Classic Fiction

Some of our favorite classic stories, modern classics, and classic stories reimagined.

Updated September 11, 2025
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Things fall apart
Achebe, Chinua.
Paper Book
"A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world." --Barack Obama "African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe." --Toni Morrison "A...
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...
Little women
Alcott, Louisa May
Paper Book
The illustrations for this series were created by Scott McKowen, who, with his wife Christina Poddubiuk, operates Punch & Judy Inc., a company specializing in design and illustration for theater and performing arts. Their projects often involve research into the visual aspects of...
Persuasion
Austen, Jane
Paper Book
'In Persuasion, Jane Austen is beginning to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic than she had supposed' Virginia Woolf Jane Austen's moving late novel of missed opportunities and second chances centres on Anne Elliot, no longer young and...
The silence of the girls
Barker, Pat
Paper Book
A Washington Post Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, The Economist, Financial Times   Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award Finalist for the Women's Prize for Fiction Here is the story of the Iliad as we've never...
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....
Jane Eyre
Bront,? Charlotte
Paper Book
Jane Eyre, a penniless orphan, is engaged as governess at Thornfield Hall by the mysterious Mr Rochester. Her integrity and independence are tested to the limit as their love for each other grows, and the secrets of Mr Rochester's past are revealed. Charlotte Brontë's novel about the...
The good earth
Buck, Pearl S.
Paper Book
Wang Lung, rising from humble Chinese farmer to wealthy landowner, gloried in the soil he worked. He held it above his family, even above his gods. But soon, between Wang Lung and the kindly soil that sustained him, came flood and drought, pestilence and revolution.... Through this one Chinese...
Kindred
Butler, Octavia E.
Paper Book
Experience the novel that redefined American literature by the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower, MacArthur "Genius," and Nebula and Hugo award winner Selected by The Atlantic as one of the "most consequential novels of the past 100 years"...
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...
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...
The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
Paper Book
Wilkie Collins' classic tale of murder,intrigue, madness, and mistaken identity, featuring updated endnotes and anintroduction by Anne Perry " TheWomaninWhite has lasted, to our great pleasure, because it is superb storytelling about people who engage our minds and our...
The last of the Mohicans
Cooper, James Fenimore
Paper Book
The second of Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales, this is the one which has consistently captured the imagination of generations since it was first published in 1826. It's success lies partly in the historical role Cooper gives to his Indian characters, against the grain of accumulated racial...
The red badge of courage
Crane, Stephen
Paper Book
The finest literature in the world is now accessible to new readers!
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
'One death, in exchange for thousands of lives - it's simple arithmetic!'A new translation of Dostoevsky's epic masterpiece, Crime and Punishment (1866). The impoverished student Raskolnikov decides to free himself from debt by killing an old moneylender, an act he sees as elevating himself above...
Invisible man
Ellison, Ralph.
Paper Book
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time * Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its...
James : a novel
Everett, Percival
Paper Book
A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. From the "literary icon" (Oprah Daily), Pulitzer Prize Finalist, and one of the most decorated writers of our...
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...
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald's family and from his lifelong publisher. This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book...
A room with a view
Forster, E. M.
Audiobook
One hundred years of solitude
Garca? Mr?quez, Gabriel
Paper Book
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history...
Cold Comfort Farm
Gibbons, Stella
Paper Book
"Quite simply one of the funniest satirical novels of the last century." --Nancy Pearl, NPR's Morning Edition The deliriously entertaining Cold Comfort Farm is "very probably the funniest book ever written" (The Sunday Times, London), a...
Lord of the flies
Golding, William
Paper Book
The 50th Anniversary Edition of the Lord of the Flies is the volume that every fan of this classic book will have to own! Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal...
A haunting on the hill
Hand, Elizabeth
Paper Book
From award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first-ever novel authorized to return to the world of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House--an "eerily beautiful, strangely seductive, and genuinely upsetting" (Alix E. Harrow) new ...
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
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
A dramatic, moving depiction of social defiance and social deference A stark and allegorical tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letteris a foundational work of American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne's exploration of the...
Catch-22 : a novel
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
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...
Their eyes were watching God
Hurston, Zora Neale.
Paper Book
Their Eyes Were Watching God, a luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern black woman in the 1930s whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance, continues to inspire the next generation of students. Freshman Common Read:...
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...
Meg & Jo
Kantra, Virginia
Paper Book
The timeless classic Little Women inspired this heartwarming modern tale of four sisters from New York Times bestselling author Virginia Kantra. The March sisters-reliable Meg, independent Jo, stylish Amy, and shy Beth-have grown up to pursue their separate dreams....
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
Kipling, Rudyard
Paper Book
Harvey Cheyne is the over-indulged son of a millionaire. When he falls overboard from an ocean liner he is rescued by a Portuguese fisherman and, initially against his will, joins the crew of the We're Here for a summer. Through the medium of an exciting adventure story, Captains Courageous (1897)...
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper.
Paper Book
"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel--a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and...
Main Street
Lewis, Sinclair
Paper Book
Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis's barbed portrait of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, shattered the myth of the American Middle West as God's Country and became a symbol of the cultural narrow-mindedness and smug complacency of small towns everywhere. A Penguin Classic ...
Moby-Dick
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
"A work tantalizingly subversive, and yet somehow if not affirming at least forgiving of the blind destructiveness of human nature and of nature itself." -Elizabeth Hardwick Moby-Dick is one of the great epics of all literature. Captain Ahab's hunt for the white whale drives the...
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,...
Beloved : a novel
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
Toni Morrison--author of Song of Solomon and Tar Baby--is a writer of remarkable powers: her novels, brilliantly acclaimed for their passion, their dazzling language and their lyric and emotional force, combine the unassailable truths of experience and emotion with the vision of legend...
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...
Hello beautiful : a novel
Napolitano, Ann
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * MORE THAN ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! From the author of Dear Edward comes a "powerfully affecting" (People) family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole? "Another tender tearjerker...
The things they carried : a work of fiction
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...
Cry, the beloved country
Paton, Alan.
Paper Book
"The greatest novel to emerge out of the tragedy of South Africa, and one of the best novels of our time." --The New Republic "A beautiful novel...its writing is so fresh, its projection of character so immediate and full, its events so compelling, and its understanding...
The bell jar
Plath, Sylvia.
Paper Book
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels "A coming-of-age masterpiece." --Boston Globe "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 Sylvia Plath's masterwork--an...
True grit : a novel
Portis, Charles.
Paper Book
#1 New York Times bestseller "An epic and a legend." --Washington Post "Quite simply, an American masterpiece." --Boston Globe "Charles Portis had a wonderful talent--original, quirky, exciting." --Larry...
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."--...
Wild and distant seas : a novel
Roberts, Tara Karr
Paper Book
Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island's small, close-knit community, one that by 1849 has started to feel the decline of a once-thriving whaling industry. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together, was once...
Portnoy's complaint
Roth, Philip.
Paper Book
The groundbreaking novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral that originally propelled its author to literary stardom: told in a continuous monologue from patient to psychoanalyst, this masterpiece draws us into the turbulent mind of one lust-ridden young Jewish...
Giants in the earth : a saga of the prairie
Rølvaag, O. E.
Paper Book
"The fullest, finest, and most powerful novel that has been written about pioneer life in America."--The Nation O. E. Rolvaag's classic novel of a family of Norwegian settlers in the Great Plains--a vivid and intimate portrait of the nineteenth-century immigrant experience and the...
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 really...
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....
A thousand acres
Smiley, Jane.
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A "powerful and poignant" twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear (The New York Times Book Review) that takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride--and centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to...
A tree grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Betty
Paper Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the twentieth century. From the moment she entered the world, Francie needed to be made of stern stuff, for the often harsh life of Williamsburg demanded fortitude,...
Angle of repose
Stegner, Wallace
Paper Book
An American masterpiece and iconic novel of the West by National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner--a deeply moving narrative of one family and the traditions of our national past. Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to a wheelchair by a...
The grapes of wrath
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized--and sometimes outraged--millions of readers. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read A Penguin Classic First published in 1939...
Dracula
Stoker, Bram
Paper Book
In 1897 Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, launching a literary sensation. In this new illustrated edition, Jae Lee, onw of the most renowned artists from the Marvel stable, reawakens Count Dracula. Critics and fans alike have praised Lee for his mastery of complex emotion and, in this new book, 40...
Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Paper Book
  Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and...
Address unknown
Taylor, Kathrine Kressmann.
Paper Book
When it first appeared in Story magazine in 1938, Address Unknown was an immediate social phenomenon and artistic sensation. The novella's penetrating focus afforded an unprecedented vision of the horror and grief wrought by the Nazi regime, and within a mere ten days, every issue of Story had been...
Vanity fair
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
Widely considered the greatest novel ever written in any language, War and Peace has as its backdrop Napoleon's invasion of Russia and at its heart three of the most memorable characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, a quixotic young man in search of spiritual joy; Prince Andrey...
A confederacy of dunces
Toole, John Kennedy
Paper Book
Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, --selfish, domineering, deluded, tragic and larger than life-- is a noble crusader against a world of dunces. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. In magnificent revolt against the twentieth century, Ignatius propels his monstrous bulk...
The Eustace diamonds
Trollope, Anthony
Paper Book
When shrewd and poor Lizzie Greystock marries she is fully aware of her wealthy husband's approaching death.
Fathers and sons
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich
Paper Book
When Fathers and Sons was first published in Russia, in 1862, it was met with a blaze of controversy about where Turgenev stood in relation to his account of generational misunderstanding. Was he criticizing the worldview of the conservative aesthete, Pavel Kirsanov, and the older...
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...
A journey to the centre of the earth
Verne, Jules
Paper Book
Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
Vonnegut, Kurt.
Paper Book
Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is "a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century" (Time). Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time * One of The Atlantic's...
The age of innocence
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
Edith Wharton's acclaimed novel of love, duty, and half-known truths in Gilded Age New York society, with a foreword by bestselling author Elif Batuman Dutiful Newland Archer, an eligible young man from New York high society, is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a...
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
Oscar Wilde's enduringly popular story of a beautiful and corrupt man and the portrait that reveals all his secrets-The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel as flamboyant and controversial as its incomparable author. Entranced by the perfection of his recently painted...
The man who lived underground : a novel
Wright, Richard
Paper Book
NAACP IMAGE AWARD FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER ONE OF TIME'S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2021 ONE OF OPRAH'S 15 FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 ONE OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2021 A BOSTON GLOBE BEST...
The story of Edgar Sawtelle
Wroblewski, David.
Paper Book
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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