Banned or Challenged Books

Read these dangerous books at your own risk!

Updated June 7, 2023
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The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
First published in 1985, The Handmaid's Tale is a novel of such power that the reader is unable to forget its images and its forecast. With more than two million copies in print, it is Margaret Atwood's most popular and compelling novel. Set in the near future, it describes life in what once was...
The Clan of the Cave Bear : a novel
Auel, Jean M.
Paper Book
This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Through Jean M. Auel's magnificent storytelling we are...
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
Paper Book
For use in schools and libraries only. A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit.
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
Capote, Truman
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The most famous true crime novel of all time "chills the blood and exercises the intelligence" (The New York Review of Books)--and haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb,...
As I lay dying : the corrected text
Faulkner, William
Paper Book
A true 20th-century classic from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Sound and the Fury: the famed harrowing account of the Bundren family's odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. As I Lay Dying is one of the most...
Anne Frank : the diary of a young girl
Frank, Anne
Paper Book
The compelling diary of a young girl on the brink of maturity as her life draws to toward its tragic end -- one of the most moving and vivid documents of the Jewish experience.
Lord of the flies : a novel
Golding, William
Paper Book
Golding's iconic 1954 novel, now with a new foreword by Lois Lowry, remains one of the greatest books ever written for young adults and an unforgettable classic for readers of any age. This edition includes a new Suggestions for Further Reading by Jennifer Buehler.
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Haddon, Mark.
The kite runner
Hosseini, Khaled
Paper Book
The 20th anniversary edition of the #1 New York Times bestselling novel beloved by readers the world over, with a new afterword by the author The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant,...
Brave new world
Huxley, Aldous
Paper Book
The astonishing novel Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's vision of the future--of a world utterly transformed. Through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, people are genetically designed to be passive and therefore consistently useful...
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Kesey, Ken
Paper Book
Comedy Drama / 13m, 4f / Int. w. inset. Kirk Douglas played on Broadway as a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather in a prison. This, he learns, was a mistake. He clashes with the head nurse, a fierce artinet. Quickly, he takes over the yard and...
Lady Chatterley's lover
Lawrence, D. H.
Paper Book
Banned, burned, and the subject of a landmark obscenity trial, Lawrence's lyric and sensual last novel is now regarded as "our time's most significant romance." -- "The New York Times. "This classic tale of love and discovery pits the paralyzed and callous Clifford Chatterley against his indecisive...
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper
Paper Book
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made...
The bluest eye
Morrison, Toni
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME * From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner--a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace. * With a new introduction by Jacqueline...
The things they carried : a work of fiction
O'Brien, Tim
Nineteen eighty-four
Orwell, George
Paper Book
A deluxe hardcover edition of 1984: one of the most celebrated novels of the twentieth century, Orwell's cautionary tale of a man trapped under the gaze of an authoritarian state feels more relevant now than ever before. Winston Smith spends his days rewriting history to fit the...
Out of darkness
Pe rez, Ashley Hope
Paper Book
A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people...
The satanic verses
Rushdie, Salman
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths."--Newsday ...
The catcher in the rye
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
The "brilliant, funny, meaningful novel" (The New Yorker) that established J. D. Salinger as a leading voice in American literature--and that has instilled in millions of readers around the world a lifelong love of books. "If you...
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....
Sophie's choice
Styron, William
Paper Book
As the fierce lovemaking and fights of Nathan, a paranoiac Jewish intellectual, and Sophie, a Polish-Catholic concentration-camp survivor, intensify, Stingo, a writer who lives below them in a cheap rooming house, becomes more and more involved in their lives.
Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
Vonnegut, Kurt
Paper Book
A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece, "a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century" (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds<...
The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
Read the original inspiration for the new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino. Celebrating its fortieth anniversary, The Color Purple writes a message of healing,...
The glass castle : a memoir
Walls, Jeannette.
Paper Book
THE BELOVED #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER--FROM THE AUTHOR OF HANG THE MOON The extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, "nothing short of spectacular" (Entertainment Weekly) memoir from one of the world's most gifted storytellers. The Glass Castle...
All the king's men
Warren, Robert Penn
Paper Book
As relevant today as it was 50 years ago, "All the King's Men" is a classic novel about American politics. Set in the 1930s, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie Stark, a fictional character based on the real-life Huey Long of Louisiana.
Brideshead revisited
Waugh, Evelyn
Paper Book
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)   Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated novel is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the novel mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew...

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