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
Little Women is the heartwarming story of the March family that has thrilled generations of readers. It is the story of four sisters--Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth-- and of the courage, humor and ingenuity they display to survive poverty and the absence of their father during the Civil War.
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, na ve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares...
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
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....
Wuthering Heights
Bronte, Emily
Paper Book
Heathcliff, a waif found on the streets of Liverpool, is brought home to the Yorkshire moors by Mr Earnshaw and raised as one of his own children. Hindley despises and ill-treats him, but wild Cathy becomes his constant companion, and he falls violently in love with her. When she will not marry him,...
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...
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
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. With more than 100,000 copies in print, Kindred is a classic timetravel novel by an acclaimed African-American...
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 Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his...
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
Walter Hartright meets the ethereal figure of a woman in white on a moonlit road who is familiar with Limmeridge House in Cumberland, where he is to take up employment as a drawing teacher. The mystery deepens when he learns that she, by all accounts, has escaped from an asylum.
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 Mohicansrecounts the story of two sisters, Cora and...
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
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 Napoleon- acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game...
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dumas, Alexandre
Paper Book
In his rousing adventure story, Alexandre Dumas employs all the elements of compelling drama-suspense, intrigue, love, vengeance, and the triumph of good over evil-that contribute to this classic novel's irresistible and timeless appeal. In the post-Napoleonic era, a young sailor...
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.
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 beautiful and damned
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paper Book
A gripping account of the complexities of marriage, largely based on Fitzgerald's relationship with his wife, Zelda. 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...
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
Forster's social comedy is a witty observation of the English middle classes as they holiday abroad in Florence. One of these tourists is Lucy Honeychurch, a young girl whose heart is awakened by her experiences in Italy.
Love in the time of cholera
García Márquez, Gabriel
Paper Book
Set in a country on the Caribbean coast of South America, this is a story about a woman and two men and their entwined lives. From the author of the legendary One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Wives and daughters
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Ebook
King Solomon's mines
Haggard, H. Rider
Paper Book
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...
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
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 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
Alice has been in the mental hospital in Old Town for years. She doesn't remember why. All she can remember is a tea party long ago. Long ears and blood. Until one night she escapes, free to uncover the truth about what happened to her all those years ago. When Alice escapes, something escapes with...
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
Four sisters face new beginnings in this heartfelt modern take on Little Women by New York Timesbestselling author Virginia Kantra. Amy March is more like her older sister Jo than she'd like to admit. An up-and-coming designer in New York's competitive fashion...
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
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
Toni Morrison's first novel,The Bluest Eye(1970), was acclaimed as the work of an important talent, written--as John Leonard said inThe New York Times--in a prose "so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry." Sulahas the same power, the same...
The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
Lady Murasaki's exquisite, 11th-century portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan has been widely celebrated as the world's first novel. Offering a lively and well-rounded glimpse of golden age Japan with a cast of richly conceived and nuanced characters, Royall Tyler's superb translation, detailed...
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]...
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
The bell jar
Plath, Sylvia.
Paper Book
A Special Hardcover Edition to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of Sylvia Plath's Remarkable Novel "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 ...
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
Textual notes illuminate the novel's historical background, regional references, and the non-translated Creole and French phrases necessary to fully understand this powerful story. Backgrounds includes a wealth of material on the novel's long evolution, it connections to Jane Eyre, and Rhys's...
The plot against America
Roth, Philip.
Paper Book
When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for sel&...
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. "Everything everybody does...
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
Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear....
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...
Tomorrow will be better : a novel
Smith, Betty
Ebook
"A rediscovered treasure." -- Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post From Betty Smith, author of the beloved classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, comes a poignant story of love, marriage, poverty, and hope set in 1920s Brooklyn. Tomorrow Will Be Better tells the...
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
Bram Stoker's peerless tale of desperate battle against a powerful, ancient vampire When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England:...
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
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize "A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue."--The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero,...
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
Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS'sThe Great American Read This irresistible tale of the adventures of two friends growing up in frontier America is one of Mark Twain's most popular novels. The farcical, colorful, and poignant escapades of Tom and his...
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
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...
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
An Oprah's Book Club Pick #1 New York Times Bestseller "A mystery, a thriller, a ghost story, and a literary tour de force . . . an authentic epic, long and lush, full of back story and observed detail . . . the author exercises a certain magic that catches and holds our attention,...

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