In Cold Blood

This book was Truman Capote's greatest achievement, catapulting him from a minor writer to a full fledged society star. He claimed (along with his old childhood friend and fellow author, Harper Lee, to have done 400 interviews over many years researching this book). Unfortunately, as a long time fiction writer, he apparently used not only fictional techniques to write the book, he occasionally engaged in actual fiction as well (most memorably creating an closing scene for the book that participants say never happened). Despite such faults, this is a classic that is going strong in high school classrooms across America.