Victor Hugo's other major works include the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, published in 1831, and the poetry collection Contemplations, released in 1856, which he wrote at about the same time as Les Miserables. Some critics consider the latter, written after the drowning death of his daughter, his best poetry.

Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, first published in 1866, tells the story of Raskolnikov, a man who commits a brutal murder and then can escape neither his own conscience nor the detective who pursues him.

Published in 1940, Native Son, a novel by Richard Wright, is the story of Bigger Thomas, a poor black boy raised in the Chicago slums. Wright describes how Bigger's fear of white society, and its fear of him, turns him into a criminal.

In the Belly of the Beast is an insider's account of prison life written by...