My To Be Read List is a monthly meme hosted by Michelle at Because Reading. Each month I will make a post with three books from my TBR list. Readers will then vote on which book I should read next. The following Saturday the winning book will be announced. Then on the last Saturday of the month I’ll post a review.

The Candidates

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
by Washington Irving
Pages: 72
Published by Corundum Classics
Goodreads

Set near the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town in the secluded and mysterious glen of Sleepy Hollow, Icabod Crane competes with Brom Bones for the attention of the beautiful Katrina. As Icabod heads home, he is hunted by the Headless Horseman. This creature may be the ghost of a Hessian soldier or something else altogether.

Originally written in 1820, Washington Irving's haunting, yet humorous narrative describes of the local schoolmaster whose lonely journey home turns into a night of delightful terror when he is met on the road by the Headless Horseman.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)
by Patricia Highsmith
Publication Date June 4th 2012
Goodreads

Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath, influencing countless novelists and filmmakers. In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded a "sissy" by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal but grows enraged by Dickie's ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante. A dark reworking of Henry James's The Ambassadors, The Talented Mr. Ripley—is up to his tricks in a 90s film and also Rene Clement's 60s film, "Purple Noon."

The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene, Michael Gorra
Published by Penguin Classics
Publication Date August 31st 2004
Goodreads

"A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..."

"This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair, and it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles.

Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of his passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love-hate. At first, he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. Yet as he delves further into his emotional outlook, Bendrix's hatred shifts to the God he feels has broken his life, but whose existence at last comes to recognize.

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