ill Said is a short novel by Samuel Beckett. It was first published in French as Mal vu mal dit in 1981, and was then translated in English by the author in 1982.

Colonel Sun is a novel by Kingsley Amis published by Jonathan Cape on 28 March 1968 under the pseudonym "Robert Markham". Colonel Sun is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's 1964 death. Before writing the novel, Amis wrote two other Bond related works, the literary study The James Bond Dossier and the humorous The Book of Bond. Colonel Sun centres on the fictional British Secret Service operative James Bond and his mission to track down the kidnappers of M, his superior at the Secret Service. During the mission he discovers a communist Chinese plot to cause an international incident. Bond, assisted by a Greek spy working for the Russians, finds M on a small Aegean island, rescues him and kills the two main plotters: Colonel Sun Liang-tan and a former Nazi commander, Von Richter.

Zuckerman Unbound is a 1981 novel by the American author Philip Roth.

Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy is the fourth crime novel by the American writer Barbara Paul.

XPD is a spy novel by Len Deighton, published in 1981, and set in 1979, roughly contemporaneous with the time it was written. It concerns a plan by a group of former SS officers to seize power in West Germany, in which they intend to publish some wartime documents about a (fictional) secret meeting between Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler in June 1940, and the efforts of a British agent, Boyd Stuart, to prevent the documents becoming public.

The Xanadu Talisman is the title of an action-adventure/spy novel by Peter O'Donnell that was first published in 1981, featuring the character Modesty Blaise. This was the tenth book to feature the character. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Souvenir Press.

The Worms of Kukumlima is a humorous book written by Daniel Pinkwater for all ages and first published in 1981.

The Word of a Gentleman (1981) (later retitled Undercut) was the third of five novels written by Peter Niesewand, the South African journalist who spent 73 days in solitary confinement for his coverage of Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Set in the fictional former British colony of St David's Island, it has no principal protagonists beyond the corrupt trio of Claud Montrose, Alec Clifton, and Stephen Luther, but the subversive influence of the American agent Clive Lyle is progressively revealed as the story unfolds. The fate of the unjustly imprisoned Stephen Ayer and his wife Nora are the focus of many chapters (and the book opens with a quotation from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol); these reflect Niesewand's detention by Desmond Lardner-Burke under P. K. van der Byl and Smith, and his subsequent deportation, leaving behind his wife of three years, Nonie Niesewand (née Fogarty).

The Woods Are Dark is a 1981 horror novel by American author Richard Laymon. It was one of his earliest published works, and one he credits with having all but destroyed his publishing career in the United States.

Witness to the Future is a novel written by Danish author Klaus Rifbjerg in 1981.

The Witches and the Grinnygog is a children's novel by the writer Dorothy Edwards, published in 1981 and shortlisted for that year's Whitbread Prize for a children's book.

Windhaven is a science-fiction and fantasy novel co-written by novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin, but mainly by novelist Lisa Tuttle. The novel is a collection of three novellas compiled and first published together in 1981 by Simon and Schuster. It was later reprinted by Bantam Spectra in hardcover in 2001, and in mass market paperback in 2003. Windhaven was nominated for a Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1982.

Who Censored Roger Rabbit? is a mystery novel written by Gary K. Wolf in 1981, later adapted into the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

The White Hotel is a novel written by the English poet, translator and novelist D. M. Thomas. It was first published in January 1981 by Gollancz in Great Britain and in March 1981 by The Viking Press in the United States. It won the 1981 Cheltenham Prize. It was also short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1981, coming a close second, in the view of some.

Where Are You Dying Tonight? is a 1981 novel by the French writer Michel Déon. Its French title is Un déjeuner de soleil, which literally means "a sun's breakfast" and is an expression for something short-lived. It tells the story of Stanislas Beren, a fictional 20th-century novelist, with excerpts from his novels and the events from his life that inspired them. An English translation by Julian Evans was published in 1983.

What Happened to Mr. Forster? is a 1981 novel by Gary W. Bargar. It is a story of a young boy's first encounter with the complexities of the adult world.

Westmark (1981) is a fantasy novel by Lloyd Alexander, named for a fictional kingdom that is its setting. Alternatively, Westmark is a trilogy named for the novel, its first book. The novel won a 1982 National Book Award.

Wedding Song (أفراح القبة Afrah al-Qubba) is a 1981 Arabic-language novel by Naguib Mahfouz. In the novel a narrator tells and retells the story of a marriage, each time from different character's perspective.

The Way to Life: At the Heart of the Tao Te Ching is Benjamin Hoff's first work about Taoism. It was published in 1981 by Weatherhill (ISBN 0-8348-0156-6).

The Wave is a 1981 young adult novel by Todd Strasser under the pen name Morton Rhue (though modern copies are often under Todd Strasser's real name). It is a novelization of a teleplay by Johnny Dawkins for the movie The Wave, a fictionalized account of the "Third Wave" teaching experiment by Ron Jones that took place in a Ellwood P. Cubberley High School history class in Palo Alto, California. The novel by Strasser won the 1981 Massachusetts Book Award for Children's/Young Adult literature.

The War of the Roses (1981) is a novel by Warren Adler.

The War of the End of the World (Spanish: La guerra del fin del mundo) is a 1981 novel written by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. It is a novelization of the War of Canudos conflict in late 19th-century Brazil.

The War Hound and the World's Pain is a 1981 fantasy novel by Michael Moorcock, the first of the "von Bek" series of novels.

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The VALIS trilogy is a set of science fiction/philosophical novels by author Philip K. Dick which include VALIS (1978), The Divine Invasion (1980), and The Owl in Daylight (unfinished/unpublished). The "trilogy" may also include Radio Free Albemuth (1985) and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982). Dick's first novel about the VALIS concept originally titled "VALISystem A" (written 1976), was published as Radio Free Albemuth after Dick's death in 1982. The Transmigration of Timothy Archer was posthumously substituted for the unfinished The Owl in Daylight as the third novel in the "trilogy."

VALIS is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God.

The Twin Dilemma is the 63rd volume in the Nancy Drew Stories series.

Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window is a children's book written by Japanese television personality and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. The book was published originally as 窓ぎわのトットちゃん (Madogiwa no Totto-chan) in 1981, and became an instant bestseller in Japan. The book is about the values of the unconventional education that Kuroyanagi received at Tomoe Gakuen, a Tokyo elementary school founded by educator Sosaku Kobayashi during World War II, and it is considered her childhood memoir.

Tomoe Gozen is a novel by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, published in 1981. Set in an alternate universe resembling feudal Japan, the book combines the tale of historical female samurai Tomoe Gozen with the legends and creatures of Japanese mythology to create an action-adventure fantasy. It is the first part of the Tomoe Gozen Trilogy which met with some success in the 1980s fantasy novel market. The series is notable for its unusual, highly researched samurai background and feminist story slant.

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is the debut mystery novel of Soji Shimada, the musician and writer on astrology who is best known as an author of over 100 mystery novels. Besides being Shimada's first novel and a best seller, it was nominated for the prestigious Edogawa Rampo Award for mystery novels.

The To the Stars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Harry Harrison, first published in 1980 (Homeworld) and 1981 (Wheelworld and Starworld). The three books were re-published in an omnibus edition in 1991.

The Time of the Ghost is a supernatural English-language children's novel by Diana Wynne Jones, published by Macmillan in 1981. Set in the English countryside, it features a teenage ghost who is one of four sisters, and observes the family, unable to remember which one she is. She is from seven years in the future, in the aftermath of her "accident", so it is a kind of a time slip story, but she has no memories of those seven years.

Tiger Eyes is a young adult novel written by Judy Blume in 1981 about a 15-year-old girl attempting to cope with the unexpected death of her father. In 2012, the novel was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Judy's son, Lawrence Blume and starring Willa Holland as Davey Wexler.

Three Filipino Women: Novellas is a book authored by award-winning Filipino literary writer, F. Sionil José. The book is a compilation of three novellas, each narrating a segment in the life and experiences of three women in the Philippines, providing the reader a journey to the "mentality and geography of the Philippines" and to the use of English as a language that the characters are "trying to make their own", reflective of how a Filipino speak in Philippine English, characterized by being "heavy on the reflexive" (similar to the speaking style used by Ferdinand Marcos) and with its own form of "phrasing" and "edge of formality".

Thousand Pieces of Gold is an 1981 historical novel by Ruthanne Lum McCunn and based on the life of Polly Bemis, a 19th-century Chinese immigrant woman in the American Old West. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name stars Rosalind Chao, Chris Cooper, Dennis Dun and Michael Paul Chan, and is directed by Nancy Kelly.

The Third Grave is a fantasy horror novel by author David Case. It was published by Arkham House in 1981 in an edition of 4,158 copies. It was Case's first book published by Arkham House.

They Thirst is a horror novel by Robert R. McCammon, first published in 1981 and republished in 1991 in hardback. The book details the relentless possession of Los Angeles by vampires, who quickly transform the city into a necropolis with the intent to conquer the entire world.

The Temptation of Eileen Hughes, published in 1981, is a novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore. It portrays a quiet young shop assistant from Northern Ireland and her relationship with her rich employers Bernard and Mona McAuley who take her on a trip to London.

Teheran, een zwanezang ("Tehran, a Swan Song") is a novel by Dutch author F. Springer, published in 1991. It is a love story set against the background of the Iranian Revolution.

Tar Baby is a novel by the American author, Toni Morrison, first published in 1981.

The Sword and the Circle, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is a children's novel written by Rosemary Sutcliff and was first published in 1981. The story is a retelling of the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. According to her own statements in the introduction, The Sword and the Circle follows the myths and folktales of King Arthur, crediting inspiration primarily from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur; other sources include Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, English ballads, and Irish folktales. She contrasts this telling of the King Arthur story with her previous novels, The Lantern Bearers and Sword at Sunset, which were more an attempt to connect with a concrete historical figure behind the folktales.

The Swami's Ring is the 61st volume in the Nancy Drew Stories series.

The Submarine Caper (later retitled Deadly Chase) is the 68th title of the Hardy Boys series, written by Franklin W. Dixon.

Strata is a science fiction novel by Terry Pratchett. Published in 1981, it is one of Pratchett's first novels and one of the few purely science fiction novels he has written, along with The Dark Side of the Sun and the Bromeliad Trilogy.

Stranger with My Face is a young-adult horror novel by Lois Duncan, first published in 1981. It was adapted into a television film starring Alexz Johnson and Catherine Hicks. The book is about a girl named Laurie Stratton whose boyfriend and family members start seeing her in places where she knows she wasn't.

The Stone Idol is the 65th title of the Hardy Boys series, written by Franklin W. Dixon. Grosset & Dunlap published the book.

The Stolen Lake is a children's novel by Joan Aiken, first published in 1981. Taking place in an alternate history, the story follows the adventures of Dido Twite in a fictionalized version of South America.

The Steel Tsar is a sci-fi/alternate history novel by Michael Moorcock, first published in 1981 by Granada. Being a sequel to Warlord of the Air (1971) and The Land Leviathan (1974), it is the final part of Moorcock's A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy regarding the adventures of Captain Oswald Bastable and which has been seen as an early example of steampunk fiction. The same cover image was used for the 1987 reissue of Judas Priest album Rocka Rolla and also the 1989 video game Ballistix.

Split Images is a crime novel written by Elmore Leonard published in 1981.

Une sorte de Justice. Le procès du maire de Férel pendant la Terreur (1981) is a French novel, written by French author René Chatal. The title translates to A kind of Justice. The trial of the mayor of Férel during the Terror

So Long a Letter (translated from Une si longue lettre) is a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel originally written in French by the Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ. Its theme is the condition of women in Western African society.

The Snow Queen is a science fiction/fantasy novel by Joan D. Vinge, published in 1980. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1981, and was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1981.

Sisters is a 1981 novel by Lynne Cheney published only in a Signet Canadian paperback edition as part of the New American Library (ISBN 0-451-11204-0). Sisters is a historical novel set in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1886. Sophie Dymond, a magazine editor in New York, comes home to Cheyenne after the death of her sister, Helen. The novel is a historical and literary portrayal of the status of women in the Old West. In the novel, Sophie finds a letter that Amy Travers, a schoolteacher and close friend of Helen's, had written to her:

Le Silence de la cité is a French language science-fiction novel by Élisabeth Vonarburg. It was first published in Canada in 1981 and has been translated in English under the title The Silent City. It received the Prix Rosny-Aîné in 1982

Shuttlecock is Graham Swift's critically acclaimed second novel, a psychological thriller published in 1981 by Allen Lane. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1983, and is said to be the best of his earlier novels. It was not published in the US until 1985, after the success of Waterland.

Shuttle Down is a novel by American author G. Harry Stine, written under the nom de plume Lee Correy. First appearing as a four-part serial in Analog magazine between December 1980 and March 1981, the novel was later published by Ballantine/Del Rey in 1981, with a second edition following in 1985.

Shike is a two-volume novel published in 1981 by Robert Shea. It fictionalises and compresses Japanese history in order to incorporate the Genpei War and attempted invasion of Japan by the Mongols within the lifespans of two characters: Jebu, a warrior-monk of mixed parentage (a Mongol father and a Japanese woman) of the Order of Zinja who is a highly fictionalized version of Benkei — and Shima Taniko, the minor noblewoman with whom he falls in love on his first mission — escorting her to an arranged marriage with Prince Horigawa, a far older and extremely influential (but also extremely cunning and malevolent) nobleman. In that regard, the narrative structure of the Shike books bears a close similarity to Shea's later All Things Are Lights, which also focuses on star-crossed lovers.

Sharra's Exile is a fantasy novel written by Marion Zimmer Bradley as part of the Darkover series and is a sequel to The Heritage of Hastur. This novel is a complete rewrite of The Sword of Aldones published by Ace in 1962. The second chapter of book one (pages 39 to 57) of Sharra's Exile was previously published in a slightly different form as a short story entitled "Blood Will Tell" in The Keeper's Price.

Sharpe's Gold is the ninth historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell first published in 1981. The story is set in August 1810 and features the destruction of Almeida during the Peninsular War.

Sharpe's Eagle is a historical novel in the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, first published in 1981. The story is set in July 1809 at the Battle of Talavera during the Peninsular War. It was the first Sharpe novel published, but eighth in the series' chronological order.

The Secret Book of Gnomes is Book II in a series of four books about Gnomes designed for children. They contain stories and a guide to how Gnomes live in harmony with their environment, such as what a Gnome has in his first aid kit and how a Gnome's house is built. The books were written by the Dutch author Wil Huygen and illustrator Rien Poortvliet, though they claimed that it was written by a Gnome called David. Those authors also created another series about Gnomes entitled The Gnomes. That later was used as a basis for the television shows David the Gnome and Wisdom of the Gnomes by BRB Internacional.

The Scarecrows is a young-adult novel by Robert Westall, published by Chatto & Windus in 1981. It is a psychological novel with a supernatural twist, featuring a thirteen-year-old boy's reaction to his mother's courtship and remarriage six years after his father's death. It deals with themes of rage, isolation and fear. Beside the inner themes, it "tells of a boy and his family brought to the brink of destruction by sinister external forces" and it may be called a ghost story. Its U.S. Library of Congress Subject Headings are remarriage, stepfathers, and horror stories.

A Savage Place is the 8th Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker.

Satori is a science fiction novel written by Dennis Schmidt. It is the third part of four in the Kensho series of novels.

Saint Peter's Fair is a medieval mystery novel by Ellis Peters, set in July – September 1139. It is the fourth novel in The Cadfael Chronicles, first published in 1981 (1981 in literature). The story occurs during The Anarchy, in the English town of Shrewsbury.

The S.I.L.V.E.R. Series is a fantasy novel series by Tanith Lee. The Silver Metal Lover, published in 1981, is the first in the series. Metallic Love, published in 2005, is the second novel.

Une rose au paradis is a science-fiction novel written by René Barjavel, and first published in 1981.

The Root Cellar is a children's historical novel by Janet Lunn that is set in the 1980s, although much of the action takes place in the 1860s. It follows Rose Larkin, an orphan, who travels temporally back and forth between Ontario, Canada, of the 1980s and various settings of U.S. Civil War in the 1860s. This time travel is done through the root cellar of the title.

Ronia the Robber's Daughter (Swedish: Ronja Rövardotter) is a children's fantasy book by the noted Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, first published in 1981. In the film based on the story, Ronia was played by Hanna Zetterberg Struwe.

Roadwork is a novel by Stephen King, published in 1981 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, which is no longer in print. However, three of the four novels in that collection - Roadwork, The Long Walk, and The Running Man - have since been reprinted as standalone titles.

The Road to Camlann: The Death of King Arthur is the third book in Rosemary Sutcliff's Arthurian trilogy, after The Sword and the Circle and The Light Beyond the Forest. This book portrays the events that lead to the Battle of Camlann and the downfall of Camelot, including Guinevere and Lancelot's secret affair, and the betrayal of Arthur's illegitimate son Mordred.

River of Death is a novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean, first published in 1981. As with most of MacLean's novels, it depicts adventure, treachery, and murder in an unforgiving environment, but is set this time in the steamy jungles of South America instead of above the Arctic Circle.

Red Dragon is a novel by American author Thomas Harris, first published in 1981. It introduced the character Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The novel was adapted as a film, Manhunter, in 1986 which featured Brian Cox as Lecter. Directed by Michael Mann, the film was critically well received but fared poorly at the box office. It has since developed a cult following.

The Rebel Angels is Canadian author Robertson Davies's most noted novel, after those that form his Deptford Trilogy.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (1981) by Beverly Cleary is the sixth book of the popular Ramona series. Ramona Quimby is in the third grade, now at a new school, and making some new friends. With Beezus in Jr. High and Mr. Quimby going back to college, Ramona feels the pressure with everyone counting on her to manage at school by herself and get along with Willa Jean after school every day. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 was named a Newbery Honor book in 1982.

Radix is a science fiction novel by A. A. Attanasio, published in 1981. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1981. It is the first of four books in Attanasio's Radix Tetrad, followed by In Other Worlds in 1984.

Rabbit Is Rich is a 1981 novel by John Updike. It is the third novel of the four-part series which begins with Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux, and concludes with Rabbit At Rest. There is also a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered. Rabbit Is Rich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1982, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1981. The first-edition hardcover dust jacket for the novel was designed by the author, and is significantly different from the common horizontal-stripe designs used on the other three Rabbit novels. Later printings, including trade paperbacks, feature the trademark stripe motif with stock images of a set of car keys or an image of a late-1970s Japanese automobile.

The Quiet Earth is a 1981 science fiction novel (ISBN 0-340-26507-8) by New Zealand writer Craig Harrison. The novel was adapted into a 1985 New Zealand science fiction film of the same name directed by Geoff Murphy.

Put on by Cunning is a novel by British crime-writer Ruth Rendell. It was first published in 1981, and features her popular series protagonist Inspector Wexford. It is the 11th in the series.

The Probability Broach is the first novel (1980) by American science fiction writer L. Neil Smith. It is set in an alternate history, the so-called Gallatin Universe, where a libertarian society has formed on the North American continent, styled the North American Confederacy (NAC).

Pot is a novel by Slovenian author Nejc Zaplotnik (sl). It was first published in 1981.

Porvarin morsian (Finnish: The Bourgeois Bride) is a historical novel by Finnish author Kaari Utrio.

The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. is a 1981 literary novella written by George Steiner, in which Jewish Nazi hunters find Adolf Hitler (A.H.) alive in the Amazon jungle thirty years after the end of World War II. The book generated considerable controversy after its publication because in it, Steiner, who is Jewish, allows Hitler to defend himself when he is put on trial in the jungle by his captors. There Hitler maintains that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust and that he is the "benefactor of the Jews".

Poland is a historical novel written by James A. Michener and published in 1983 detailing the times and tribulations of three Polish families (the Lubonski family, the Bukowski family, and the Buk family) across eight centuries, ending in the then-present day (1981).

The Pigman's Legacy is a young adult novel written by Paul Zindel, first published in 1980. The book is a sequel to The Pigman following the lives of John and Lorraine shortly after The Pigman's death at the end of the first story and how they quickly make up for it.

Peace Breaks Out (1981) is a novel by American author John Knowles, better known for A Separate Peace (1959). The books share the setting of the Devon preparatory school, probably a reference to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, which Knowles attended in his youth.

The Outlaw's Silver is the title of a Hardy Boys Digest novel, written by Franklin W. Dixon. Sometimes it goes by the number of 67 in the series, a continuation of the original novels, and sometimes as the 9th, as it is the 9th published by Simon & Schuster after Grosset & Dunlap lost rights to publish new Hardy Boys books in 1979.

Other People is a novel by British writer Martin Amis, published in 1981.

Obasan is a novel by the Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa. First published by Lester and Orpen Dennys in 1981, it chronicles Canada's internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during World War II from the perspective of a young child. In 2005, it was the One Book, One Vancouver selection.

Oath of Fealty is a 1981 novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, published originally by Phantasia Press, then by Timescape Books, with numerous reprints. Set in the near future, it involves an arcology, a large inhabited structure, called Todos Santos, which rises above a crime-ridden Los Angeles, California, but has little beyond casual contact with the city. The novel popularized the phrase "think of it as evolution in action," which occurs elsewhere in Niven's books. The novel anticipated the building of the Los Angeles Subway. It was included in David Pringle's book Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels.

Noble House is a novel by James Clavell, published in 1981 and set in Hong Kong in 1963.

The Noah Conspiracy is a 1981 novel by American writer Michael Shaara, first published as The Herald.

Night Probe! is an adventure novel by Clive Cussler. This is the 5th book featuring the author’s primary protagonist, Dirk Pitt. Published in 1981, it is set in the near future of 1989, a date with ironic significance (see below).

The Night Journey is a 1981 novel by Kathryn Lasky.

Mr. Myombekere and His Wife Bugonoka, Their Son Ntulanalwo and Daughter Bulihwali (original title: Bwana Myombekere na Bibi Bugonoka, Ntulanalwo na Bulihwali) is a novel by the Tanzanian author Aniceti Kitereza. The novel is a love story depicting the history of the Kerewe through three generations. It was first published in 1981 in Swahili, but was originally completed already in 1945 in Kiterezas mother tongue Kerewe. As no publishing house wanted to publish a novel in the endangered language, Kitereza himself translated the novel into Swahili shortly before his own death, and got it published. Since, it has been translated into English, German and Swedish. The novel is the only one to have been written in Kerewe, and the most comprehensive work published in an African language.

The Mosquito Coast is the most successful novel by American author Paul Theroux. Published in 1981 it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year. It was adapted into a 1986 film starring Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren and River Phoenix.

Moi, Antoine de Tounens, roi de Patagonie is a 1981 novel by the French writer Jean Raspail. It tells the story of the French adventurer Orélie-Antoine de Tounens, who in 1860 declared the independence of the Kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia, located in South America, where he held the title of king for the next 18 years. The sovereignty of the country was not respected by Chile and Argentina, whose authorities regarded Tounens as insane. The title of the book means "I, Antoine de Tounens, King of Patagonia".

The Mockery Bird is a humorous novel by Gerald Durrell, published in 1981 by William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd. The book, like the other works of the author, contains a strong environmental message.

Miracle Monday is a novel written by Elliot S. Maggin, starring the DC Comics superhero Superman. It was published in 1981.

Minotaur was a novel by Benjamin Tammuz first published in English translation in 1981. The novel is a story of love and obsession with tragic consequences. Graham Greene declared that it was the "novel of the year" following its publication

Midnight's Children is a 1981 book by Salman Rushdie that deals with India's transition from British colonialism to independence and the partition of British India. It is considered an example of postcolonial literature and magical realism. The story is told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, and is set in the context of actual historical events as with historical fiction.

Men of Men is a novel by Wilbur Smith. It is set during the settlement of Rhodesia and the First Matabele War and climaxes with the Shangani Patrol.

Mazes and Monsters is a 1981 novel by Rona Jaffe. The novel is a cautionary tale regarding the then-new hobby of fantasy role-playing games. The book was adapted into a made-for-television movie by the same name in 1982 starring Tom Hanks.

Max and the Cats is a 1981 novella by Brazilian writer and physician Moacyr Scliar. It was first published in Portuguese, then published in English in 1990. It tells the story of Max Schmidt, born in Berlin in 1912, who comes of age just before the Nazis take power. After offending them by having an affair with a married woman, Max is forced to flee the country. He ends up on a ship bound for Brazil that sinks as part of an insurance scam and finds himself trapped in a dinghy with a jaguar—one of a number of zoo animals caged in the hold—but after being rescued and making a life for himself in Brazil continues to find his German past impossible to escape.

Masks of the Illuminati is a 1981 novel by Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of The Illuminatus! Trilogy and over thirty other influential books. Although not a sequel to the earlier work, it does expand information on many of the topics referred to in the trilogy.

The Mask is a novel by the best-selling author Dean Koontz originally released under the pseudonym Owen West in 1981. Koontz later re-released the novel under his own name.

The Many-Colored Land is the first book of the Saga of Pliocene Exile (known as the Saga of the Exiles in the UK and the Commonwealth) by American author Julian May. It sets the series up by introducing the story of each of the characters. The main purpose of the book is to provide information for the rest of the series, only beginning the main storyline in its final part.

The Mahdi is a 1981 thriller novel by Philip Nicholson, writing as A. J. Quinnell. The book was published in 1981 by Macmillan in the UK then in January 1982 by William Morrow & Co in the US and deals with political power struggles over a presumed Muslim prophet.

Maggie's Way is a 1981 American novel written by Martha Barron Barrett.

Madwand is a 1981 fantasy novel by Roger Zelazny. It is a sequel to Changeling.

Macaire le Copte is a Belgian novel by François Weyergans. It was first published in 1981.

Lunes de fiel is a 1981 novel by the French writer Pascal Bruckner. The title literally means "moons of bile", a pun on "lune de miel", which means honeymoon. The story takes place on a passenger ship heading from Marseille to Istanbul, and focuses on a couple who meet a man determined to break them apart. The book was published by Éditions du Seuil.

Loitering With Intent is a novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark. Published in 1981 by Bodley Head it was short-listed for the Booker Prize that year. It contains many autobiographical references to Spark's early career and was reprinted in 2001 by New Directions, in the US, and in 2007 by Virago Press in the UK (with a forward by Mark Lawson).

Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament is a modern fantasy novel by John Crowley, published in 1981. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1982.

Little Boy Blue is a 1981 semi-autobiographical novel by Edward Bunker that follows his journey into crime and deviance.

Lilith: A Snake in the Grass is a 1981 science fiction novel by American writer Jack L. Chalker. It is the first book in his Four Lords of the Diamond series.

Licence Renewed, first published in 1981, is the first novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. It was the first proper James Bond novel (not counting novelizations and a faux biography) since Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun in 1968. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and in the United States by Richard Marek, a G. P. Putnam's Sons imprint.

Let The Circle Be Unbroken is the 1981 sequel to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, written by Mildred D. Taylor. T.J.'s punishment is approaching, Stacey runs away to find work, and the Logan children's cousin, Suzella Rankin, tries to pass herself off as a white person, but fails which leads to embarrassing consequences. It won the Coretta Scott King Author Award in 1982.

The Leper of Saint Giles is a medieval mystery novel by Ellis Peters, set in October 1139. It is the fifth novel in The Cadfael Chronicles and was first published in 1981.

The Last Mafioso: The Treacherous World of Jimmy Fratianno is a biographical novel detailing the life of American Mafia member Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno. It chronicles Fratianno's life from his childhood in Cleveland to becoming the acting Boss of the Los Angeles crime family. Author Ovid Demaris gained the information for the book from Fraitanno himself in the early 1980s, where they spent hours recording the pair's conversations. Demaris also conducted his own research. The book was released on January 13, 1980 by Crown Publishing. It was the first of two biographical books written about Fratianno; the other is Vengeance is Mine (1987) by Michael J. Zuckerman.

The Last Day of Creation (in original German: Der letzte Tag der Schöpfung) is a science fiction novel by German writer Wolfgang Jeschke, first published in 1981. The English translation was published in 1982 in the USA and Great Britain. In the same year the novel obtained the Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis (Kurd Laßwitz award).

Lanark, subtitled A Life in Four Books, is the first novel of Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. Written over a period of almost thirty years, it combines realist and dystopian surrealist depictions of his home city of Glasgow.

The Prone Gunman (La Position du tireur couché) is a thriller written by Jean-Patrick Manchette that was published in 1981.

The Klingon Gambit is a Star Trek: The Original Series novel written by Robert E. Vardeman.

Kiss Mommy Goodbye is a 1981 psychological thriller novel by Joy Fielding.

Kirikirijin 吉里吉里人 (The People of Kirikiri or The Kirikirians - 1981) is Inoue Hisashi's major satirical novel, challenges the political, cultural and linguistic authority of Tokyo, by depicting the political separation for the Kirikiri people from the rest of Japan. The Tohoku dialect juxtaposes the fact that it is closely related with the Tokyo dialect (considered as ‘standard’ Japanese) with the fact that it is considered a rural, uneducated and backward dialect because of its sound. It defies Tokyo-centred culture and the homogenisation of individual experience, as well as celebrating imagination, independence and innovation

The King's Way (French: L'Allée du Roi) is a novel by the French author Françoise Chandernagor first published in 1981. It is the story of Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon, who in the 17th century was almost the queen of France. It follows her destiny, from her birth in a prison in Niort and her poor childhood, to a marriage to a disabled poet, and her life in the court of Louis XIV, king of France, where she became his companion and finally his wife.

Kepler is a novel by John Banville, first published in 1981.

The Keep is a horror novel by F. Paul Wilson. It is also the first volume in a series of six novels known as The Adversary Cycle. It appeared on the New York Times Bestsellers List and has been adapted for film and as a limited-series of comics.

Jumanji is a 1981 fantasy children's picture book, written and illustrated by the American author Chris Van Allsburg. It was made into a 1995 film of the same name. Both the book and the film are about a magical board game that implements real animals and other jungle elements as the game is played; thus the dangers which the players have to overcome in the game also appear in real life. Jumanji star Robin Williams claimed "jumanji" is a Zulu word meaning "many effects," and Van Allsburg does as well.

Journey to Portugal is a non-fiction book on Portugal by Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago. It was first published in 1981 by Círculo de Leitores e Editorial Caminho.

Johnny's in the Basement is a children's novel by the author Louis Sachar, the author of the National Book Award and Newbery Medal winning novel, Holes. This book was published in 1981, by Knopf. It is Sachar's second book (Sideways Stories from Wayside School was his first, in 1979). The book's title is a reference to the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan, which begins with the line "Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine."

The Island on Bird Street (Hebrew: האי ברחוב הציפורים‎; The Island on Birds Street) is a 1981 semi-autobiographical children's book by Israeli author Uri Orlev, which tells the story of a young boy, Alex, and his struggle to survive alone in a ghetto during World War II. The author received the 1996 Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's literature, largely for this book, which was translated into numerous languages and adapted into a play and a film.

The Iron Theatre - first published in 1981 revives the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century in Georgia and explores a conflict of life and art at the edge of new millennium. The plot of the novel is a mix of historical facts, real situations and the author's fantasy. The author frequently breaks the chronological order, to empower the reader to imagine the different situations and events from the different points of view and therefore creates a complete picture of the world that he wants to represent. The novel gained Shota Rustaveli State Prize back in 1983.

Irish Thoroughbred is American author Nora Roberts's debut novel, originally published by Silhouette in January 1981 as a category romance. Like other category romances, the novel was less than 200 pages and was intended to be on sale for only one month. It proved so popular that it was repackaged as a stand-alone romance and reprinted multiple times. Roberts wrote two sequels, Irish Rebel and Irish Rose.

The Ionian Mission is the eighth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1981. The story is set during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Infinity Clue is the 70th title of the Hardy Boys series, written by Franklin W. Dixon.

An Indecent Obsession is a 1981 novel by Australian author Colleen McCullough.

In the Grip of Winter is the second book of The Animals of Farthing Wood series by Colin Dann. It was first published in 1981, and later republished as part one of the first "Omnibus".

Daw books (first edition)

If There Be Thorns is a novel by Virginia Andrews which was published in 1981. It is the third book in the Dollanganger series. The story takes place in the year 1982. There was a Lifetime movie of the same name that premiered on April 5, 2015 (Easter).

I Want to Go Home is a children's novel by Gordon Korman, first published in 1981. It was republished, as with most of Korman's older books, in 2004 with a new cover and updated text.

The Hunger (1981) is a novel by Whitley Strieber. The plot involves a beautiful and wealthy vampire named Miriam Blaylock who takes human lovers and transforms them into vampire-human hybrids.

The Howling Miller (Finnish: Ulvova mylläri) is a 1981 novel by the Finnish author Arto Paasilinna. The main character of the novel is the howling miller, who sometimes acts strangely but is otherwise a goodhearted hardworking honest man. He sometimes keeps the villagers up all night by howling and getting all the dogs in the village worked up to howl with him. Finally the villagers decide that the miller has to be committed into a mental hospital, where the hero does not have to spend too much time until he escapes with the help of his only sane roommate. The miller takes to the woods near his home but there he is constantly harassed by the chief of the police with his posse.

The Hotel New Hampshire is a 1981 coming of age novel by John Irving and his fifth published novel.

The Homeward Bounders is a fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones with the chilling premise that there is a vast series of parallel universes, all of which serve as the game-boards for a race of demons that delight in war-games and fantasy-games. The style in which she presents this strange premise is directed at children, but without whimsical language, which appeals to mature readers as well.

Homecoming is a young adult novel by American children's author Cynthia Voigt. It is the first of seven novels in the Tillerman Cycle. It was adapted into a for-TV film.

Hobgoblin by John Coyne is a 1981 horror novel about Scott Gardiner, a teenaged boy who becomes obsessed with Hobgoblin, a fantasy roleplaying game based on Irish mythology, as his life in the game and in reality slowly blend.

Hiding Place is a novel by the American writer John Edgar Wideman set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the 1970s.

HERmione, is an autobiographical novel written by imagist poet H.D.. It forms part of what she refers to as her Madrigal cycle, which also includes Bid Me to Live, Paint it Today and Asphodel.

Hawk of May is the first installment in Gillian Bradshaw’s Down The Long Wind trilogy. Published initially in 1980 by Simon and Schuster, Hawk of May centers on Gwalchmai ap Lot and his adventures during the time of Arthur.

The Guardian of Isis is a young adult novel by Monica Hughes, and is the sequel to The Keeper of the Isis Light. The story takes place on the fictional world of Isis. It is set 55 years after the first book, and now two more generations have been born.

The Green Futures of Tycho is a 1981 science fiction novel for young audiences by William Sleator. The book explores the effect of excessive parent expectations on the future of their children.

Gorky Park is a 1981 crime novel written by Martin Cruz Smith set in the Soviet Union.

Goodnight Mister Tom is a children's novel by the English author Michelle Magorian, published by Kestrel in 1981. Harper & Row published a U.S. edition within the calendar year. Set in mostly rural England during World War II, it features a boy abused at home in London who is evacuated to the country at the outbreak of the war. In the care of Mister Tom, an elderly recluse, he experiences a new life of loving and care.

Goodbye, Janette is a 1981 bestselling novel by Harold Robbins, and his 16th novel.

A Good Man in Africa is the first novel by William Boyd, published in 1981. It won both the Whitbread Book Award for a first novel and the Somerset Maugham Award that year.

Written by Molly Keane in 1981, Good Behaviour tells a story of Irish society in the early twentieth century. Narrated by the daughter of the St. Charles family, Aroon, nothing is as it seems. A cold mother, a gay brother and a similarly inclined love interest all unseen or excused by the society focused upon good behaviour. The book was nominated for the Booker prize and has been adapted for television.

Golem XIV is a science fiction novel written by Polish author Stanisław Lem, published in 1981. In 1985 it was translated in English by Harvest Books in the collection Imaginary Magnitude.

The Golden Sabre is a 1981 novel written by Australian author Jon Cleary.

Golden God is a novel by Jeanne DuPrau published in 1981. In the novel, four American archaeologists flee Kalim when hostile rebel forces overthrow the government. When main character Dr. Selk (one of the archaeologists) finds himself deep into a tunnel while mining, he claims he found something valuable. The valuable item could be worth up to 800,000 dollars so he must decide whether to turn it in or keep it a secret from the rest of the archaeologists he was exploring with.

Godric (ISBN 0-06-061162-6) is a novel published in 1981, written by Frederick Buechner, that tells the semi-fictionalised life story of medieval Catholic saint Godric of Finchale. The novel was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

God Emperor of Dune is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert published in 1981, the fourth in his Dune series of six novels. It was ranked as the #11 hardcover fiction best seller of 1981 by Publishers Weekly.

George's Marvellous Medicine is a children's book written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake, first published in 1981. The book was praised for its imitativeness and humour, but was also criticised for its underdeveloped plot and somewhat abrupt ending. The book is one of Dahl's shorter children's books.

Funeral Games is a 1981 historical novel by Mary Renault, dealing with the death of Alexander the Great and its aftermath, the gradual disintegration of his empire. It is the final book of her Alexander trilogy.

Free Fall in Crimson (1981) is the nineteenth novel in the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. In the plot McGee sets out to investigate the death of an ailing millionaire, and encounters a motorcycle gang, pornographic movie-makers, and balloonists. The book also revives the character of Lysa Dean from The Quick Red Fox, an early novel in the series. In the finale, McGee's longtime friend Meyer is terrified into submission by the main villain and judges himself a failure because his inaction almost led to disaster. This moral dilemma is resolved in the next novel, Cinnamon Skin.

Frank Armoton is a humor/crime novel by Finnish author Martti Innanen, published in Finnish in 1981.

The Four-Headed Dragon is the 69th title of the Hardy Boys series, written by Franklin W. Dixon.

Flambards Divided (1981) is a sequel to the Flambards trilogy, written by K. M. Peyton.

Fireball is the first book in the Fireball Trilogy by John Christopher, published in 1981, exploring the adventures of two cousins when they are suddenly transported into an alternative history Earth through a mysterious fireball.

The File on H. is a novel by the Albanian author Ismail Kadare. It first appeared in Albanian in 1981 under the title Dosja H.

The Faraway Drums is a 1981 novel written by Australian author Jon Cleary about an American journalist and British intelligence officer who try to stop the assassination of King George V at the 1911 Delhi Durbar. Film rights were sold but abandoned after it was realised how much an adaptation would cost.

Famous Last Words is a 1981 novel by Canadian author Timothy Findley, in which Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (originally from the Ezra Pound poem of the same name) is the main character.

Famine is a 1981 horror novel written by Scottish writer Graham Masterton. The story is about a nationwide famine that sweeps America, rendering all sources of food contaminated in one way or another.

The Eyes of Darkness is a best-selling novel written by Dean Koontz, released in 1981. The book focuses on a mother who sets out on a quest to find out if her son truly did die one year ago, or if he is still alive — somewhere.

Ondskan ("The Evil") is a Swedish novel by Jan Guillou.

Everybody's All-American is a 1981 novel by longtime Sports Illustrated contributor Frank Deford and later made into a motion picture directed by Taylor Hackford.

The Entropy Tango is a novel by British fantasy and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock. It is part of his long running Jerry Cornelius series.

The Entropy Effect is a novel by Vonda N. McIntyre set in the fictional Star Trek Universe. It was originally published in 1981 by Pocket Books and is the second in its long-running series of Star Trek novels (and the first original novel in that series; the first of the series is the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture). It is also the first source to give Sulu and Uhura first names later made canon, Hikaru (in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) and Nyota (in Star Trek).

Ecotopia Emerging (EE) by Ernest Callenbach is a fictionalized history of the events leading up to the secession of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington to form the steady-state, environmentalist nation of Ecotopia along the Pacific Coast of the United States. In 1975, Callenbach had published a utopian novel called Ecotopia about the events; EE is the prequel, published in 1981. The EE story seems to take place in the 1990s; Callenbach assumes that the pro-business, anti-environmental Reagan-era policies—already evident at the time of publication—will have persisted in the United States after Reagan's presidency.

Ealdwood is a fantasy novella by C. J. Cherryh. It is one of Cherryh's Ealdwood Stories and was first published in 1981 by Donald M. Grant in a limited edition of 1,050 copies. The edition was illustrated by the author's brother, David A. Cherry. The novella draws on Celtic mythology and is about Ealdwood, a forest at the edge of Faery, and Arafel, a Daoine Sidhe.

Dying, in Other Words is the debut novel of English author Maggie Gee, variously described as surrealist and modern gothic. It garnered "rave reviews" in The Observer and The Times. According to the OUP's Good Fiction Guide, a "vividly written experimental novel" it made a "strong impression" when it was published in 1981. Containing "postmodernist gimmicks" and self-refexive structures it concerns a supposedly dead woman rewriting the story of her own death.

Dream Park is a 1981 novel written by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes set in a futuristic amusement park of the same name. It was later expanded into a series of books.

Downbelow Station is a science fiction novel written by C. J. Cherryh and published in 1981 by DAW Books. It won the Hugo Award in 1982, was shortlisted for a Locus Award that same year, and was named by Locus magazine as one of the top 50 science fiction novels of all time in 1987.

Djinn is a novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was written as a French textbook with California State University, Dominguez Hills professor Yvone Lenard using a process of grammatical progression. Each chapter covers a specific element of French grammar which becomes increasingly difficult over the course of the novel. The first five chapters are written in the present tense from the first person point of view. The sixth chapter is written partially in the third person past and partially in the first person present. The eighth chapter is written in the first person point of view, but the narrator has changed from the masculine Simon Lecoeur to an unknown female narrator.

The Divine Invasion is a BSFA Award nominated 1981 science fiction book by Philip K. Dick. It is the second book in the gnostic VALIS trilogy, and takes place in the indeterminate future, perhaps a century or more after VALIS. It was originally titled, "Valis Regained".

Delusion's Master (1981) is the third novel in Tales From The Flat Earth by Tanith Lee.

Death by Sheer Torture (1981), also known simply as Sheer Torture, is a mystery novel by English writer Robert Barnard, the first of five novels, penned in the 1980s, featuring his recurring detective character Perry Trethowan.

The Dead of Jericho is a work of English detective fiction by Colin Dexter, the fifth novel of the Inspector Morse series, which was subsequently the first of a highly successful series of television adaptations of the novels.

De vierde man (The Fourth Man) is a 1981 novel by Dutch author Gerard Reve, and the basis for the film of the same name by Paul Verhoeven. Within Reve's oeuvre, it stands out as one of only a few novels to have a heterosexual theme.

Dawn is a science fiction novel written in 1980 by Dean McLaughlin. A re-imagining of Isaac Asimov's classic 1941 short story, "Nightfall", it was serialized in Analog magazine (April–July 1981), with — unusually — two cover illustrations, for both its first and last segments. The story was republished in hardcover in 2006.

Darconville's Cat is the second novel by Alexander Theroux, first published in 1981. The main story is a love affair between Alaric Darconville, an English professor at a Virginia women's college, and one of his students, Isabel, but includes long sections on other topics, including a general satire of world of American academics.

Dale Loves Sophie to Death (April 1981) is the debut novel of American author Robb Forman Dew. It won the 1982 National Book Award in the category First Novel.

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man is a 1981 novel by best-selling author Fannie Flagg. It was originally published under the title "Coming Attractions". The story is a series of diary entries that chronicle the main character's years growing up in Mississippi from 1952 to 1959.

The Curse of the Pharaohs is a historical mystery novel by Elizabeth Peters, the second in the Amelia Peabody series of novels; it takes place in the excavation season of 1892-93.

Cujo is a 1981 psychological horror novel by Stephen King about a rabid dog. The novel won the British Fantasy Award in 1982, and was made into a film in 1983.

Cruiser Dreams is a 1980 novel by Janet Morris, the second in her Kerrion Space trilogy.

Creation is an epic historical fiction novel by Gore Vidal published in 1981. In 2002 he published a restored version, reinstating four chapters that a previous editor had cut and adding a brief foreword explaining what had happened and why he had restored the cut chapters.

The Covenant of the Crown is a Star Trek: The Original Series novel written by Howard Weinstein.

A Countess Below Stairs is a 1981 British historical romance novel by Eva Ibbotson. It follows the story of Anna Grazinsky, a Russian countess, after World War I. It has also been published under the title The Secret Countess as a young adult novel.

The Cool War is a science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl published in 1981 by Del Rey Books.

Conan the Mercenary is a fantasy novel written by Andrew J. Offutt and illustrated by Esteban Maroto featuring Robert E. Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, the second volume in a trilogy beginning with Conan and the Sorcerer and concluding with The Sword of Skelos. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in 1980, with an official publication date of January 1981. Ace reprinted the novel in April 1983, and issued a trade paperback edition in 1985. The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in July 1989.

The Company of Women is a novel by Irish-American author Mary Gordon. First published in 1981, it is a coming-of-age story which details the sheltered upbringing of a well-educated Catholic girl named Felicitas, and how her values are challenged and altered by the turbulence of the 1960s protest movement. The book earned Gordon a second Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.

The Comfort of Strangers is a 1981 novel by British writer Ian McEwan. It is his second novel, and is set in an unnamed city (though the detailed description strongly suggests Venice). It was adapted into a film in 1990 (The Comfort of Strangers), which starred Rupert Everett, Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren and Natasha Richardson. The film is set in Venice.

The Sword of the Lictor is a science fantasy novel by Gene Wolfe, first released in 1982. It is the third volume in the four-volume series, The Book of the New Sun.

The Claw of the Conciliator is a science fantasy novel by Gene Wolfe, first released in 1981. It is the second volume in the four-volume series, The Book of the New Sun.

The Citadel of the Autarch is a science fantasy novel by Gene Wolfe, first released in 1983. It is the fourth and final volume in the four-volume series, The Book of the New Sun.

Cities of the Red Night is a 1981 novel by American author William S. Burroughs, his first full-length novel since The Wild Boys (1971). It is part of his final trilogy of novels, known as The Red Night Trilogy, followed by The Place of Dead Roads (1983) and The Western Lands (1987). The plot involves a group of radical pirates who seek the freedom to live under the articles set out by Captain James Misson. In near present day, a parallel story follows a detective searching for a lost boy, abducted for use in a sexual ritual. The cities of the title mimic and parody real places, and Burroughs makes references to the United States, Mexico, and Morocco.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Spanish: Crónica de una muerte anunciada) is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1981. It tells, in the form of a pseudo-journalistic reconstruction, the story of the murder of Santiago Nasar by the two Vicario brothers.

The Christmas Tree is Irish author Jennifer Johnston's sixth novel, first published in 1981 by Hamish Hamilton. It has been suggested by The Irish Times as being her finest work, and was chosen by the Irish Independent to be published as one of the books its "Irish Women Writers" collection. It is one of U.S. writer Lionel Shriver's favourite books and was adapted for television in 1986.

Chiefs is the first novel in the Will Lee series by Stuart Woods. It was first published in 1981 by W. W. Norton & Company. The novel takes place in the fictional town of Delano, Georgia, over three generations, as three different police chiefs attempt to identify a serial killer operating in the area. It is Woods' first published novel. As the author explains in a note, it was inspired by the story of his grandfather's death while serving as a police chief. Chiefs was made available in e-book format on January 23, 2012.

Chhinnamastar Abhishap is a Bengali novel by Satyajit Ray featuring private detective Feluda.

The Changing Land is a Locus Award nominated fantasy novel written by Roger Zelazny, first published in 1981. The novel resolves the storyline from the various Dilvish, the Damned short stories (collected in 1982 as Dilvish, the Damned.)

The Chaneysville Incident is a 1981 novel by David Bradley. It concerns a black historian who investigates an incident involving the death of his father and a prior incident involving the death of some 12 slaves. John, the historian, struggles to solve the mystery of his father, Moses Washington, a moonshiner with a troubled past. Imagination, hunting, death, and racial tensions all make thematic appearances in this novel. Chaneysville is in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.

Chances is a 1981 novel by Jackie Collins and the first in her Santangelo novels series. The novel has three focal points, two of them focusing on the main characters of the novel and a third during the New York City blackout of 1977.

Century is a New York Times best-selling novel, written by Fred Mustard Stewart and published in 1981. The story follows four generations of an Italian-American family with settings in both America and Italy. Most of the events that take place in the novel, take place in actual American and Italian history. Readers are witnesses to the rise of Benito Mussolini, the Prohibition period, Black Tuesday, World War I, World War II, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, and the gradual formation of the motion picture industry in Hollywood. The novel spent six weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list.

The Centurions is the first in a historical fiction trilogy about the 1st-century Roman Empire. Set primarily in Roman Britain circa AD 72–75, it follows the adventures of a pair of Roman brothers – one free-born and one slave-born – as they serve in the Roman legions.

Cathedral is a 1981 novel by Nelson DeMille.

The Cat and the King (1981) is a work of historical fiction about the court of French King Louis XIV (1638–1715) by novelist Louis Auchincloss. The novel's narrator—Louis de Rouvroy, the second Duc de Saint-Simon—was a real-life French noble who observed life at the court and recorded in his memoirs all that he saw and felt about the reign of the Sun King. Saint-Simon (1675–1755) is mentioned in many of Auchincloss’ works and in The Cat and the King he fantasizes that the Duc kept on writing after his real-life memoirs were published.

The Care of Time (1981) is the last novel by British spy fiction writer Eric Ambler. It deals with the theme of international terrorism, using alleged hither-to-unpublished memoirs of the Russian terrorist Sergey Nechayev as a plot device.

The Cardinal Sins is a 1981 novel by author and priest Andrew Greeley.

Captive Witness is the 64th volume in the Nancy Drew Stories series. Nancy travels to Austria to solve a mystery. It is about stolen film and 10 refugee children trapped in Hungary. It was originally titled "Captive Witness Mystery."

Camber the Heretic is a fantasy novel by American-born author Katherine Kurtz. It was first published by Del Rey Books in 1981. It was the sixth novel of Kurtz' Deryni novels to be published, and the third book in her second Deryni trilogy, The Legends of Camber of Culdi. The Legends trilogy serves as prequels to The Chronicles of the Deryni series that Kurtz wrote from 1970 to 1973, and it details the events that occurred two centuries before the Chronicles trilogy. Kurtz' next Deryni series to be published was The Histories of King Kelson, but the internal literary chronology of the Legends trilogy is continued in The Heirs of Saint Camber trilogy.

Byzantium Endures (1981) is a novel by Michael Moorcock. It is the first in the Pyat Quartet tetralogy.

Brown's Requiem is a 1981 crime novel, the first novel by American author James Ellroy. Ellroy dedicated Brown's Requiem, "to Randy Rice".

A Breed of Heroes is a 1981 novel by Alan Judd. It narrates in third person the experiences of a young British Army officer as he is deployed on his first tour of duty, a four-month operation in Armagh and Belfast at the height of The Troubles.

Brain is a medical thriller written by Robin Cook. It describes how a future generation of computers will work hard-wired to human brains.

Bougainville: Een gedenkschrift is a novel by Dutch author F. Springer. Published in 1981, it won the Ferdinand Bordewijk Prijs in 1982. The novel is one of the author's most popular and was Springer's first big literary success. It is set in the nineteenth-century Dutch colonial past and contemporaneous Bangladesh, and is based on the experiences of the author, who grew up in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) and was stationed in Bangladesh as a diplomat.

The Book of Lights is a 1981 novel by Chaim Potok about a young rabbi and student of Kabbalah whose service as a United States military chaplain in Korea and Japan after the Korean War challenges his thinking about the meaning of faith in a world of "light" from many sources.

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a novel by Gerald Basil Edwards first published in United Kingdom by Hamish Hamilton in 1981, and in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in the same year. It has since been published by Penguin books and New York Review Books in their classics series, as well as in French and Italian.

The Book of Dreams is a science fiction book by American author Jack Vance, the fifth and last novel (1981) in the "Demon Princes" series.

Bodily Harm is a novel by Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1981.

Bliss is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey. Published in 1981, the book won that year's Miles Franklin Award.

Beaver Towers: The Witch's Revenge is a novel by British author Nigel Hinton which was first published in 1981. It is the second installment in the Beaver Towers series between Beaver Towers and Beaver Towers: The Dangerous Journey. It follows the story of Philip who was summoned to Beaver Towers when Oyin the Witch went after him.

The Beast Within is a horror novel written by Edward Levy.

Baseball Fever is a novel written by Johanna Hurwitz and published in 1981 by William Morrow and Company. It features Ezra Feldman as the protagonist, who has a depicted obsession to baseball and is primarily centered on his father and Ezra himself, who fail to compromise because Ezra prefers baseball and his father loathes baseball and prefers chess and sociology.

An Asian Minor is a novel by Felice Picano in which he re-invents the myth of Ganymede. In Greek Mythology, Ganymede was the cupbearer of Olympus and the beloved of Zeus, chief of the gods. In the novel, told in the first person from the viewpoint of Ganymede himself, he reveals that before Zeus became his lover Ganymede was erotically and amorously pursued by several other major deities. Ares, god of war, was too rough and violent. Hermes, god of thieves and tricksters, was too dishonest and deceitful. Only Zeus was able to satisfy Ganymede fully.

The Antipope is a comic fantasy novel by the British author Robert Rankin. It is Rankin's first novel, and the first book in the Brentford Trilogy (which, as of July 2010, consists of 9 novels). The book was first published in 1981 by Pan Books, and from 1991 by Corgi books, an imprint of Transworld Publishers. Although typically found in the Science fiction section of bookshops, it is a difficult novel to categorise; Rankin himself joked that he wanted to create a new genre of fiction, called "Far Fetched Fiction", so that he would have his own bookshelf in Smiths.

Angel Eyes is the novel by Loren D. Estleman, second in Private Investigator Amos Walker series.

Anastasia Again! (1981) is a young-adult novel by Lois Lowry. It is part of her Anastasia and Sam series and the sequel to Anastasia Krupnik.

The Alleys of Eden is the debut novel of Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler, first published in 1981.

Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful is the third novel of Alan Paton, the South African author who is best known for writing Cry, the Beloved Country. Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful is an anti-apartheid novel, in a similar vein to Cry, the Beloved Country. It is a fictional reworking of Paton's own years working as a political activist and of the experience he gained working as the president of the South African Liberal Party.

The Affirmation is a 1981 science fiction novel by Christopher Priest. In 2015 Valancourt Books released a new edition which includes an introduction by the author.

Act of Love is a 1981 serial killer horror novel written by American author Joe R. Lansdale. This is Lansdale's first full length novel.

The Price, published by Eclipse Comics, is a Dreadstar graphic novel featuring Syzygy Darklock. It is the second part of the Metamorphosis Odyssey story arc begun in Epic Illustrated magazine and tells the story of the magician-priest Darklock and his rise to power within the Church of the Instrumentality.

The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 7 is an anthology of fantasy stories, edited by Arthur W. Saha. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in 1981.

The Wonderful Lips of Thibong Linh is a collection of adventure and fantasy short stories by Theodore Roscoe. It was first published in 1981 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. in an edition of 1,200 copies. The stories originally appeared in the magazines Argosy and Adventure.

Winners is a collection of award winning short fiction by science fiction and fantasy author Poul Anderson, first published in paperback by Tor Books in August 1981. The pieces were originally published between 1960 and 1972 in the magazines The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, and Galaxy Magazine.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a 1981 collection of short stories by American writer Raymond Carver, as well as the title of one of the stories in the collection.

Weird Tales #3 is an anthology edited by Lin Carter, the third in his paperback revival of the classic fantasy and horror magazine Weird Tales. It was first published in paperback by Zebra Books in 1981.

We Are All Legends is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Darrell Schweitzer featuring his sword and sorcery hero Sir Julian. The book was edited by Hank Stine and illustrated by Stephen Fabian, and features an introduction by L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published as a trade paperback by The Donning Company in 1981. It was reprinted by Starmount House in 1988, Borgo Press in 1989 and Wildside Press in 1999.

Tales from the Nightside is a collection of stories by author Charles L. Grant. It was released in 1981 and was the author's first book by Arkham House and was published in an edition of 4,121 copies. The book cover has been featured on Thrash Metal band Sepultura album Beneath the Remains

Storyteller is a hybrid collection of poetry, short stories and family photographs compiled by Laguna Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko. It was first published in 1981 following the literary success of the novel Ceremony.

Shadows was a series of horror anthologies edited by Charles L. Grant, published by Doubleday from 1978 to 1991. Grant, a proponent of "quiet horror", initiated the series in order to offer readers a showcase of this kind of fiction. The short stories appearing in the Shadows largely dispensed with traditional Gothic settings, and had very little physical violence. Instead, they featured slow accumulations of dread through subtle omens, mostly taking place in everyday settings. While Grant himself was very adept at this kind of fiction, he contributed no stories to the anthologies, writing only the introductions and author profiles. The first volume in the series won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology.

Scarlet Dream is a collection of science fiction short stories by C. L. Moore. It was first published in 1981 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. in an edition of 1,820 copies, of which 220 were bound in buckram, boxed, and signed by the author and artist. The stories feature Moore's character Northwest Smith. All but the last story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.

Sandkings is a collection of science fiction short stories by George R. R. Martin, published in December 1981. The multiple-award-winning title story concerns a race of insectoid, militaristic alien 'pets' who worship their master until he badly mistreats them. It was adapted into "The Sandkings," an episode of the new The Outer Limits, as well as a 1987 graphic novel, published by DC Comics as the seventh and last book of the DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel line, adapted by Doug Moench, Pat Broderick, and Neal McPheeters.

Palm Sunday is a 1981 collection of short stories, speeches, essays, letters, and other previously unpublished works by author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Out of the Everywhere, and Other Extraordinary Visions is a short story collection by James Tiptree, Jr that was first published in 1981 as a Del Rey Books paperback original. All but two of the stories had been previously published, four of them under the pseudonym Raccoona Sheldon (as opposed to Tiptree, also a pseudonym).

On the Yankee Station is a short story collection by William Boyd. His first novel, A Good Man in Africa was published in 1981; this collection was published later that same year, and includes two stories featuring Morgan Leafy, the anti-hero of the novel. The title comes from one of the stories which is set at Yankee Station an operations centre for the US Navy during the Vietnam War. The collection has been a set text for English A-Level.

Love Not Human is a collection of science fiction stories by Gordon R. Dickson. It was first published by Ace Books in 1981. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Galaxy Science Fiction, Startling Stories, Fantastic, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Universe, Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Amazing Stories.

Lord of the Dead is a collection of crime short stories by Robert E. Howard. It was first published in 1981 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. in an edition of 1,250 copies. The stories are pastiches of Sax Rohmer.

Lord Darcy Investigates is a collection of short stories by Randall Garrett featuring his alternate history detective Lord Darcy. It was first published in paperback in 1981 by Ace Books, and has been reprinted a number of times since. It was later gathered together with Murder and Magic (1979) and Too Many Magicians into the omnibus collection Lord Darcy (1983, expanded 2002).

Lonely Vigils is a collection of fantasy, horror and mystery short stories by author Manly Wade Wellman. It was released in 1981 by Carcosa in an edition of 1,548 copies, of which the 566 pre-ordered copies were signed by the author and artist. The stories feature Wellman's supernatural detective characters, Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant, Professor Nathan Enderby, and John Thunstone. The story "Vigil" first appeared in the magazine Strange Stories. The remaining stories originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.

Liars in Love is a collection of short stories by Richard Yates, published in 1981.

Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 6 (1944) is the sixth volume of Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories, which is a series of short story collections, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, which attempts to list the great science fiction stories from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. They date the Golden Age as beginning in 1939 and lasting until 1963. The book was later reprinted as the second half of Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction, Third Series with the first half being Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943).

Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 5 (1943) is the fifth volume of Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories, which is a series of short story collections, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, which attempts to list the great science fiction stories from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. They date the Golden Age as beginning in 1939 and lasting until 1963. The book was later reprinted as the first half of Isaac Asimov Presents The Golden Years of Science Fiction, Third Series with the second half being Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 6 (1944).

Happy to Be Here is a collection of short stories by Garrison Keillor, first published in hardcover by Viking in 1981. It is Keillor's first attempt at publishing a full-length book. Many of the stories first appeared in magazines Keillor wrote for between 1969 and 1981.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction is an anthology of science fiction short stories all originally published between 1949 and 1962. The stories were selected and introduced by Kingsley Amis, who also wrote an Editor's Note and a 21-page Introduction. The collection was first published by Hutchinson in 1981 and was released in paperback by Penguin in 1983.

Gene Wolfe's Book of Days is a short story collection by American science fiction author Gene Wolfe published in 1981 by Doubleday.

Footprints on Sand: a Literary Sampler is a 1981 collection of writings by science fiction authors L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, illustrated by C. H. Burnett, published by Advent. The collection was compiled to celebrate the de Camps' appearance as joint Guests of Honor at the June 12–14, 1981 X-Con science fiction convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Fog Horn and Other Stories is a collection of four short stories by Ray Bradbury. The collection, published in Japan, is published in English for school use.

Figments of Experience is a collection of short stories by Gopal Baratham. It was published in 1981 by Times Books International. It contains the following stories:

Federation is a collection of short stories written by H. Beam Piper, and edited by John F. Carr. The book was published in 1981 by Ace Books, and again in 1982, 1983 and 1986. Most of these stories take place in the early part of his Terro-Human Future History.

Fairy Tales is a 1981 book of children's stories written by Monty Python's Terry Jones and illustrated by Michael Foreman with both ink drawings and watercolor paintings.

Empire is a collection of short stories written by H. Beam Piper, and edited by John F. Carr. The book was published in 1981 by Ace Books, and again in 1986. Most of these stories take place in his Terro-Human Future History, with the sole exception being "The Return".

Dragons of Darkness (1981) is an anthology edited by Orson Scott Card. It contains fifteen stories, two of which were written by Card himself. The two stories by Card are "Middle Woman" and "A Plague of Butterflies". Both of them were later published in Card's collection Maps in a Mirror.

The Door in the Hedge is a collection of fairy tales by Robin McKinley, published by William Morrow and Company under its Greenwillow Books imprint in 1981. It includes two original stories and two retellings.

Distant Stars is a 1981 collection of short stories by Samuel R. Delany. Many of the stories originally appeared in the magazines The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Algol and New Worlds, while the novella Empire Star was originally published as an Ace Double with Tree Lord of Imeten by Tom Purdom.

The Dark Between the Stars is a 1981 collection of previously-published science fiction short stories by Poul Anderson.

The Cornet Player Who Betrayed Ireland is a compilation of previously uncollected stories by Frank O'Connor from 1981. The stories were selected by O'Connor's widow, Harriet O'Donovan Sheehy, and the Cork writer David Marcus. The collection includes:

Collected Stories is a collection of 67 of Frank O'Connor's best-known short stories, first published in 1981.

Circus World (1981) is a science fiction collection by Barry B. Longyear about a planet descended entirely from the population of a crashed spaceship carrying a circus. It comprises the following short stories:

Blooded on Arachne is a collection of science fiction stories by American author Michael Bishop. It was published in 1982 by Arkham House in an edition of 4,081 copies. The volume, Bishop's first short fiction collection, contains two novellas as well as two poems.

The Black House (1981) is a collection of short stories by American author Patricia Highsmith.

The Best Science Fiction of the Year #10 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Terry Carr, the tenth volume in a series of sixteen. It was first published in paperback by Pocket Books in July 1981, and in trade paperback and hardcover and trade paperback (the latter under the slightly variant title The Best Science Fiction of the Year: No. 10) by Gollancz in the same year.

The 1981 Annual World's Best SF is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, the tenth volume in a series of nineteen. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in May 1981, followed by a hardcover edition issued in August of the same year by the same publisher as a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club. For the hardcover edition the original cover art of Michael Mariano was replaced by a new cover painting by John Gampert.