Ten Great Novels in English

Discover ten must-read English novels that captivate and inspire. From timeless classics to modern masterpieces, explore the best books in English literature for every reader.

Bridge of San Luis Rey Cover
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Bridge of San Luis Rey

by Thornton Wilder

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world. By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His study leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is now reissued in this handsome hardcover edition featuring a new foreword by Russell Banks. Tappan Wilder has written an engaging and thought-provoking afterword, which includes unpublished notes for the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, illuminating photographs, and other remarkable documentary material. Granville Hicks's insightful comment about Wilder suggests an inveterate truth: "As a craftsman he is second to none, and there are few who have looked deeper into the human heart."
The Lord of the Rings Cover
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The Lord of the Rings

by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Presents the epic depicting the Great War of the Ring, a struggle between good and evil in Middle-earth, following the odyssey of Frodo the hobbit and his companions on a quest to destroy the Ring of Power, in a special anniversary volume containing the corrected text of all three volumes of the seminal fantasy trilogy, complemented by maps and cover art by acclaimed artist Alan Lee. Simultaneous.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Cover
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Huckleberry Finn had a tough life with his drunk father until an adventure with Tom Sawyer changed everything. But when Huck's dad returns and kidnaps him, he must escpe down the Mississippi river with runaway slave, Jim. They encounter trouble at every turn, from floods and gunfights to armed bandits and the long arm of the law. Through it all the friends stick together - but can Huck and Tom free Jim from slavery once and for all? With an inspirational introduction by Darren Shan, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the twenty wonderful classic stories being relaunched in Puffin Classics in March 2015.
Brideshead Revisited Cover
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Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated novel is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the novel mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous plea-sures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh. At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, "Brideshead Revisited" transcends Waugh's familiar satiric exploration of his cast of lords and ladies, Catholics and eccentrics, artists and misfits, revealing him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity. The edition reprinted here contains Waugh's revisions, made in 1959, and his preface to the revised edition.
The Wind in the Willows Cover
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The Wind in the Willows

by Kenneth Grahame

The escapades of four animal friends who live along a river in the English countryside--Toad, Mole, Rat, and Badger.
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(Type: books)
Death Comes for the Archbishop Cover
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Death Comes for the Archbishop

by Willa Cather

In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour becomes Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico, and over the next forty years he faces the lawlessness and loneliness of the frontier as he tries to spread his faith.