Classic Literature 
Showing 1 - 20 of 34
There are a total of 137 valid entries on the list.
1. 1984
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Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities.
Written 75 years ago, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."...
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Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
A feisty young boy fakes his own death to escape his abusive father and heads off down the Mississippi River with his newfound friend Jim, a runaway slave.
The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century.
Author:
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"The classic boyhood adventure tale, updated with a new introduction by noted Mark Twain scholar R. Kent Rasmussen. A consummate prankster with a quick wit, Tom Sawyer dreams of a bigger fate than simply being a "rich boy." Yet through the novel's humorous escapades-from the famous episode of the whitewashed fence to the trial of Injun Joe-Mark Twain explores the deeper themes of the adult world, one of dishonesty and superstition, murder and revenge,...
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Average Rating:
4 stars
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Description:
Willie Stark's obsession with political power leads to the ultimate corruption of his gubernatorial administration.
5. Anthem
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Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
Anthem takes place in a dark, dystopian future. Collectivism and socialist economics have driven mankind to a technological standstill. The individual is not acknowledged in this society, the word "I" having been eliminated from speech altogether. Rand explores the tension between collectivism and individualism and equates the errors or triumphs of these with socialism and capitalism.
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Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Huxley's classic prophetic novel describes the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia devoid of individual freedom.
First published 70 years ago, the classic, prophetic novel capturing the socialized horrors of a futuristic utopia remarkably explores the now-timely themes of cloning, individual creativity and freedom, and the role of science, technology, and drugs in humankind's future.
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Average Rating:
3 stars
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Description:
Chaucer's work begins at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, England, where a group of pilgrims have assembled on their way to Canterbury. Harry Bailly, the innkeeper, suggests a contest: whoever tells the best tale will win a supper when they reach Canterbury.
8. Catch-22
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Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
Presents the contemporary classic depicting the struggles of a United States airman attempting to survive the lunacy and depravity of a World War II airbase.
Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest--and most celebrated--books of all time. In recent years it has been named to "best novels" lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Set in Italy...
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City
Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school.
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Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.
11. The color purple
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Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a Southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.
"Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence"--Back cover.
12. East of Eden
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Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America's most enduring authors, in a deluxe Centennial edition. In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose...
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Average Rating:
3.3 stars
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Three individuals--nurse Hana, thief Caravaggio, and Kip--are brought together in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II by a nameless and hideously burned English patient
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Average Rating:
3.4 stars
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"Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center." --provided by publisher.
15. Fahrenheit 451
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Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
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. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and...
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Average Rating:
4.7 stars
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Description:
Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence-a procedure that has already...
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence-a procedure that has already...
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Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Depicts the hardships and suffering endured by the Joads as they journey from Oklahoma to California during the Depression.
18. The great Gatsby
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
A young man newly rich tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married.
This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author's own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this...
19. Hamlet
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Average Rating:
4 stars
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Description:
Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, discusses the author and the theater of his time, and provides quizzes and other study activities.
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness