Classic Fiction

Some of our favorite classic stories

Updated April 19, 2024
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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
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...
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...
The women of Troy : a novel
Barker, Pat
Paper Book
A daring and timely feminist retelling of The Iliad from the perspective of the women of Troy who endured it--an extraordinary follow up to The Silence of the Girls from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy and "one of contemporary literature's most thoughtful...
A manual for cleaning women : selected stories
Berlin, Lucia.
Paper Book
One ofTheNew York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2015 One ofJezebel's Favorite Books of 2016 A Manual for Cleaning Womencompiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the...
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.
Wuthering Heights
Bronte, Emily
Paper Book
The title of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors of the story. The narrative centres on the all-encompassing, passionate, but ultimately doomed love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and the people around them. ...
The eternal wonder : a novel
Buck, Pearl S.
Paper Book
Lost for forty years, a new novel by the author of The Good Earth The Eternal Wonder tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax (Rann for short), an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to...
Kindred
Butler, Octavia E.
Paper Book
Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. ("You have to read them.") From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur "Genius" Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner The visionary time-travel classic whose...
Miranda and Caliban
Carey, Jacqueline
Paper Book
Miranda and Caliban is bestselling fantasy author Jacqueline Carey's gorgeous retelling ofThe Tempest. With hypnotic prose and a wild imagination, Carey explores the themes of twisted love and unchecked power that lie at the heart of Shakespeare's masterpiece, while serving up a...
The spy who came in from the cold
Le Carrâe, John
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Our Kind of Traitor; and The Night Manager, now a television series starring Tom Hiddleston. The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that...
O pioneers!
Cather, Willa
Paper Book
Don Quixote
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Paper Book
Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece, in an expanded P.S. edition and with an introduction by Harold Bloom "A major literary achievement."--Carlos Fuentes, New York Times Book Review Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books...
The Awakening
Chopin, Kate
Paper Book
Kate Chopin's riveting, daring story of one woman's search for personal freedom was so far ahead of its time that its publication in 1899 aroused a storm of controversy violent enough to end its author's career.   With an effortless, sure-handed artistry, Chopin tells the...
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...
The last of the Mohicans
Cooper, James Fenimore
Paper Book
Cooper's most enduringly popular novel combines heroism and romance with powerful criticism of the destruction of nature and tradition. Set against the French and Indian siege of Fort William Henry in 1757, The Last of the Mohicans recounts the story of two...
The red badge of courage
Crane, Stephen
Paper Book
First published in 1895, America's greatest novelof the Civil War was written before 21-year-oldStephen Crane had "smelled even the powder of asham battle." But this powerful psychologicalstudy of a young soldier's struggle with thehorrors, both within and without, that war strikes thereader with...
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...
Great expectations
Dickens, Charles
Paper Book
One of Charles Dickens's most fascinating novels, Great Expectations follows the orphan Pip as he leaves behind a childhood of misery and poverty after an anonymous benefactor offers him a chance at the life of a gentleman. From the young Pip's first terrifying encounter with...
Crime and punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Paper Book
The classic novel of guilt and redemption from one of Russia's greatest novelists Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a...
The sound and the fury
Faulkner, William
Paper Book
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time * One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years From the Modern Library's new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by William Faulkner--also available are Snopes,...
Beatrice and Benedick
Fiorato, Marina.
Ebook
Hidden in the language of Shakespeare's best-loved comedy Much Ado About Nothing are 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...
The beautiful and damned
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, pocket-sized classics bound in real cloth with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. Featuring an afterword by Ned Halley. A gripping account of the...
To kill a mockingbird : a graphic novel
Fordham, Fred
Paper Book
"This gorgeously rendered graphic-novel version provides a new perspective for old fans but also acts as an immersive introduction for youngsters as well as any adult who somehow missed out on the iconic story set in Maycomb, Alabama."--USA Today A beautifully...
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...
Love in the time of cholera
García Márquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds three people's lives together for more than fifty years. In the story of Florentino Ariza, who waits more than half a century to declare his undying...
Wives and daughters
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Audiobook
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...
King Solomon's mines
Haggard, H. Rider
Paper Book
Far from the madding crowd
Hardy, Thomas
Paper Book
Far From the Madding Crowd, published in 1874, is the book that made Hardy famous.  Bathsheba Everdene is a prosperous farmer in Hardy's fictional Wessex county whose strong-minded independence and vanity lead to disastrous consequences for her and the three very...
The scarlet letter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Paper Book
The mere wife
Headley, Maria Dahvana
Paper Book
New York Times bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley presents a modern retelling of the literary classic Beowulf, set in American suburbia as two mothers--a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran--fight to protect those they love in The Mere Wife.
Catch-22
Heller, Joseph.
Paper Book
Named one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read * One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years One of the funniest books ever written, Joseph Heller's masterpiece about a bomber squadron in the Second World War's...
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
Paper Book
From the national bestselling author of Ghost Tree comes a mind-bending novel inspired by the twisted and wondrous works of Lewis Carroll... In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City, there stands a hospital with cinderblock walls which...
Ayesha at last
Jalaluddin, Uzma
Paper Book
As seen on The Today Show! One of the best summer romance picks! One of Publishers Weekly Best Romance Books of 2019! A modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice for a new generation of love. Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of...
The American
James, Henry
Paper Book
Christopher Newman, a 'self-made' American millionaire in France, falls in love with the beautiful aristocratic Claire de Bellegarde. Her family, however, taken aback by his brash American manner, rejects his proposal of marriage. When Newman discovers a guilty secret in the Bellegardes' past, he...
Beth & Amy
Kantra, Virginia
Paper Book
Amy March is more like her older sister Jo than she'd like to admit. An designer in New York's fashion industry, Amy is determined to get out of her sisters' shadow. But when Jo's wedding forces her home, she must face what she really wants. Beth grew up as the good girl. A talented singer...
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
The only one of Kipling's novels to be cast in an American setting, Captains Courageous endures as one of literature's most cherished and memorable sea adventures. Harvey Cheyne, spoiled millionaire's son, tumbles overboard from a luxury liner--only to be rescued by the crew of a Gloucester schooner...
Babbitt
Lewis, Sinclair
Paper Book
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The call of the wild
London, Jack
Paper Book
The moving story of a proud dog who escapes captivity to become the leader of a wolf pack. Buck is a dog born to luxury, but betrayed and sold to be a sledge dog in the harsh and frozen Yukon. This is the remarkable story of how Buck rises above his enemies to become one of the most feared and...
Northanger Abbey
McDermid, Val
Paper Book
Internationally best-selling crime writer Val McDermid has riveted millions of readers worldwide with her acutely suspenseful, psychologically complex, seamlessly plotted thrillers. In Northanger Abbey, she delivers her own, witty, updated take on Austen’s classic novel about a...
Moby-Dick, or, The whale
Melville, Herman
Paper Book
Herman Melville's masterpiece in a deluxe 150th anniversary edition, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history   Over a century and a half after its publication, Moby-Dick still stands as an indisputable literary classic. It is the story of...
Tropic of Capricorn
Miller, Henry
Paper Book
Banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller’s Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn’s ethnic neighborhoods and Miller’s...
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,...
Sula
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
Sula and Nel are born in the Bottom--a small town at the top of a hill. Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma's girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear...
The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
In the eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in the Heian court of Japan, wrote the world's first novel. But The Tale of Genji is no mere artifact. It is, rather, a lively and astonishingly nuanced portrait of a refined society where every dalliance is an act of political consequence, a play 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...
Slaughterhouse-five : or the children's crusade : a duty-dance with death
North, Ryan
Paper Book
An American classic and one of the world's seminal antiwar books, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is faithfully presented in graphic novel form for the first time from Eisner Award-winning writer Ryan North (How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler) and Eisner...
The things they carried
O'Brien, Tim
Paper Book
Depicting the men of Alpha Company, The Things They Carried opened our eyes to the nature of war in a way we will never forget. It is a life-changing meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. In the decades since its publication it has never failed to...
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...
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."--...
The plot against America
Roth, Philip.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The chilling bestselling alternate history novel of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president whose government embraces anti-Semitism--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral. "A...
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...
Franny and Zooey
Salinger, J. D.
Paper Book
"Perhaps the best book by the foremost stylist of his generation" (New York Times), J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey collects two works of fiction about the Glass family originally published in The New Yorker. ...
Home fire
Shamsie, Kamila
Paper Book
"Ingenious... Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I've read in a novel this century." --The New York Times WINNER OF THE 2018 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE 2019 INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD LONGLISTED FOR...
Frankenstein : or, The modern Prometheus
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Paper Book
  No-one in the grip of Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, with its mythic-minded hero and its highly sympathetic monster who reads Goethe and longs to be at peace with himself, can fail to notice how much more excellent the original is than all the adaptations, imitations and outright...
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...
The prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spark, Muriel.
Paper Book
The elegantly styled classic story of a young, unorthodox teacher and her special--and ultimately dangerous--relationship with six of her students.
Of mice and men
Steinbeck, John
Paper Book
A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression A Penguin Classic Over seventy-five years since its first publication, Steinbeck's tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America's most widely read and taught novels....
Dracula
Stoker, Bram
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 When Jonathan Harker visits...
Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Paper Book
When Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852, it became an international blockbuster, selling more than 300,000 copies in the United States alone in its first year. Progressive for her time, Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of the earliest writers to offer a shockingly realistic depiction of slavery....
Address unknown
Taylor, Kathrine Kressmann.
Paper Book
A rediscovered classic and international bestseller that recounts the gripping tale of a friendship destroyed at the hands of Nazi Germany  In this searing novel, Kathrine Kressmann Taylor brings vividly to life the insidious spread of Nazism through a series of letters between Max, a...
Vanity fair : a novel without a hero
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Paper Book
A panoramic satire of English society during the Napoleonic Wars, Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray's masterpiece. At its center is one of the most unforgettable characters in nineteenth-century literature: the enthralling Becky Sharp, a charmingly ruthless social climber who is...
War and peace
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Paper Book
War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind...
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
Anthony Trollope's celebrated Parliamentary novels, of which The Eustace Diamonds (1873) is the third and most famous, are at once unfailingly amusing social comedies, melodramas of greed and deception, and precise nature studies of the political animal in its mid-Victorian habitat. With its...
The adventures of Tom Sawyer
Twain, Mark
Paper Book
Who could forget the pranks, the adventures, the sheer fun of Tom Sawyer? It's something every child should experience and every child will love. From Tom's sly trickery with the whitewashed fence--when he cleverly manipulates everyone so they happily do his work for him--to his and Becky...
20,000 leagues under the sea
Verne, Jules
Paper Book
Originally published in 1870, Verne's amazing undersea adventure is one of the earliest science fiction novels ever written. Since that time, generations of readers have plunged below the ocean's waves with Captain Nemo and his first-ever submarine, The Nautilus. It's a...
Hocus pocus
Vonnegut, Kurt.
Paper Book
Hocus Pocus is the fictional autobiography of a West Point graduate who was in charge of the humiliating evacuation of U.S. personnel from the Saigon rooftops at the close of the Vietnam War. Returning home from the war, he unknowingly fathered an illegitimate son. In 2001, the son begins a search...
Ethan Frome
Wharton, Edith
Paper Book
Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual tensions, published with an introduction and notes by Elizabeth Ammons in Penguin Classics. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a...
The picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar
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. Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait...
Frankissstein : a love story
Winterson, Jeanette
Paper Book
Since her astonishing debut at twenty-five with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide critical and commercial success as "one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time" (Elle). Her new novel, Frankissstein, is an audacious love...
Native son
Wright, Richard
Paper Book
With an introduction by Arnold Rampersad "The Library of America has insured that most of Wright's major texts are now available as he wanted them to be read." --Alfred Kazin, New York Times Book Review Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for...
The story of Edgar Sawtelle : a novel
Wroblewski, David.
Paper Book
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 thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and...

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