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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
Sandleford Warren is in danger. Hazel's younger brother Fiver is convinced that a great evil is about to befall the land, but no one will listen. And why would they when it is Spring and the grass is fat and succulent? So together Hazel and Fiver and a few other brave rabbits secretly leave behind...
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Little women
Alcott, Louisa May
Paper Book
This Penguin Classics edition of Louisa May Alcott's inspiring tale of sisterhood, Little Women, is edited with an introduction by Elaine Showalter. The charming story of four 'little women' - Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth - and their wise and patient mother Marmee, was an instant...
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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, naïve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who...
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The women of Troy : a novel
Barker, Pat
Paper Book
Troy has fallen and the Greek victors are primed to return home, loaded with spoils. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind does not come. The gods are offended - the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied - and so the victors remain in uneasy limbo, camped...
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A manual for cleaning women : selected stories
Berlin, Lucia.
Paper Book
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Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
Paper Book
The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task force of firemen. Over 1 million copies sold in the UK. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of...
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Wuthering Heights
Bronte, Emily
Paper Book
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 that took place years before- of the intense passion between the foundling...
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Kindred
Butler, Octavia E.
Paper Book
**MAJOR TV SERIES COMING SOON TO DISNEY+** Octavia E. Butler's ground-breaking masterpiece, with an original foreword by Ayòbámi Adébáyò. 'A marvel of imagination, empathy and detail' NEW YORK TIMES 'The marker you should judge all other...
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The spy who came in from the cold
Le Carrâe, John
Paper Book
From the master of spy thrillers, John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a gripping story of love and betrayal at the height of the Cold War. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an afterword by the author and an introduction by William Boyd, author of Any Human...
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Don Quixote
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Paper Book
Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading romances of chivalry that he determines to become a knight errant and pursue bold adventures, accompanied by his squire, the cunning Sancho Panza. As they roam the world together, the aging Quixote's fancy leads them wildly astray. At the same time the...
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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,...
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The red badge of courage
Crane, Stephen
Paper Book
Henry Fleming is an ordinary farm boy turned soldier, with romantic notions about the glory of war. But, as the tedium of his regiment's encampment without action provides ample time for self-reflection, disquieting thoughts begin to prey upon his mind: doubts as to whether, in combat, he will stand...
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Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel
Paper Book
With Robinson Crusoe, Defoe wrote what is regarded as the first English novel, and created one of the most popular and enduring myths in literature. Written in an age of exploration and enterprise, it has been variously interpreted as an embodiment of British imperialist values, as a portrayal of...
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Great expectations
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
'His novels will endure as long as the language itself' Peter Ackroyd Dickens's haunting late novel depicts the education and development of a young man, Pip, as his life is changed by a series of events - a terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the...
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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...
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A room with a view
Forster, E. M.
Paper Book
'My first intimation of the possibilities of fiction' Zadie Smith More than a love story, A Room with a View is a penetrating social comedy and a brilliant study of contrasts - in values, social class, and cultural perspectives - and the ingenuity of fate. Its heroine, Lucy...
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Love in the time of cholera
GarcÃa Márquez, Gabriel
Ebook
A CLASSIC STORY OF ENDURING LOVE FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR _______________________________ 'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love' Fifty-one years, nine months and four days...
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Wives and daughters
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Paper Book
"Eh, miss, but that be a rare young lady! She do have such pretty coaxing ways ..." Seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson worships her widowed father. But when he decides to remarry, Molly's life is thrown off course by the arrival of her vain, shallow and selfish stepmother. There is...
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King Solomon's mines
Haggard, H. Rider
Paper Book
Allan Quatermain, wild game hunter and explorer, narrates his adventures with Danish adventurer Sir Henry Curtis and Royal Navy Officer Captain Good. Hired by Curtis, Quatermain leads the quest to find Curtis's lost brother - who vanished while searching for the fabled diamond mines of King Solomon...
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Far from the madding crowd
Hardy, Thomas
Paper Book
Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors- the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in...
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The scarlet letter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
A dramatic, moving depiction of social defiance and social deference A stark and allegorical tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letteris a foundational work of American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne's exploration of the...
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Catch-22
Heller, Joseph.
Paper Book
Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage. Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious...
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The sun also rises
Hemingway, Ernest
Paper Book
Discover Ernest Hemingway's most decadent novel 'He's so damned nice and he's so awful. He's my sort of thing' Paris in the twenties- Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett...
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Ayesha at last
Jalaluddin, Uzma
Paper Book
A big-hearted, captivating, modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice, with hijabs instead of top hats and kurtas instead of corsets.
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Demon Copperhead : a novel
Kingsolver, Barbara
Paper Book
A masterpiece in storytelling from the global bestselling author of Unsheltered and Flight Behaviour.
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Captains courageous
Kipling, Rudyard
Paper Book
A Penguin Classic First published in 1897, Captain Courageoustells of the high-seas adventures of Harvey Cheyne, the son of an American millionaire, who, after falling from a luxury ocean liner, is rescued by the raucous crew of the fishing ship We're Here. Obstinate and...
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Northanger Abbey
McDermid, Val
Paper Book
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Moby-Dick, or, The whale
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
'The ultimate fish story' Bob Dylan When Ishmael sets sail on the whaling ship Pequod one cold Christmas Day, he has no idea of the horrors awaiting him out on the vast and merciless ocean. The ship's strange captain, Ahab, is in the grip of an obsession to...
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Circe : a novel
Miller, Madeline
Paper Book
The international Number One bestseller from the author of The Song of Achilles, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction Woman. Witch. Myth. Mortal. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Survivor. CIRCE. In the house of Helios, god of the sun and...
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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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The things they carried
O'Brien, Tim
Paper Book
The million copy bestseller that redefined the way the world saw war. One of the ten books - novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography - that make up our Matchbook Classics' series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist....
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The bell jar
Plath, Sylvia.
Paper Book
A student from Boston wins a guest editorship on a national magazine, and finds a new world at her feet. Her New York life is crowded with possibilities, so the choice of future is overwhelming. She is faced with the perennial problems of morality, behaviour and identity.
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All quiet on the western front
Remarque, Erich Maria
Paper Book
** NOW A HIT NETFLIX FILM, WINNER OF 7 BAFTAS AND 4 OSCARS, INCLUDING BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE** One by one the boys begin to fall... In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the...
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The plot against America
Roth, Philip.
Paper Book
'He captures better than anyone the collision of public and private, the intrusion of history into the skin, the pores of every individual alive' Guardian 'Though on the morning after the election disbelief prevailed, especially among the pollsters, by the next...
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Franny and Zooey
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
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Home fire
Shamsie, Kamila
Paper Book
_______________ WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, EVENING STANDAND AND NEW YORK TIMES _______________...
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Frankenstein : or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake...
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The prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spark, Muriel.
Paper Book
When an unbridled schoolmistress with advanced ideas is in her prime the classroom can take on a new identity and no one can predict what will happen. Jean Brodie is a teacher whose unconventional ideas put her at odds with the other members of staff at the Marcia Blaine School in Edinburgh, as she...
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Of mice and men
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
Drifters in search of work, George and his childlike friend Lennie, have nothing in the world except the clothes on their back - and a dream that one day they will have some land of their own. Eventually they find work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley, but their hopes are dashed as Lennie -...
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Dracula
Stoker, Bram
Paper Book
'The very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years' Arthur Conan Doyle A masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also probes identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. It begins when Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to...
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Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Paper Book
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Vanity fair : a novel without a hero
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...
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War and peace
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Paper Book
In Russia's struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Greater than a historical chronicle, War and Peace is an affirmation of life itself, 'a complete picture', as a contemporary reviewer put it, 'of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness,their...
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The adventures of Tom Sawyer
Twain, Mark
Paper Book
Mark Twain's hymn to the secure and fantastic world of boyhood and adventure From the famous episodes of the whitewashed fence and the ordeal in the cave to the trial of Injun Joe, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is redolent of life in the Mississippi River towns in which Twain...
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20,000 leagues under the sea
Verne, Jules
Paper Book
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Ethan Frome
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
Ethan works his unproductive farm, and struggles to maintain an existence with his suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.
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The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
Paper Book
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman inthe eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears...
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Frankissstein : a love story
Winterson, Jeanette
Paper Book
***LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2020** **LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE 2020** A radical love story for right now, from 'one of the most gifted writers working today' (New York Times)<...
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