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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
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...
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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
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 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
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
'May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then' 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...
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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
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston. The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that...
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O pioneers!
Cather, Willa
Paper Book
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Don Quixote
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Paper Book
Our ceaseless human quest for something larger than ourselves has never been represented with more insight and love than in this story of Don Quixote-pursuing his vision of glory in a mercantile age-and his shrewd, skeptical manservant, Sancho Panza. As they set out to right the world's...
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The Awakening
Chopin, Kate
Ebook
When first published in 1899, The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage,...
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The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
Ebook
The first and greatest sensation novel, a thrilling story of evil thwarted and love reclaimed The night before he leaves London for a temporary engagement in the North of England, drawing instructor Walter Hartright walks home on an empty, moonlit road. Suddenly a hand...
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The last of the Mohicans
Cooper, James Fenimore
Paper Book
Presented for the first time as an illustrated novel--with unabridged text--experience anew the war for control of the New World in this classic tale by James Fenimore Cooper. The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure novel has made The Last of the Mohicans the...
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The red badge of courage
Crane, Stephen
Ebook
First published in 1895, this small masterpiece set the pattern for the treatment of war in modern fiction. The novel is told through the eyes of Henry Fleming, a young soldier caught up in an unnamed Civil War battle who is motivated not by the unselfish heroism of conventional war...
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Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel
Paper Book
'I made him know his Name should be Friday, which was the Day I sav'd his Life...I likewise taught him to say Master'Robinson Crusoe's seafaring adventures are abruptly ended when he is shipwrecked, the solitary survivor on a deserted island. He gradually creates a life for himself, building a in...
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Great expectations
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
Pip is a poor orphan, a boy with "no expectations" being raised by his unkind sister and her husband in a small home on the marshes of Kent. But when Pip meets the bizarre Miss Havisham and her beautiful ward, Estella, he starts to yearn for a life as a gentleman. However, Pip will discover that...
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Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Paper Book
Hailed by Washington Post Book World as "the best [translation] currently available" when it was first published, this second edition of Crime and Punishment has been updated in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky's birth. * ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST...
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The sound and the fury
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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The beautiful and damned
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Ebook
A brilliant, sharp-edged novel of the Jazz Age by its most famous chronicler With his impeccable lineage and Harvard education, twenty-five-year-old Anthony Patch is one of the sparkling lights of New York society. The presumptive heir to an enormous fortune, he marries the...
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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
A Room With a View is widely considered to be one of Forster's most well-known and beloved tales; it is considered a classic by some and is worth taking the time to read.
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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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Wives and daughters
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Paper Book
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel, is regarded by many as her masterpiece. Molly Gibson is the daughter of the doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford. Her widowed father marries a second time to give Molly the woman's presence he feels she lacks, but until the arrival...
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King Solomon's mines
Haggard, H. Rider
Ebook
A famed elephant hunter embarks on a perilous African treasure hunt in this classic tale that launched the long-running Allan Quatermain series. Sir Henry Curtis's brother has disappeared into the uncharted African interior. Last seen by explorer and hunter Allan...
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Far from the madding crowd
Hardy, Thomas
Ebook
Thomas Hardy's first literary masterpiece, Far From the Madding Crowd is the story of free-spirited Bathsheba Everdene, whose bold independence attracts the attention of three suitors: the frugal shepherd Gabriel Oak, the lonely farmer William Boldwood, and the dashing young soldier Sergeant...
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The scarlet letter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
An iconic novel dressed in a fierce design by acclaimed fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo. Other titles in the couture-inspired collection include Jane Eyre, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice.Ruben Toledo's breathtaking drawings have appeared in...
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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
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...
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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
Audiobook
A mind-bending new novel inspired by the twisted and wondrous works of Lewis Carroll In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City stands a hospital with cinder-block walls that echo the screams of the poor souls inside. ...
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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
James, Henry
Ebook
A brash American expatriate confronts the profound differences between the Old and New Worlds in this classic tale. Soon after wealthy businessman Christopher Newman decides to leave America for a life of leisure in Europe, he becomes acquainted with Claire de Cintré, a...
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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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Captains courageous
Kipling, Rudyard
Ebook
This dramatic nineteenth-century nautical adventure and classic coming-of-age story is one of Rudyard Kipling's most enduringly popular works. Harvey Cheyne Jr., the teenage son of a millionaire American railroad tycoon, is sailing to Europe on a luxury liner when he falls...
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Babbitt
Lewis, Sinclair
Paper Book
Since the 1922 publication of Babbitt, its eponymous antihero--a prosperous real estate broker and relentless social climber inhabiting a Midwestern town called Zenith--has become a symbol of stultifying values and middle-class hypocrisy. At once a conformist and a rebel, George F. Babbitt...
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The call of the wild
London, Jack
Paper Book
Puffin Classics- the definitive collection of timeless stories, for every child Join Puffin in celebrating 120 years since Call of the Wild first published with this very special anniversary edition. To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing,...
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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
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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
Sula and Nel are born in the Bottom--a small town at the top of a hill. Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma's girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear...
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The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
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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
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
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 beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition of this haunting American classic: a realistic and emotional novel about a woman battling mental illness and societal pressures written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath. ...
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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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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
Winner of the 2018 Women's Prize for FictionLonglisted for the Man Booker PrizeTwo families' fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined in this suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences.
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Frankenstein : or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
More than 200 years after it was first published, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has stood the test of time as a gothic masterpiece--a classic work of horror that blurs the line between man and monster. "If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear." For...
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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...
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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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The prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spark, Muriel.
Ebook
"A perfect book"--and basis for the Maggie Smith film--about a teacher who makes a lasting impression on her female students in the years before World War II (Chicago Tribune). "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!...
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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
Introducing the ultimate collector's edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker, the best-known vampire novel of all time, now in an exquisite special edition featuring sprayed edges and an introduction and appendices by renowned fantasy editor Marvin Kaye. The luxurious design and...
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Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Paper Book
Harriet Beecher Stowe's seminal anti-slavery novel with an afterword by Pat Righelato.When a Kentucky farmer falls on hard times he is forced to sell his slaves, and among them is Uncle Tom, who's bought by a brutal plantation owner. The novel describes the horror of plantation labour and Tom...
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Vanity fair : a novel without a hero
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Ebook
This classic story of two nineteenth-century social climbers is the basis for countless films and TV series, and one of the UK's "Best-Loved Novels." Before the Real Housewives, there were Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley. Ruthless and cunning, Becky may have been born in a...
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War and peace
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Paper Book
From Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the best-selling, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov, comes a brilliant, engaging, and eminently readable translation of Leo Tolstoy's master epic. * Nominated as one of America's best...
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A confederacy of dunces
Toole, John Kennedy
Paper Book
After four decades, the peerless wit and indulgent absurdity of A Confederacy of Dunces continues to attract new readers. Though the manuscript was rejected by many publishers during John Kennedy Toole?s lifetime, his mother successfully published the book years after her son?s suicide,...
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The Eustace diamonds
Trollope, Anthony
Ebook
For an ambitious, keenly intelligent woman, lying proves to be the easiest way to get through life, in this Victorian-era classic. Lizzie Greystock is a woman of rare cunning and determination--both of which she uses to better her lot in life. This is especially true...
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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
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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Hocus pocus
Vonnegut, Kurt.
Paper Book
From the New York Timesbestselling author of Slaughterhouse-Five comes anirresistible novel thatcombines"clever wit with keen social observation... and re-establishes Mr. Vonnegut's place as the Mark Twain of our times" (Atlanta Journal & Constitution).
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Ethan Frome
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
A marked departure from Edith Wharton's usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she herself belonged, Ethan Fromeis a sharply etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village. The protagonist, Ethan Frome, is a man tormented...
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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...
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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
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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