Classic Fiction

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

Updated September 11, 2025
Rochester Public Library RPL Staff
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Classic Fiction

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

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Things fall apart
Achebe, Chinua.
Paper Book
The most widely read book in modern African literature, presented here in stunning hardcover, tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around a fearless Igbo warrior in Nigeria in the late 1800s, before and after the European colonization of the continent. ...
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...
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...
Persuasion
Austen, Jane
Paper Book
Persuasion celebrates romantic constancy in an era of turbulent change. Written as the Napoleonic Wars were ending, the novel examines how a woman can at once remain faithful to her past and still move forward into the future. Anne Elliot seems to have given up on present happiness and has resigned...
The silence of the girls
Barker, Pat
Paper Book
From the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy comes a brave and masterful retelling of The Iliad, as experienced by the captured women living in the Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War. Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award * Finalist for...
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
"Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!" Throughout the hardships of her childhood - spent with a severe aunt and abusive cousin, and later at the austere Lowood charity school - Jane Eyre clings to a sense of self-worth, despite of her treatment from those close to her. At the age of...
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
No further information has been provided for this title.
Don Quixote
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Paper Book
Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece, a landmark work of early modern literature, in an expanded P.S. edition Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, this classic of Spanish literature, Don Quixote,...
The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
Paper Book
The Woman in White (1859-60) is the first and greatest `Sensation Novel'. Walter Hartright's mysterious midnight encounter with the woman in white draws him into a vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, and international intrigue.The novel is dominated by two of the finest creations in all Victorian...
The red badge of courage
Crane, Stephen
Paper Book
The Red Badge of Courage is an American masterpiece-and yet the novel familiar to so many readers is not, in fact, the story Crane wrote. That story is the one printed here, as Henry Binder has recovered it, as fully as possible, from the author's final handwritten manuscript. Just prior to the...
Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel
Paper Book
Thomas Keymer is a 2011 Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada.'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...
Great expectations
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
Perhaps Dickens's best-loved work, Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, a young man with few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefactor allows him to escape the Kent marshes for a more promising life in London. Despite his good fortune, Pip is haunted by figures from his past--the...
Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Paper Book
This Norton Critical Edition includes: Michael Katz's new translation of the world's most-read Russian novel accompanied by his preface and detailed explanatory footnotes. Names of Principal Characters, a Note on Character's Names, and a map of St. Petersburg. Key...
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
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE...
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.
Paper Book
E.M. Forster's beloved novel of forbidden love, culture clash, and the confines of Edwardian society   Visiting Florence with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional, lower-class Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Upon her...
One hundred years of solitude
Garca? Mr?quez, Gabriel
Paper Book
From the Nobel Prize winning novelist, this epic tale of seven generations of the Buendia family spans a hundred years of Latin American history. The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love--in rich,...
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...
Lord of the flies
Golding, William
Paper Book
Before The Hunger Games there was Lord of the Flies Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely...
King Solomon's mines
Haggard, H. Rider
Paper Book
'Don't you see that we are buried alive?'When Allan Quatermain is approached by Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good to search for Sir Henry's missing brother, deep in the African interior, he agrees to lead their expedition. Quatermain has a map to the fabled King Solomon's Mines, whose...
Far from the madding crowd
Hardy, Thomas
Paper Book
'I shall do one thing in this life - one thing for certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.'Gabriel Oak is only one of three suitors for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. He must compete with the dashing young soldier Sergeant Troy and...
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
A Scribner Classics Edition "The ideal companion for troubled times: equal parts Continental escape and serious grappling with the question of what it means to be, and feel, lost." --The Wall Street Journal Originally published in 1926, The Sun Also...
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
One of Rudyard Kipling's most enduringly popular works, Captains Courageous is a stirring coming-of-age story. Harvey Cheyne, the pampered fifteen-year-old son of an American millionaire, is sailing to Europe when he falls overboard. Saved from drowning by a New England...
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper.
Paper Book
Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025. Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize...
Tropic of Cancer
Miller, Henry
Paper Book
Chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s.
Beloved : a novel
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * This "powerful, mesmerizing story" (People) is an unflinching look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. With an afterword by the author and a new introduction by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers....
The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
Lady Murasaki's exquisite, 11th-century portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan has been widely celebrated as the world's first novel. Offering a lively and well-rounded glimpse of golden age Japan with a cast of richly conceived and nuanced characters, Royall Tyler's superb translation, detailed...
The things they carried : a work of fiction
O'Brien, Tim
Paper Book
A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking work of Vietnam War fiction and a meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. ...
Cry, the beloved country
Paton, Alan.
Paper Book
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
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
Employers often ascribe values to gender and sexual orientation that override truly relevant personal characteristics including ability, intelligence and dedication. Policy makers and business leaders need to be informed and involved in creating a workplace climate that openly accepts all people....
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 Nolan needed to be made of stern stuff, for the often harsh life of Williamsburg,...
Angle of repose
Stegner, Wallace
Paper Book
Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of personal, historical, and geographic discovery   Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of...
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...
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...
A confederacy of dunces
Toole, John Kennedy
Paper Book
This anniversary edition of the classic novel that won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for fiction features a Foreword by Walker Percy that looks back on the history of this humorous story set in New Orleans about around a slob named Ignatius Reilly and his relationship with his mother
The Eustace diamonds
Trollope, Anthony
Paper Book
'She liked lies...To lie readily and cleverly, recklessly and yet successfully, was, according to the lessons which she had learned, a necessity in a woman'Lizzie Eustace is young, beautiful, and widowed. Her determination to hold on to the Eustace family's diamond necklace in the face of legal...
A journey to the centre of the earth
Verne, Jules
Paper Book
This new translation is faithful to the lyricism, verve, and humour of the original, and is the only annotated edition available.
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
This is the first variorum edition of the 1890 and 1891 editions of Oscar Wilde's controversial novel, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. Drawing on manuscripts and a typescript, this volume reprints the thirteen-chapter and twenty-chapter versions of Wilde's narrative as separate works, enabling the...
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