Classics not to turn your nose up at

Discover timeless literary masterpieces you shouldn't overlook. Explore essential classics that captivate readers across generations—must-read books for every bibliophile.

Wuthering Heights Cover
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Wuthering Heights

by Emily Bronte

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, the year before the author's death at the age of thirty, endures today as perhaps the most powerful and intensely original novel in the English language. “Only Emily Brontë,” V.S. Pritchett said about the author and her contemporaries, “exposes her imagination to the dark spirit.” And Virginia Woolf wrote, “It is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts, with few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar.”
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The Great Gatsby Cover
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The Great Gatsby

 

No summary available.
All Quiet on the Western Front Cover
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All Quiet on the Western Front

by Erich Maria Remarque

Now repackaged--the timeless classic of World War I Germany that speaks to generation after generation.
To Kill a Mockingbird 40th Cover
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To Kill a Mockingbird 40th

by Harper Lee

The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a Black man accused of rape
The Sun Also Rises Cover
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The Sun Also Rises

by Ernest Hemingway

A group of expatriates travel from Paris to the Pamplona bullfights.
Pride and Prejudice Cover
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Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

Austen's most popular novel, the unforgettable story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy Few have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s beloved classic Pride and Prejudice. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows us the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life. This Penguin Classics edition, based on Austen's first edition, contains the original Penguin Classics introduction by Tony Tanner and an updated introduction and notes by Viven Jones. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Animal Farm Cover
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Animal Farm

by George Orwell

75th Anniversary Edition—Includes a New Introduction by Téa Obreht George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel—a scathing satire on a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.
A Tale of Two Cities Cover
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A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

No summary available.
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Jane Eyre Cover
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Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë

In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned by the mysteriously remote Mr. Rochester.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Cover
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.
The Diary of Anne Frank Cover
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The Diary of Anne Frank

by Anne Frank

Diary of the adolescent Jewish girl who ultimately perished in the Nazi death camps.
Tobacco Road Cover
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Tobacco Road

by Erskine Caldwell

Jeeter Lester, a poor Georgia sharecropper, and his family struggle to get by, but when his son Dude is seduced and married by Jeeter's widowed sister, it starts a tragic chain of events.
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ID: 1593082029
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Naked Lunch Cover
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Naked Lunch

by William S. Burroughs

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. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume—that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs—is a valuable and fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or satirical bite.