If you mention the title of a fictional work in your text, you have two options for how to style it. One is to treat it just as you would a real title. That is, italicize the titles of books, plays, and other long-form works and place the titles of shorter works in regular roman font and in quotation marks. Another option is to follow the styling in the source, which might not adhere to those conventions. Styling conventions have varied over the years, and not all publications use italics for longer works. So you’ll sometimes see titles of longer fictional works in quotation marks. The following provides examples and options:
Nathan Zuckerman’s short story “Higher Education” from Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer.
Harold Vanner’s novel Bonds in Hernan Diaz’s Trust.
The play The Murder of Gonzago from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
(or, The play “The Murder of Gonzago” from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.)
The book titled Mad Trist by Sir Launcelot Canning in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.”
(or, The book titled “Mad Trist” by Sir Launcelot Canning in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher.”)