Classic Fiction

Some of our favorite classic stories

Updated April 19, 2024
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Watership Down
Adams, Richard
Paper Book
Fiver could sense danger. Something terrible is about to happen to the warren - he feels sure of it. And Fiver's sixth sense is never wrong, according to his brother Hazel. They had to leave immediately, and they had to persuade the other rabbits to join them. And so begins a long and perilous...
Little women
Alcott, Louisa May
Paper Book
Louisa May Alcott's classic tale of four sisters in a deluxe hardcover edition,with beautiful cover illustrations by Anna Bond, the artist behind world-renowned stationery brand Rifle Paper Co. Grown-up Meg, tomboyish Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. The four March sisters...
Northanger Abbey
Austen, Jane
Paper Book
Austen's witty exploration of the perils of mistaking fiction for reality During an eventful season at Bath, young, na ve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares...
The women of Troy : a novel
Barker, Pat
Paper Book
A daring and timely feminist retelling of The Iliad from the perspective of the women of Troy who endured it--an extraordinary follow up to The Silence of the Girls from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy and "one of contemporary literature's most thoughtful...
A manual for cleaning women : selected stories
Berlin, Lucia.
Paper Book
One ofTheNew York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2015 One ofJezebel's Favorite Books of 2016 A Manual for Cleaning Womencompiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the...
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
Paper Book
Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before. Guy Montag is a fireman....
Wuthering heights
Brontë, Emily
Paper Book
The title of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors of the story. The narrative centres on the all-encompassing, passionate, but ultimately doomed love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and the people around them. ...
The eternal wonder : a novel
Buck, Pearl S.
Paper Book
Lost for forty years, a new novel by the author of The Good Earth The Eternal Wonder tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax (Rann for short), an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to...
Kindred
Butler, Octavia E.
Paper Book
Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. ("You have to read them.") From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur "Genius" Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner The visionary time-travel classic whose...
Miranda and Caliban
Carey, Jacqueline
Paper Book
Miranda and Caliban is bestselling fantasy author Jacqueline Carey's gorgeous retelling ofThe Tempest. With hypnotic prose and a wild imagination, Carey explores the themes of twisted love and unchecked power that lie at the heart of Shakespeare's masterpiece, while serving up a...
The spy who came in from the cold
Le Carré, John
Paper Book
The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carré's career worldwide From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager. In the shadow...
O pioneers
Cather, Willa
Paper Book
Alexandra Bergson is the eldest child of a Swedish immigrant family newly arrived in the harsh untamed landscape of the American West. An original, determined child, she is driven by two forces: her fierce protective love for her younger brother, and a deep love of the beautiful country she has come...
Don Quixote
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Paper Book
Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece, in an expanded P.S. edition Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his...
The awakening
Chopin, Kate
Ebook
Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renown musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence....
The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
Paper Book
'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop .. There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth .. stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white' The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie...
THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Cooper, James Fenimore
Paper Book
The red badge of courage : an episode of the American Civil War
Crane, Stephen
Ebook
Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel
Paper Book
With Robinson Crusoe, Defoe wrote what is regarded as the first English novel, and created one of the most popular and enduring myths in literature. Written in an age of exploration and enterprise, it has been variously interpreted as an embodiment of British imperialist values, as a portrayal of...
Great expectations
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
One of Charles Dickens's most fascinating novels, Great Expectations follows the orphan Pip as he leaves behind a childhood of misery and poverty after an anonymous benefactor offers him a chance at the life of a gentleman. From the young Pip's first terrifying encounter with...
Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Paper Book
Hailed by Washington Post Book World as "the best [translation] currently available" when it was first published, this second edition of Crime and Punishment has been updated in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky's birth. * ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST...
The sound and the fury
Faulkner, William
Paper Book
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time * One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years From the Modern Library's new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner--also available are Snopes,...
Beatrice and Benedick
Fiorato, Marina
Paper Book
Hidden in the language of Shakespeare's best-loved comedy Much Ado About Nothing, are several clues to an intriguing tale. It seems that the witty lovers Beatrice and Benedick had a previous youthful love affair which ended bitterly. But how did they meet, why did they part, and what...
The beautiful and damned
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, which brilliantly satirizes a doomed and glamorous marriage, anticipated the master stroke-The Great Gatsby-that would follow, and marks a key moment in the writer's career.Would-be Jazz Age aristocrats Anthony and Gloria Patch embody the corrupt high...
To kill a mockingbird : a graphic novel
Fordham, Fred
Paper Book
"This gorgeously rendered graphic-novel version provides a new perspective for old fans but also acts as an immersive introduction for youngsters as well as any adult who somehow missed out on the iconic story set in Maycomb, Alabama."--USA Today A beautifully...
A room with a view
Forster, E. M.
CD
Love in the time of cholera
García Márquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Fifty-one years have passed since Fermina rebuffed Florentino and married Juvenal Urbino instead. Swearing his love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again. When Fermina's husband is killed, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find new life...
Wives and daughters
Gaskell, Elizabeth
Paper Book
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel, is regarded by many as her masterpiece. Molly Gibson is the daughter of the doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford. Her widowed father marries a second time to give Molly the woman's presence he feels she lacks, but until the arrival...
King Solomon's mines
Haggard, H. Rider
Paper Book
Far from the madding crowd
Hardy, Thomas
Paper Book
This story of a proud rural beauty and the three men who court her is the novel that first made Thomas Hardy famous. Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy's great novels. The strong...
The scarlet letter : a romance
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter 'A'...
Catch-22
Heller, Joseph.
Paper Book
This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller's masterpiece with a new introduction; critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos; and much more. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels...
The sun also rises
Hemingway, Ernest
Paper Book
A Scribner Classics Edition "The ideal companion for troubled times: equal parts Continental escape and serious grappling with the question of what it means to be, and feel, lost." -- The Wall Street Journal One of America's best-loved novels by PBS...
Alice
Henry, Christina
Paper Book
Alice has been in the mental hospital in Old Town for years. She doesn't remember why. All she can remember is a tea party long ago. Long ears and blood. Until one night she escapes, free to uncover the truth about what happened to her all those years ago. When Alice escapes, something escapes with...
Ayesha at last
Jalaluddin, Uzma
Paper Book
Pride and Prejudice with a modern twist    AYESHA SHAMSI has a lot going on.  Her dreams of being a poet have been set aside for a teaching job so she can pay off her debts to her wealthy uncle. She lives with her boisterous Muslim family and is...
Demon Copperhead : a novel
Kingsolver, Barbara
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE * WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION New York Times Readers' Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century * An Oprah's Book Club Selection * An Instant New York Times Bestseller * An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller * A #1 Washington Post...
Captains courageous : a story of the Grand Banks
Kipling, Rudyard
Paper Book
Babbitt
Lewis, Sinclair
Paper Book
Amusing and tragic by turn, Sinclair Lewis's classic novel is a biting satire of middle-American values whose title has entered the language as a byword for smug complacency, conformity, and materialism, and whose suburban targets are still much in evidence. A successful real estate agent, George F....
The call of the wild
London, Jack
Paper Book
Life is good for Buck in Santa Clara Valley, where he spends his days eating and sleeping in the golden sunshine. But one day a treacherous act of betrayal leads to his kidnap, and he is forced into a life of toil and danger. Dragged away to be a sledge dog in the harsh and freezing cold Yukon, Buck...
Northanger Abbey
McDermid, Val.
Paper Book
Moby-Dick
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
Moby-Dick is Herman Melville's great adventure of the sea and the life of the soul, featuring the timeless characters Ishmael, Ahab, and Queequeg, and presented here in a beautiful Everyman's Library hardcover edition. A giant of American literature, Melville is justly...
Tropic of Capricorn
Miller, Henry
Paper Book
A riotous and explosive mixture of joys and frustrations, Tropic of Capricorn chronicles Miller's early life in New York, from his repressive Brooklyn childhood spent amongst 'a galaxy of screwballs' to frantic, hilarious years of dead-end jobs and innumerable erotic adventures. Irreverent and...
Circe : a novel
Miller, Madeline
Paper Book
This #1 New York Times bestseller is a "bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story" that brilliantly reimagines the life of Circe, formidable sorceress of The Odyssey (Alexandra Alter, TheNew York Times). In the house of Helios,...
Sula
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
'Extravagantly beautiful... Enormously, achingly alive... A howl of love and rage, playful and funny as well as hard and bitter' New York Times As young girls, Nel and Sula shared each other's secrets and dreams in the poor black mid-West of their...
The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
  In the early eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in the Heian court of Japan, wrote what many consider to be the world's first novel, more than three centuries before Chaucer. The Heian era (794--1185) is recognized as one of the very greatest periods in Japanese literature,...
Lolita
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
Paper Book
Nabokov's wise, ironic, elegant masterpiece owes its stature as a classic not to the controversy its subject matter aroused but to its author's use of that material to tell a love story almost shocking in its beauty and tenderness. With an introduction by Martin Amis. When it was...
Slaughterhouse-five : or the children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
North, Ryan
Paper Book
The first-ever graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great anti-war books.  An American classic and one of the world's seminal antiwar books, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is faithfully presented in...
The things they carried
O'Brien, Tim
Paper Book
The million-copy bestseller, which is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. 'The Things They Carried' is, on its surface, a sequence of award-winning stories about the madness of the Vietnam War; at the same time it has...
The bell jar : a novel
Plath, Sylvia.
Paper Book
A Special Hardcover Edition to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of Sylvia Plath's Remarkable Novel "It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath's voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal." -- USA Today ...
All quiet on the Western Front
Remarque, Erich Maria
Paper Book
The masterpiece of the German experience during World War I, considered by many the greatest war novel of all time--with an Oscar-winning film adaptation now streaming on Netflix.   "[Erich Maria Remarque] is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank."--...
The plot against America
Roth, Philip
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The chilling bestselling alternate history novel of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president whose government embraces anti-Semitism--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral. "A...
Franny and Zooey
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
"Perhaps the best book by the foremost stylist of his generation" (New York Times), J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey collects two works of fiction about the Glass family originally published in The New Yorker. ...
Home fire
Shamsie, Kamila
Paper Book
Winner of the 2018 Women's Prize for FictionLonglisted for the Man Booker PrizeTwo families' fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined in this suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences.
Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
  No-one in the grip of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, with its mythic-minded hero and its highly sympathetic monster who reads Goethe and longs to be at peace with himself, can fail to notice how much more excellent the original is than all the adaptations, imitations and outright...
A thousand acres : a novel
Smiley, Jane
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * The only hardcover edition of the "powerful and poignant" (The New York Times Book Review) twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear * With a new introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett * EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY CONTEMPORARY CLASSICS ...
The prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spark, Muriel
Paper Book
When an unbridled schoolmistress with advanced ideas is in her prime the classroom can take on a new identity and no one can predict what will happen. Jean Brodie is a teacher whose unconventional ideas put her at odds with the other members of staff at the Marcia Blaine School in Edinburgh, as she...
Of mice and men
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
Drifters in search of work, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie, have nothing in the world except each other - and a dream. A dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch, but their hopes are doomed as Lennie - struggling against extreme...
Dracula
Stoker, Bram
Paper Book
Since its publication in 1897, Dracula has enthralled generation after generation of readers with the same spellbinding power with which Count Dracula enthralls his victims. Though Bram Stoker did not invent vampires, and in fact based his character's life-in-death on extensive research in...
Uncle Tom's cabin : or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Paper Book
The novel that changed the course of American history Published in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel was a powerful indictment of slavery in America. Describing the many trials and eventual escape to freedom of the long-suffering, good-hearted slave Uncle Tom, it aimed to show...
Address unknown
Taylor, Kathrine Kressmann
Paper Book
The enduring classic of a friendship torn apart by Nazism.
Vanity fair : a novel without a hero
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Paper Book
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George. As the two heroines make their...
War and peace
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Paper Book
At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous...
A confederacy of dunces
Toole, John Kennedy
Paper Book
After four decades, the peerless wit and indulgent absurdity of A Confederacy of Dunces continues to attract new readers. Though the manuscript was rejected by many publishers during John Kennedy Toole?s lifetime, his mother successfully published the book years after her son?s suicide,...
The Eustace diamonds
Trollope, Anthony
Paper Book
The adventures of Tom Sawyer
Twain, Mark
Paper Book
Who could forget the pranks, the adventures, the sheer fun of Tom Sawyer? It's something every child should experience and every child will love. From Tom's sly trickery with the whitewashed fence--when he cleverly manipulates everyone so they happily do his work for him--to his and Becky...
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea
Verne, Jules
Paper Book
Taken aboard the submarine Nautilus by Captain Nemo, the narrator and his companions find themselves captives on a spectacular tour of the world's oceans, and witnesses to Nemo's increasingly obsessive hatred of the surface world. Professor Pierre Aronnax was rescued from...
Hocus pocus
Vonnegut, Kurt.
Paper Book
From the New York Timesbestselling author of Slaughterhouse-Five comes anirresistible novel thatcombines"clever wit with keen social observation... and re-establishes Mr. Vonnegut's place as the Mark Twain of our times" (Atlanta Journal & Constitution).
Ethan Frome
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual tensions, published with an introduction and notes by Elizabeth Ammons in Penguin Classics. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a...
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman inthe eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears...
Frankissstein : a love story
Winterson, Jeanette
Paper Book
***LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2020** **LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE 2020** A radical love story for right now, from 'one of the most gifted writers working today' (New York Times)<...
The story of Edgar Sawtelle : a novel
Wroblewski, David.
Paper Book
Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and...

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