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...
Little women
Alcott, Louisa May
Paper Book
Louisa May Alcott's classic tale of four sisters in a deluxe hardcover edition,with beautiful cover illustrations by Anna Bond, the artist behind world-renowned stationery brand Rifle Paper Co. Grown-up Meg, tomboyish Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. The four March sisters...
Bless me, Ultima
Anaya, Rudolfo A.
Paper Book
Winner of the Premio Quinto Sol National Chicano Literary Award -- Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will test the bonds that tie him to his people, and discover...
Persuasion
Austen, Jane
Paper Book
Featuring one of her most likeable characters, this sparkling love story set in a seaside resort is Jane Austen's final finished work. "There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison." Since Anne Elliot eight years...
The silence of the girls
Barker, Pat
Paper Book
Briseis was queen of one of Troy's neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece's greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles's concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the...
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
The good earth
Buck, Pearl S.
Paper Book
Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Oprah Book Club selection about a vanished China and one family's shifting fortunes. Though more than seventy years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and...
Impasse
Buckingham, Royce
Paper Book
In Royce Scott Buckingham'sImpasse, a man is left to die in Alaska while on an "adventure vacation" and must somehow survive to get his revenge on those who betrayed him. Forty and facing a mid-life crisis, Stu Stark has lost his mojo. He simply gave up after being...
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
Don Quixote
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Paper Book
Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality, colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Don Quixote has become so entranced by...
The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie
Paper Book
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice,...
The last of the Mohicans
Cooper, James Fenimore
Paper Book
The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and...
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
For nearly a century, Scribner has exemplified the very best in publishing by pairing classic texts with the illustrative giants of the time, such as N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. With the same commitment to the high standards established by the series' founders, Atheneum Books for Young Readers...
Great expectations
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Paper Book
A masterpiece of guilt and redemption that transforms the sordid story of an old woman's murder into the nineteenth century's profoundest and most compelling philosophical novel. * ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME ...
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<...
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...
Beatrice and Benedick
Fiorato, Marina
Paper Book
Hidden in the language of Shakespeare's best-loved comedyMuch Ado About Nothingare several clues to an intriguing tale. It seems that the witty lovers Beatrice and Benedick had a previous love affair that ended bitterly. But how did they meet? Why did they part? And what brought them...
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...
One hundred years of solitude
Garca? Mr?quez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Now a Netflix original series! "One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. . . . García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound,...
Cold Comfort Farm
Gibbons, Stella
Paper Book
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.
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 ...
The scarlet letter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
Catch-22 : a novel
Heller, Joseph
Audiobook
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...
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. ...
Their eyes were watching God
Hurston, Zora Neale.
Paper Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick "A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly." --Zadie Smith One of the most important...
Meg & Jo
Kantra, Virginia
Paper Book
A heartwarming modern novel inspired by Little Women, to coincide with the release of the new film in early 2020.
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
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...
To kill a mockingbird
Lee, Harper.
Paper Book
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made...
Main Street
Lewis, Sinclair
Paper Book
Main Street is the climax of civilization.
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,...
Moby-Dick
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
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.
Audiobook
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding audio transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of...
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
One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of...
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
A #1 New York Times bestseller, Charles Portis's True Grit is "an epic and a legend" (Washington Post), a story of danger and adventure in the Old West--the basis for two award-winning films, the first starring John Wayne in his only Oscar-winning role, as...
Jane and Prudence
Pym, Barbara.
Ebook
The author of Excellent Women explores female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life--a literary delight for fans of Jane Austen.   Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were close friends at Oxford University, but now live very...
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."--...
Wide Sargasso Sea
Rhys, Jean.
Paper Book
Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys's return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into...
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...
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...
Frankenstein : or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
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 A special 75th anniversary edition of 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 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
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England- an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman...
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...
War and peace
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Paper Book
Hailed as one of the greatest novels of all time and a classic of world literature, War and Peace unfolds in the early nineteenth century during the turbulent years of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Tolstoy's epic ranges from stirring depictions of historical events to intimate portraits...
A confederacy of dunces
Toole, John Kennedy
Ebook
A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower...
Fathers and sons
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich
Ebook
As Arkady Kirsanov returns home after graduation, his father waits patiently for him--excited to see his much-loved son once again. But in returning home to a world that has remained static, Arkady and his friend Bazarov, a self-defined nihilist, find themselves wholly changed, and must now...
The adventures of Tom Sawyer
Twain, Mark
Paper Book
The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a Mississippi River town in the early nineteenth century.
A journey to the centre of the earth
Verne, Jules
Paper Book
What a stunning discovery: an old, coded note that actually contains directions for reaching the Earth's very core! And once he finds it, renowned geologist Professor Liedenbrock can't resist setting out with his 16-year-old nephew to go where only one man has gone before. Jules Verne...
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
Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton's masterful portrait of desire and betrayal in the sumptuous Golden Age of New York, when society people "dreaded scandal more than disease." This is Newland Archer's world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional...
The story of Edgar Sawtelle
Wroblewski, David.
Audiobook
The extraordinary debut novel that became a modern classic Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose remarkable...
Find this list online: https://librarian.syndetics.com/syndeticsunbound/lp/723.1086/list/2918

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