My Classic Reading List

Explore a curated classic reading list featuring timeless books every literature lover should read. Discover must-read classics that inspire, educate, and entertain for generations.

The Count of Monte Cristo Cover
Book

The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas

Translated with an Introduction by Robin Buss
The Three Musketeers Cover
Book

The Three Musketeers

by Alexandre Dumas

In seventeenth-century France, young d'Artagnan initially quarrels with, then befriends, three musketeers and joins them in trying to outwit the enemies of the king and queen.
Item Not Found
ID: 0517053608
(Type: books)
William Shakespeare Cover
Book

William Shakespeare

 

No summary available.
Les Misérables Cover
Book

Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo

No summary available.
Item Not Found
ID: 067003469X
(Type: books)
Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy Cover
Book

Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy

by Leo Tolstoy

The brilliant shorter novels of Tolstoy, including The Death of Ivan Ilych and Family Happiness, collected and reissued with a beautiful updated design. Of all Russian writers Leo Tolstoy is probably the best known to the Western world, largely because of War and Peace, his epic in prose, and Anna Karenina, one of the most splendid novels in any language. But during his long lifetime Tolstoy also wrote enough shorter works to fill many volumes. Here reprinted in one volume are his eight finest short novels, together with "Alyosha the Pot", the little tale that Prince Mirsky described as "a masterpiece of rare perfection."
Ivanhoe Cover
Book

Ivanhoe

by Walter Scott

The great historical romance by Sir Walter Scott giving reality to twelfth-century England. The story of the disinherited Knight Ivanhoe and the fair Lady Rowena.
Item Not Found
ID: 0140435549
(Type: books)
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Cover
Book

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

No summary available.
The Lord of the Rings Cover
Book

The Lord of the Rings

by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

In time for the golden anniversary of the arrival of part one of Tolkien's epic masterpiece on these shore comes a spectacular new edition of "The Lord of the Rings." The text is fully correctedQunder the supervision of Christopher TolkienQto meet the author's exacting wishes, and includes two large-format fold-out maps, a ribbon placemarker, and exceptionally elegant packaging. 0-618-51765-0$100.00 / Houghton Mifflin
Item Not Found
ID: 1402536941
(Type: books)
Out of the Silent Planet Cover
Book

Out of the Silent Planet

by C.S. Lewis

The first book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which continues with Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, Out of the Silent Planet begins the adventures of the remarkable Dr. Ransom. Here, that estimable man is abducted by a megalomaniacal physicist and his accomplice and taken via spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra. The two men are in need of a human sacrifice, and Dr. Ransom would seem to fit the bill. Once on the planet, however, Ransom eludes his captors, risking his life and his chances of returning to Earth, becoming a stranger in a land that is enchanting in its difference from Earth and instructive in its similarity. First published in 1943, Out of the Silent Planet remains a mysterious and suspenseful tour de force.
Perelandra Cover
Book

Perelandra

by C.S. Lewis

The second book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which also includes Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength, Perelandra continues the adventures of the extraordinary Dr. Ransom. Pitted against the most destructive of human weaknesses, temptation, the great man must battle evil on a new planet -- Perelandra -- when it is invaded by a dark force. Will Perelandra succumb to this malevolent being, who strives to create a new world order and who must destroy an old and beautiful civilization to do so? Or will it throw off the yoke of corruption and achieve a spiritual perfection as yet unknown to man? The outcome of Dr. Ransom's mighty struggle alone will determine the fate of this peace-loving planet.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Cover
Book

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

by Clive Staples Lewis

Four English school children find their way through the back of a wardrobe into the magic land of Narnia and assist Aslan, the golden lion, to triumph over the White Witch, who has cursed the land with eternal winter.
That Hideous Strength Cover
Book

That Hideous Strength

by Clive Staples Lewis

The dark forces that were repulsed in "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra" are massed for an assault on the planet Earth itself. Word is on the wind that the mighty wizard Merlin has come back to the land of the living after many centuries, holding the key to ultimate power for that force which can find him and bend him to its will. A sinister technocratic organization is gaining power throughout Europe with a plan to "recondition" society, and it is up to Ransom and his friends to squelch this threat by applying age-old wisdom to a new universe dominated by science.
The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics Cover
Book

The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics

by C. S. Lewis

For the first time ever, these seven essential volumes by C. S. Lewis are available in a single edition. This remarkable book presents the classic works Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, A Grief Observed, and Lewis's prophetic examination of universal values, The Abolition of Man. Beautiful and timeless, this is a vital collection by one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century. Lewis reached a vast audience during his lifetime, and books such as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters continue to be regarded as among the best spiritual writing of all time. With his uncanny grasp of human nature, Lewis offers a refreshing antidote to the modern world's consumerism and moral relativism. This new edition of his most celebrated books highlights Lewis's compassion for humanity and his relevance for the twenty-first century.
Item Not Found
ID: 0517147688
(Type: books)
Wuthering Heights Cover
Book

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.”
Jane Eyre Cover
Book

Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë

An orphan girl who accepts employment as a governess finds herself involved in a family secret and in love with her employer.
Item Not Found
ID: 0140434011
(Type: books)
The Scarlet Letter Cover
Book

The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country," Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth. With The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.
Utopia Cover
Book

Utopia

by Thomas More

Revised introduction; new chronology and further reading Translated with an Introduction by Paul Turner.
Item Not Found
ID: 1577489160
(Type: books)
The Best Poems of the English Language Cover
Book

The Best Poems of the English Language

 

No summary available.