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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
Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth - four "little...
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Bless me, Ultima
Anaya, Rudolfo A.
Paper Book
Full of "sensual dreams [and] unexplained phenomena," this "best-known and most-respected" coming-of-age classic from the godfather of Chicano literature follows a young boy growing up in the llano, or plains, of post-World War II New Mexico, and the generous curandera who introduces him to the...
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Northanger Abbey
Austen, Jane
Paper Book
Northanger Abbey is a perfectly aimed literary parody that is also a withering satire of the commercial aspects of marriage among the English gentry at the turn of the nineteenth century. But most of all, it is the story of the initiation into life of its naïve but sweetly appealing...
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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 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...
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Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
Paper Book
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of this timeless classic with a special edition featuring a new foreword by the author and a message that is as relevant today as when it was first published. Since the late 1940s, Ray Bradbury has been revered for his works of science fiction and fantasy. With more...
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Wuthering Heights
Bronte, 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. ...
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The eternal wonder : a novel
Buck, Pearl S.
Ebook
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 New...
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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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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...
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O pioneers!
Cather, Willa
Paper Book
The novel that first made Willa Cather famous--a powerfully mythic tale of the American frontier told through the life of one extraordinary woman One of America's greatest writers, Cather established her talent and her reputation with this extraordinary novel--the first of her...
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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
A new edition of Kate Chopin's controversial masterpiece, an essential novel in the canon of early feminism-with an introduction by Carmen Maria Machado, award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties. "Whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to...
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The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
Paper Book
Wilkie Collins's classic thriller took the world by storm on its first appearance in 1859, with everything from dances to perfumes to dresses named in honor of the "woman in white." The novel's continuing fascination stems in part from a distinctive blend of melodrama, comedy, and realism;...
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The red badge of courage
Crane, Stephen
Paper Book
The story of a young soldier, Henry Fleming, who flees a Civil War battle, The Red Badge of Couragehas been celebrated for its depiction of both the physical action of battle and the protagonist's internal struggle. Despite the precise and vivid descriptions of the scenes of battle in his fiction...
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Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel
Paper Book
This classic story of a shipwrecked mariner on a deserted island is perhaps the greatest adventure in all of English literature. Fleeing from pirates, Robinson Crusoe is swept ashore in a storm possessing only a knife, a box of tobacco, a pipe-and the will to survive. His is the saga of a man alone:...
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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...
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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 Count of Monte Cristo
Dumas, Alexandre
Paper Book
In his rousing adventure story, Alexandre Dumas employs all the elements of compelling drama-suspense, intrigue, love, vengeance, and the triumph of good over evil-that contribute to this classic novel's irresistible and timeless appeal. In the post-Napoleonic era, a young sailor...
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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
Ebook
Introduction by Hortense Calisher Commentary by Edmund Wilson, Henry Seidel Canby, and Arthur Mizener Fitzgerald's second novel, a devastating portrait of the excesses of the Jazz Age, is a largely autobiographical depiction of a glamorous, reckless...
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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
&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RA Room with a View&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RE. M. Forster&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R&&LI&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality editions at...
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Love in the time of cholera
GarcÃa Márquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Set in a country on the Caribbean coast of South America, this is a story about a woman and two men and their entwined lives. From the author of the legendary One Hundred Years of Solitude.
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Wives and daughters
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Paper Book
Set in English society before the 1832 Reform Bill, Wives and Daughters centres on the story of youthful Molly Gibson, brought up from childhood by her father. When he remarries a new stepsister, Cynthia, enters Molly's quiet life. Loveable but worldly and troubling, Cynthia's arrival alters Molly's...
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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
Named one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read * One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years One of the funniest books ever written, Joseph Heller's masterpiece about a bomber squadron in the Second World War's...
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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! A modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice for a new generation of love. 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...
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The American
James, Henry
DVD
Christopher Newman is a 19th century 'new man' who has amassed a fortune in California and heads to Paris to learn its ways and find a wife. There he finds a young widow whose beauty ignites desire in the American.
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Beth & Amy
Kantra, Virginia
Paper Book
Amy March is more like her older sister Jo than she'd like to admit. An designer in New York's fashion industry, Amy is determined to get out of her sisters' shadow. But when Jo's wedding forces her home, she must face what she really wants. Beth grew up as the good girl. A talented singer...
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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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Babbitt
Lewis, Sinclair
Paper Book
'Zenith is the finest example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere.'Zenith is the Midwestern city where George F. Babbitt lives and works. A successful real estate agent, his business provides all the material trappings and comfort he thinks he ought to have. He is a member of all...
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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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Northanger Abbey
McDermid, Val
Paper Book
"Long before our modern-day crime author draws a final, canny ace from her tartan sleeve, you'll have succumbed to the delights of Northanger à la McDermid."--The Boston Globe Now in paperback, Val McDermid's Northanger Abbey is an updated take on Jane Austen's...
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Moby-Dick, or, The whale
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
Introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick Illustrations by Rockwell Kent Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS'sThe Great American Read First published in 1851, Herman Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words, "the...
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Tropic of Capricorn
Miller, Henry
Paper Book
Banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller’s Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn’s ethnic neighborhoods and Miller’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
Nominated for the National Book Award, this rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines-from their growing up in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation. The one, Nel Wright, chooses to remain in the...
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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,...
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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...
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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
"O'Brien has written a vital, important book--a book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing...
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The bell jar
Plath, Sylvia.
Paper Book
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels "A coming-of-age masterpiece. . . . Sylvia Plath has become one of the influential writers of her time." --Boston Globe Sylvia Plath's masterwork--an acclaimed and enduring novel about a young woman falling into the grip of mental illness...
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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
Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear....
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A thousand acres
Smiley, Jane.
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * The only hardcover edition of the "powerful and poignant" twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear (The New York Times Book Review). * EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY CONTEMPORARY CLASSICS. * With a new introduction. This powerful novel centers on...
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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
'it was butcher work...the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam'Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic shocker introduced Count Dracula to the world, an ancient creature bent on bringing his contagion to London, the very heart of the British Empire....
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Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Paper Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe's timeless and moving novel, an incendiary work that fanned the embers of the struggle between free and slave states into the fire of the Civil War. Uncle Tom's Cabin is the story of the slave Tom. Devout and loyal, he is sold and sent down south,...
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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
War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind...
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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
Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS'sThe Great American Read This irresistible tale of the adventures of two friends growing up in frontier America is one of Mark Twain's most popular novels. The farcical, colorful, and poignant escapades of Tom and his...
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20,000 leagues under the sea
Verne, Jules
Paper Book
Join Captain Nemo and the Nautilus as they journey into the deep in Jules Verne's classic science fiction tale. In an age that has seen the wildest speculations of science become reality, Jules Verne is regarded as both a technological prophet and one of the most exciting...
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Ethan Frome
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
A masterwork of American literature from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence. A marked departure from Edith Wharton's usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she belonged, Ethan Frome is a sharply etched portrait...
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The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author's most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused a scandal when...
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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
Widely acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on race and class divisions in America, this powerful novel reflects the forces of poverty, injustice, and hopelessness that continue to shape out society. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
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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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