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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
Chronicles the adventures of a group of rabbits searching for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can live in peace.
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Little women
Alcott, Louisa May
Paper Book
Come laugh and cry with the March family in this beloved classic. Meg - the sweet-tempered one. Jo - the smart one. Beth - the shy one. Amy - the sassy one. Together they're the March sisters. Their father is away at war and times are difficult, but the bond between...
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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 when Ultima...
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Northanger Abbey
Austen, Jane
Paper Book
Northanger Abbey is the story of naïve but sweetly appealing Catherine Morland, a willing victim of the 19th-century craze for Gothic literature who is determined to see herself as the heroine of a dark and thrilling romance. Northanger Abbey is both a perfectly...
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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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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
Bront,︠ Emily
Paper Book
Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before- of the intense passion between the foundling...
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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...
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The spy who came in from the cold
Le Carrâe, John
Audiobook
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 head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse-- a desk job-- Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge...
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O pioneers!
Cather, Willa
Paper Book
O Pioneers!, Willa Cather's first great novel, is the classic American story of pioneer life as embodied by one remarkable woman and her singular devotion to the land. Alexandra Bergson arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Nebraska as a young girl and grows up to turn it into a prosperous farm. In...
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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
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The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
CD
Wilkie Collins is a master of suspense, but his transfer to audiobook requires a cast of readers to faithfully reflect the eleven different characters who tell the story. Walter Hartright, a drawing teacher to two sisters, wants to marry Laura, though she is betrothed to another. But who is the...
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Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel
Paper Book
Defoe's classic story of adventure and survival as a shipwrecked Englishman finds himself stranded on a deserted island. After a fierce storm at sea, Robinson Crusoe is marooned on an uncharted island, with only a few bits of his wrecked ship's flotsam and jetsam to sustain him....
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Great expectations
Dickens, Charles
CD
Great Expectations, recognized as Charles Dickens' finest novel, is told by Pip, an orphan who lives with his sister and her husband, the village blacksmith. The young boy's life is changed forever when he meets and aids an escaped convict who wanders into his yard. Years later, Pip is...
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Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Paper Book
A desperate young man plans the perfect crime -- the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law -- if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the...
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The sound and the fury : the corrected text
Faulkner, William
Paper Book
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER * One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century is the story of a family of Southern aristocrats on the brink of personal and financial ruin. * The definitive corrected text, including Faulkner's Appendix One of The Atlantic...
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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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Love in the time of cholera
Garca̕ Mr̀quez, Gabriel
Paper Book
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds three people's lives together for more than fifty years. In the story of Florentino Ariza, who waits more than half a century to declare his undying...
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Wives and daughters
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Paper Book
Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is a story of romance, scandal and intrigue within the confines of a watchful, gossiping English village during the early nineteenth century. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Pam Morris. When...
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King Solomon's mines
Haggard, H. Rider
Paper Book
Touted by its 1885 publisher as "the most amazing story ever written," King Solomon's Mines was one of the bestselling novels of the nineteenth century. H. Rider Haggard's thrilling saga of elephant hunter Allan Quatermain and his search for fabled treasure is more than just an adventure...
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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...
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The scarlet letter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
Introduction by Kathryn Harrison Commentary by Nathaniel Hawthorne, W. D. Howells, and Carl Van Doren A stark tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature. Nathaniel...
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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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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...
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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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The American
Modine, Matthew.
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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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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The call of the wild
London, Jack
Paper Book
Buck lives a content life. Half St. Bernard, half Shepard, he is top dog on a California ranch. But the Gold Rush in the Klondike has produced an enormous demand for sled dogs so, when a gardener at the ranch needs to pay a gambling debt, stealing and selling Buck is a quick way to do it.
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Northanger Abbey
McDermid, Val
Paper Book
Internationally best-selling crime writer Val McDermid has riveted millions of readers worldwide with her acutely suspenseful, psychologically complex, seamlessly plotted thrillers. In Northanger Abbey, she delivers her own, witty, updated take on Austen’s classic novel about a...
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Moby-Dick, or, The whale
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
Herman Melville's masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history.Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Overa century and a half after its publication,Moby-Dickstill stands as an indisputable literary...
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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
In clear, dark, resonant language, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison brilliantly evokes not only a bond between two lives, but the harsh, loveless, ultimately mad world in which that bond is destroyed, the world of the Bottom and its people. Unabridged. 5 CDs.
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The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
Gazing through the portal of Japanese culture at the amorous exploits of Prince Hikaru Genji, this novel tells the story of a time when indigenous Japanese culture still held prominence over the Chinese culture that would come to dominate Japan.
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Slaughterhouse-five : or the children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
North, Ryan
Paper Book
An American classic and one of the world's seminal antiwar books, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is faithfully presented in graphic novel form for the first time from Eisner Award-winning writer Ryan North (How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler) and Eisner...
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The things they carried : a work of fiction
O'Brien, Tim
Paper Book
One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of...
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The bell jar
Plath, Sylvia.
Paper Book
The Bell Jaris a classic of American literature. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963--only a month before the author's suicide--Sylvia Plath's harrowing autobiographical novel traces a young woman's descent into an emotional breakdown. The brilliant and disturbing...
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All quiet on the western front
Remarque, Erich Maria
CD
"ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the greatest war novels of all time. It should be ranked with Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms as an eloquent expression of the futility and irreparable loses of war. Paul...
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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. ...
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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
Shelley's suspenseful and intellectually rich gothic tale confronts some of the most important and enduring themes in all of literture--the power of human imagination, the potential hubris of science, the gulf between appearance and essence, the effects of human cruelty, the desire for revenge and...
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Tomorrow will be better : a novel
Smith, Betty
Paper Book
"A rediscovered treasure." -- Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post From Betty Smith, author of the beloved classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes a poignant story of love, marriage, poverty, and hope set in 1920s Brooklyn. Tomorrow Will Be Better tells the story of...
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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
Count Dracula sleeps in a silent tomb beneath his desolate castle. His eyes are stony and his cheeks are deathly pale. But on his lips, there is a mocking smile-and a trickle of fresh blood. He has been dead for centuries, yet he may never die . . . Here begins the most celebrated vampire story in...
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Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Ebook
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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
A modern repackaging of Mark Twain's classic American tale of Tom Sawyer. Here is the story of Tom, Huck, Becky, and Aunt Polly; a tale of adventures, pranks, playing hookey, and summertime fun. Written by the author sometimes called "the Lincoln of literature," The Adventures...
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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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Hocus pocus
Vonnegut, Kurt.
Paper Book
Hocus Pocus is the fictional autobiography of a West Point graduate who was in charge of the humiliating evacuation of U.S. personnel from the Saigon rooftops at the close of the Vietnam War. Returning home from the war, he unknowingly fathered an illegitimate son. In 2001, the son begins a search...
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Ethan Frome
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
`It was not so much his great height that marked him ... it was the careless powerful look that he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.' Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden,...
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The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides .Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS'sThe Great American Read 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...
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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.
Ebook
An Oprah's Book Club Pick #1 New York Times Bestseller "A mystery, a thriller, a ghost story, and a literary tour de force . . . an authentic epic, long and lush, full of back story and observed detail . . . the author exercises a certain magic that catches and holds our attention,...
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