Banned or Challenged Books

Read these dangerous books at your own risk!

Updated June 7, 2023
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Me and Earl and the dying girl : a novel
Andrews, Jesse.
Paper Book
The New York Times bestselling novel that inspired the hit film!   This is the funniest book you'll ever read about death.   It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his...
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
Capote, Truman
CD
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,...
Lord of the flies
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.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A modern classic--both poignant and funny--about a boy with autism who sets out to solve the murder of a neighbor's dog and discovers unexpected truths about himself and the world. "Disorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect.......
Crank
Hopkins, Ellen.
Paper Book
Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina -- she's fearless. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank....
The kite runner
Hosseini, Khaled.
Paper Book
The New York Times bestseller and international classic loved by millions of readers. The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in...
Brave new world
Huxley, Aldous
Paper Book
Huxley's story shows a futuristic World State where all emotion, love, art, and human individuality have been replaced by social stability. An ominous warning to the world's population, this literary classic is a must-read.
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
Kesey, Ken.
Paper Book
Ken Kesey's bracing, inslightful novel about the meaning of madness and the value of self-reliance, and the inspiration for the new Netflix original series Ratched One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Boisterous,...
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper.
CD
Harper Lee's classic novel of a lawyer in the deep south defending a black man charged with the rape of a white girl One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize, has...
The bluest eye
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
The Bluest Eye (1970) is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people...
1984 : a novel
Orwell, George
Paper Book
Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... This 75th Anniversary Edition includes: *...
Of mice and men
Steinbeck, John
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.
CD
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life,...
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
CD
This landmark book is a loosely fictionalized account of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, one of the nation's most astounding politicians. All the King's Men tells the story of Willie Stark, a southern-fried politician who builds support by appealing to the common man and playing dirty politics with...
Brideshead revisited : the sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Waugh, Evelyn
Black boy
Wright, Richard
CD
"Superb. . . .A great American writer speaks with his own voice about matters that still resonate at the center of our lives." -- New York Times Book Review Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi amid poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole,...

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