Recommended Classics Books

This new edition of Thornton Wilder's renowned 1967 National Book Award-winning novel features a new foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on such unique sources as Wilder's unpublished letters, handwritten...

The only American edition of the cult classic novel.A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same...

The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully...

And what is at the core of not only the private dramas but also the very psychology of 'Anna Karenina'? It is Tolstoy's concept of the heart at war with the structure of society. The dramas of Anna, Vronsky, Karenin, Levin, and Kitty would be nothing...

The classic novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author offers a graphic view of China during the reign of the last emperor as it tells the story of an honest Chinese peasant and his wife as they struggle with the sweeping changes of the twentieth...

The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No...

The ultimate science fiction classic For more than one hundred years this compelling tale of the Martian invasion of Earth has enthralled readers with a combination of imagination and incisive commentary on the imbalance of power that...

With a new introduction by Richard Ford'A deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic.' --William StyronFrom the moment of its publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction...

In this bleak American comedy, Jack and Babette are a typical middle-class suburban couple until an accident in a chemical plant changes their lives. Babette becomes addicted to a Prozac-like experimental drug called Dylar that removes her horror of...

Allan Quatermain, gentleman adventurer, is retained to locate a missing man by two Englishmen. The man, brother of one of the Englishmen, has disappeared into the heart of Africa while on a hunt for the lost mines of King Solomon. Joining up with a...

A satirical novel depicting a scientific and industrialized utopia in which Ford and Freud are worshipped, eugenics policies have eliminated class conflicts (while strengthening the division of the classes), and personal unhappiness is assuaged...

Set in Appalachia, Kingsolver's very pastoral novel tells the stories of three women who live close to the land. A wildlife biologist studying coyotes is fascinated by a young man with a passion for hunting. An intellectually inclined farmer's wife...

Evelyn Waugh's classic novel retold, and now a major motion picture from Miramax. Academy Award and Tony Award Winner Jeremy Irons--who has starred in films such as Lolita, Die Hard with a Vengeance, and Reversal of Fortune--narrates, invoking...

This vibrant portrait of Paris in the 1920s, published posthumously in 1964, is vintage Hemingway--evocative, self-mocking and frank. In an extraordinary chronicle of the sights, sounds, and tastes of Paris in a bygone era, Hemingway offers readers a...

Pearl Buck (1892-1973) wrote THE GOOD EARTH in three months, based on her observations of Chinese life and culture while she lived in China as the daughter of American missionaries. In the novel, Buck tells the story of a simple, traditional...

Drawing on such unique sources as the author's unpublished letters,business records, and obscure family recollections, Tappan Wilder'sAfterword adds a special dimension to the reissue of this hilarious tale about goodness in a fallen...

Louisa May Alcott’s little–known novella is an ingenious study of deception, betrayal, and the ruthless power of a woman scorned. Foreword by Doris Lessing. When demure Scottish governess Jean Muir arrives at a wealthy household, the...

Written in the 9th-century B.C. and based on an actual historical event that occurred in the 13th century B.C., Homer's Iliad is one of the great epic poems of the Western world. Vast in scope, fresh and noble in literary style, it is a tale for all...

A prolific and popular writer, G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) is best known as the creator of detective-priest Father Brown (even though Chesterton's mystery stories constitute only a small fraction of his writings). The eight adventures in this...

For the condemned nobles during the French Revolution, there is a ray of hope: rescue by the Scarlet Pimpernel. His identity remains a mystery to his sworn enemy, the ruthless Chauvelin, and to his devoted admirer, the beautiful Lady Margaret...

Pepys's accounts of life in Restoration London offer a fascinating view of the society and culture of that period. He witnessed some of the most significant events of his time, including the return of Charles II in 1660, the Great Plague in 1665,...

Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op. In his novels and stories, Dashiell Hammett created some of the most memorable characters--detectives, dames, and assorted miscreants--in twentieth-century fiction. It is nearly impossible to...

Even now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, when science has largely replaced superstition as our way of viewing the world, who among us does not hesitate, however briefly, before entering a darkened room? Who does not feel an involuntary...

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the...

The daring Captain Horatio Hornblower sails into his third stormy adventure as he wages battle against Napoleon's navy and confronts the yearnings of his heart in an attractively repackaged episode of the classic adventure series. Reprint.

Frances Hodgson Burnett was the highest paid and most widely read woman writer of her time, publishing more than fifty novels and thirteen plays. Born in England and transplanted to New York toward the end of the Civil War, Burnett made her home in...

A vivid, personal account of the epic expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark describes their trek through the wilderness between the Missouri River and the Pacific coast and the natural wonders, perils, people, and places they encountered...

In Oil! Upton Sinclair fashioned a novel out of the oil scandals of the Harding administration, providing in the process a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and...

I think my sense of right and wrong, my feeling of noblesse oblige, and any thought I may have against the oppressor and for the oppressed came from [Le Morte D'Arthur]....It did not seem strange to me that Uther Pendragon wanted the wife of his...

Available for the first time in trade paperback--this provocative book is 'an anthem sung in praise of man's ego'--from the legendary author Ayn RandAnthem has long been hailed as one of Ayn Rand's classic novels, and a clear predecessor to...