Oregon City Adult Classics Genre List

Classic titles in the Oregon City Adult Fiction Collection.

Updated October 22, 2025
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I know why the caged bird sings
Angelou, Maya.
CD
Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know...
Persuasion
Austen, Jane
Paper Book
Of all Jane Austen's great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving--the entrancing story of a second chance at love. Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish, spendthrift Sir Walter Elliot, is a woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she...
Jane Eyre
Brontë, 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...
Naked lunch
Burroughs, William S.
Paper Book
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture....
Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy
Le Carré, John
Paper Book
Featuring George Smiley, this New York Times bestseller is the first installment in John le Carr#65533;'s acclaimed Karla Trilogy. From the author of A Delicate Truth and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. John le Carr#65533;'s new novel, A Legacy of Spies, will be...
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 big sleep
Chandler, Raymond
Paper Book
One of the most acclaimed works of crime fiction ever written, The Big Sleep is the first novel featuring Raymond Chandler's iconic creation Philip Marlowe, hailed as the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times). One of The Atlantic's Great...
Canterbury tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Paper Book
The precise, unerring, delicately emphatic characterizations for which The Canterbury Tales is so famous are no more extraordinary than Chaucer's utter mastery of English rhythms and his effortless versification. Ranging from animal fables to miniature epics of courtly love and savagely...
Heart of darkness
Conrad, Joseph
Paper Book
In a novella which remains highly controversial to this day, Conrad explores the relations between Africa and Europe. On the surface, this is a horrifying tale of colonial exploitation. The narrator, Marlowe journeys on business deep into the heart of Africa. But there he encounters Kurtz, an...
The divine comedy
Dante Alighieri
Paper Book
This beautiful hardcover edition--containing all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso--includes an introduction by Nobel Prize-winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli's marvelous...
A tale of two cities
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English...
Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Paper Book
'Dostoyevsky's finest masterpiece' John Bayley Dostoyevsky's great novel of damnation and redemption evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur. It tells the story of Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, who wanders...
Rebecca
Du Maurier, Daphne
CD
With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were...
Middlemarch : a study of provincial life
Eliot, George
Paper Book
One of the most accomplished and prominent novels of the Victorian era, Middlemarch is an unsurpassed portrait of nineteenth-century English provincial life. Dorothea Brooke is a young woman of fervent ideals who yearns to effect social change yet faces resistance from the society she...
Invisible man
Ellison, Ralph.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. One of The Atlantic<...
The great Gatsby
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
One of the classics of twentieth-century literature, The Great Gatsby is now available in a definitive, textually accurate edition. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan has been acclaimed by generations of readers. But the first edition...
One hundred years of solitude
Garcia Marquez, 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...
Beowulf : a new verse translation
Heaney, Seamus.
Paper Book
Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a...
Catch-22
Heller, Joseph.
Paper Book
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save...
The odyssey
Homer.
Paper Book
If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of an everyman's journey through life. Odysseus' reliance on wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after...
Brave new world
Huxley, Aldous
Paper Book
Now more than ever: Aldous Huxley's enduring masterwork must be read and understood by anyone concerned with preserving the human spirit "A masterpiece. . . . One of the most prophetic dystopian works." --Wall Street Journal  Aldous Huxley's...
Ulysses
Joyce, James
Paper Book
Ulysses takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, also known as Bloomsday, it sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, and...
On the road
Kerouac, Jack
Paper Book
On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his...
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...
The call of the wild, White Fang, and other stories
London, Jack
Paper Book
The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories collects some of Jack London's most profound and moving allegorical tales. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Andrew Sinclair with an introduction by James Dickey. The Call of the Wild, London's masterpiece...
Moby-Dick
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
Moby-Dick is Herman Melville's great adventure of the sea and the life of the soul, featuring the timeless characters Ishmael, Ahab, and Queequeg, and presented here in a beautiful Everyman's Library hardcover edition. A giant of American literature, Melville is justly...
Gone with the wind
Mitchell, Margaret
CD
Gone With the Wind
Gilgamesh : a new English version
Mitchell, Stephen
Paper Book
An English-language rendering of the world's oldest epic follows the journey of conquest and self-discovery by the king of Uruk, in an edition that includes an introduction that places the story in its historical and cultural context.
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...
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: *...
The satanic verses
Rushdie, Salman.
CD
Horrible Science: Blood, Bones, and Body Bits
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...
East of Eden
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
In his journal, John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families-the...
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. One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years First published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning...
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Stevenson, Robert Louis
CD
Gabriel Utterson is intrigued by the sinister figure of Mr Hyde, and the latter's strange relationship with Utterson's good friend, Dr Jekyll. When Mr Hyde beats a Member of Parliament to death, Gabriel Utterson tries to get to the bottom of the mystery and eventually discovers Dr Jekyll's dark...
Dracula
Stoker, Bram
Paper Book
The Lord of the rings
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paper Book
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, The Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him....
War and peace
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Paper Book
Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit....
Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
Vonnegut, Kurt.
Paper Book
A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece, "a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century" (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds<...
Brideshead revisited : the sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Waugh, Evelyn
The age of innocence
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
Set in old New York, this novel details the thwarted romance between Newland Archer, a young dandy, and the beautiful, unconventional divorceee Countess Ellen Olenska. The cast of characters includes Newland's docile - and calculating - fiancee, May Welland and the lordly Mrs Manson Mingott.
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides 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 most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused a scandal when...
To the lighthouse
Woolf, Virginia
Paper Book
"A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again." -- Greta Gerwig The authorized, original edition of one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century: a miraculous novel of family, love, war, and mortality,...

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