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Some of our favorite classic stories
Updated April 19, 2024
RPL Staff
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Watership Down
Adams, Richard
Paper Book
Now with a new introduction by Madeline Miller, the New York Times bestselling author of The Song of Achilles and Circe. The 50th anniversary edition of Richard Adam's timeless classic, the tale of a band of wild rabbits struggling to hold onto their place...
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Little women
Alcott, Louisa May
Paper Book
&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RLittle Women&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RLouisa May Alcott&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R&&LI&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality...
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Bless me, Ultima
Anaya, Rudolfo A.
Paper Book
This coming-of-age classic from "one of the nation's foremost Chicano literary artists" follows a young boy as he questions his faith and beliefs after a curandera woman introduces herbs and magic into his life (Denver Post) . .Antonio Marez is six years old...
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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...
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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...
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A manual for cleaning women : selected stories
Berlin, Lucia.
Paper Book
One of The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Global bestseller. A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley,...
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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....
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Wuthering Heights
Bronte, Emily
Paper Book
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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...
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Impasse
Buckingham, Royce
Paper Book
In Royce Scott Buckingham'sImpasse, a man is left to die in Alaska while on an "adventure vacation" and must somehow survive to get his revenge on those who betrayed him. Forty and facing a mid-life crisis, Stu Stark has lost his mojo. He simply gave up after being...
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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...
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The spy who came in from the cold
Le Carrâe, John
Paper Book
John le Carré’s third novelA #1 New York Times bestseller for 34 weeksand the book that launched his career worldwide In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the...
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O pioneers!
Cather, Willa
Paper Book
Set on the Nebraska prairie where Willa Cather (1873-1947) grew up, this powerful early novel tells the story of the young Alexandra Bergson, whose dying father leaves her in charge of the family and of the lands they have struggled to farm. In Alexandra's long flight to survive and...
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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...
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The Awakening
Chopin, Kate
Paper Book
Kate Chopin's riveting, daring story of one woman's search for personal freedom was so far ahead of its time that its publication in 1899 aroused a storm of controversy violent enough to end its author's career. With an effortless, sure-handed artistry, Chopin tells the...
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The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
Paper Book
"There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road-there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven-stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments." Thus young Walter Hartright first meets the mysterious woman in...
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The last of the Mohicans
Cooper, James Fenimore
Paper Book
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The red badge of courage
Crane, Stephen
Paper Book
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Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel
Paper Book
Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles with fate and the nature of God. This edition features maps.
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Great expectations
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
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Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Paper Book
A masterpiece of guilt and redemption that transforms the sordid story of an old woman's murder into the nineteenth century's profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel. * ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME ...
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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,...
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Beatrice and Benedick
Fiorato, Marina.
Paper Book
Hidden in the language of Shakespeare's best-loved comedyMuch Ado About Nothingare several clues to an intriguing tale. It seems that the witty lovers Beatrice and Benedick had a previous love affair that ended bitterly. But how did they meet? Why did they part? And what brought them...
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The beautiful and damned
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
The work that signaled Fitzgerald's maturity as a storyteller and novelist, The Beautiful and Damned is a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age. Anthony Comstock Patch is a Harvard-educated gallant who leisurely aspires to author a book as he awaits an enormous inheritance upon...
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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...
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A room with a view
Forster, E. M.
Paper Book
This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a...
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Love in the time of cholera
GarcÃa Márquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * "A love story of astonishing power" (Newsweek), the acclaimed modern literary classic by the beloved Nobel Prize-winning author. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry...
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Far from the madding crowd
Hardy, Thomas
Paper Book
Far From the Madding Crowd, published in 1874, is the book that made Hardy famous. Bathsheba Everdene is a prosperous farmer in Hardy's fictional Wessex county whose strong-minded independence and vanity lead to disastrous consequences for her and the three very...
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The scarlet letter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
The canonical American masterpiece of sin, guilt, and revenge, in an authoritative new edition from Penguin Classics with a foreword by Tom Perrotta At once retrospective and radically new, The Scarlet Letter portrays seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a time period...
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The mere wife
Headley, Maria Dahvana
Paper Book
New York Times bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley presents a modern retelling of the literary classic Beowulf, set in American suburbia as two mothers--a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran--fight to protect those they love in The Mere Wife.
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Catch-22
Heller, Joseph.
Paper Book
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save...
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The sun also rises
Hemingway, Ernest
Paper Book
Originally published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises is Ernest Hemingway's first novel and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of...
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Ayesha at last
Jalaluddin, Uzma
Paper Book
As seen on The Today Show! One of the best summer romance picks! One of Publishers Weekly Best Romance Books of 2019! A modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice for a new generation of love. Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of...
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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...
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Captains courageous
Kipling, Rudyard
Paper Book
After being washed overboard from an ocean liner, fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne, spoiled son of a millionaire, is rescued by New England fishermen who put him to work on their boat.
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The call of the wild
London, Jack
Paper Book
Stolen from his home and family, a dog named Buck must quickly learn the harsh law of survival among the men and dogs of the gold-crazed North. His intelligence, courage, and cunning transform him into a feared leader. As wolves attack and men grow desperate, Buck must heed the call of the wild....
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Moby-Dick, or, The whale
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
The original 'Great American Novel', Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is a masterful study of obsession. This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction by Andrew Delblanco, with explanatory commentary by Tom Quirk. 'Call me Ishmael.' So begins Herman Melville's...
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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,...
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Sula
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
Toni Morrison's first novel,The Bluest Eye(1970), was acclaimed as the work of an important talent, written--as John Leonard said inThe New York Times--in a prose "so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry." Sulahas the same power, the same...
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The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
Lady Murasaki's exquisite, 11th-century portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan has been widely celebrated as the world's first novel. Offering a lively and well-rounded glimpse of golden age Japan with a cast of richly conceived and nuanced characters, Royall Tyler's superb translation, detailed...
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Lolita
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
Paper Book
The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. "The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in]...
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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...
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The things they carried
O'Brien, Tim
Paper Book
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The bell jar
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 ...
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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."--...
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The plot against America
Roth, Philip.
Paper Book
When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for sel&...
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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. "Everything...
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Home fire
Shamsie, Kamila
Paper Book
"Ingenious... Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I've read in a novel this century." --The New York Times WINNER OF THE 2018 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE 2019 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD LONGLISTED FOR...
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Frankenstein : or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
Few creatures of horror have seized readers' imaginations and held them for so long as the anguished monster of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story of Victor Frankenstein's terrible creation and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of readers and inspired countless...
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A thousand acres
Smiley, Jane.
Paper Book
A thousand acres, a piece of land of almost mythic proportions. Upon this fertile, nourishing earth, Jane Smiley has set her rich, breathtakingly dramatic novel of an American family whose wealth cannot stay the hand of tragedy. It is the intense, compelling story of a father and his daughters, of...
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The prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spark, Muriel.
Paper Book
Muriel Spark's classic novel, widely hailed as one of the twentieth century's best--the story of a young, unorthodox teacher and her special--and ultimately dangerous--relationship with six of her students. At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher...
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Of mice and men
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression A Penguin Classic Over seventy-five years since its first publication, Steinbeck's tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America's most widely read and taught novels....
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Dracula
Stoker, Bram
Paper Book
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Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Paper Book
When Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852, it became an international blockbuster, selling more than 300,000 copies in the United States alone in its first year. Progressive for her time, Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of the earliest writers to offer a shockingly realistic depiction of slavery....
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Vanity fair : a novel without a hero
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Paper Book
A panoramic satire of English society during the Napoleonic Wars, Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray's masterpiece. At its center is one of the most unforgettable characters in nineteenth-century literature: the enthralling Becky Sharp, a charmingly ruthless social climber who is...
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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...
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A confederacy of dunces
Toole, John Kennedy
Paper Book
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize "A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue."--The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero,...
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The adventures of Tom Sawyer
Twain, Mark
Paper Book
The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a Mississippi River town in the early nineteenth century.
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20,000 leagues under the sea
Verne, Jules
Paper Book
ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATEDBY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIPA group of men set sail to solve the mystery of a sea monster in this amazing underwater adventure.EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: - A concise introduction that gives readers important background information- A chronology of the author's...
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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...
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The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
VINTAGE CLASSICS X MADE.COM Dorian is a good-natured young man until he discovers the power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deep into a frivolous, glamorous world of selfish luxury, he apparently remains physically unchanged by the stresses of his corrupt lifestyle...
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Frankissstein : a love story
Winterson, Jeanette
Paper Book
Since her astonishing debut at twenty-five with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide critical and commercial success as "one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time" (Elle). Her new novel, Frankissstein, is an audacious love...
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Native son
Wright, Richard
Paper Book
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels "If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication of Native Son." - Henry Louis Gates Jr. "The most powerful American novel to...
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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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