Best Literature Books of All Time

Here are the 50 best literature books of all time according to Google. Find your new favorite book from the local library with one click.

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1. The Great Gatsby

by: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Release date: Apr 27, 2021
Number of Pages: 134
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The Great Gatsby (1925) is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published at the height of Fitzgerald’s career as a leading writer of American fiction, The Great Gatsby was reviewed poorly by contemporary critics, but has since been recognized as a groundbreaking work for its vision of American decadence and decay. Adapted into several influential films and adored by generations of readers and writers, The Great Gatsby is not only Fitzgerald’s crowning achievement, but one of the finest novels ever written. Nick Carraway is a young veteran and Yale graduate who moves to New York in search of work. He rents a bungalow on Long Island next door to the extravagant mansion of Jay Gatsby, a magnanimous millionaire with a mysterious past. There, he reconnects with his distant cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, a flagrant philanderer who brings Nick to the city in order to spend time with Myrtle, his impoverished mistress. Soon, he receives an invitation to a party at the Gatsby mansion, where he gets terribly drunk and meets his neighbor, who swears they served together in the Great War. As time goes by, the two begin a tenuous friendship bolstered by stories of the war and a mutual fondness for alcohol. When Nick discovers that Gatsby and Daisy have a complicated history with one another, he starts to question not only the nature of his neighbor’s kindness, but his own desire to make it big in New York. The Great Gatsby is a tragic tale of ambition and romance set in the Roaring Twenties, a decade born from war and lost to economic disaster. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this new edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a classic work of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four

by: George Orwell
Release date: Jan 28, 2021
Number of Pages: 304
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Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) was George Orwell’s final novel and was completed in difficult conditions shortly before his early death. It is one of the most influential and widely-read novels of the post-war period.

3. The Catcher in the Rye

by: Jerome Salinger
Release date: Feb 15, 2016
Number of Pages: 182
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“The Catcher in the Rye” (in other translations – “Break on the edge of rye fields of childhood,” “Catcher in the grain field,” English The Catcher in the Rye -. The Catcher in the Rye,” 1951) – a novel by American writer Jerome Salinger. In it on behalf of the 16-year old boy named Holden in a very blatant form it tells about his heightened perception of American reality and the rejection of the common canons and morality of modern society. The work was immensely popular among young people and among the adult population, have a significant impact on world culture of the second half of the XX century. The novel was translated almost all world languages. In 2005, Time magazine included the novel in the list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and publisher Modern Library [en] included in its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. However, despite this, at the same time in the US the novel has often been criticized, and the prohibition of the large amount of obscene language.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird

by: Harper Lee
Release date: Jul 08, 2014
Number of Pages: 336
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Voted America’s Best-Loved Novel in PBS’s The Great American Read Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

5. Pride and Prejudice

by: Jane Austen
Release date: Jan 01, 1995
Number of Pages: 262
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In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman, as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters.

6. Anna Karenina

by: graf Leo TolstoyLouise MaudeAylmer Maude
Release date: Jan 01, 2004
Number of Pages: 740
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Presents the classic nineteenth-century Russian novel in which a young woman is destroyed when she attempts to live outside the moral law of her society.

7. Moby-Dick

by: Herman Melville
Release date: Jan 01, 2013
Number of Pages: 641
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A nineteenth-century tale of life aboard a New England whaling ship whose captain is obsessed with the pursuit of a large white whale.

8. Things Fall Apart

by: Chinua Achebe
Release date: Apr 25, 2013
Number of Pages: 176
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One of the BBC’s ‘100 Novels That Shaped Our World’ A worldwide bestseller and the first part of Achebe’s African Trilogy, Things Fall Apart is the compelling story of one man’s battle to protect his community against the forces of change Okonkwo is the greatest wrestler and warrior alive, and his fame spreads throughout West Africa like a bush-fire in the harmattan. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart. Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his world thrown radically off-balance he can only hurtle towards tragedy. First published in 1958, Chinua Achebe’s stark, coolly ironic novel reshaped both African and world literature, and has sold over ten million copies in forty-five languages. This arresting parable of a proud but powerless man witnessing the ruin of his people begins Achebe’s landmark trilogy of works chronicling the fate of one African community, continued in Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease. ‘His courage and generosity are made manifest in the work’ Toni Morrison ‘The writer in whose company the prison walls fell down’ Nelson Mandela ‘A great book, that bespeaks a great, brave, kind, human spirit’ John Updike With an Introduction by Biyi Bandele

9. Don Quixote

by: Miguel de Cervantes
Release date: Mar 21, 2018
Number of Pages: 992
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A parody of chivalric romances, this story of an elderly knight and his loyal squire offers a strikingly modern narrative that also reflects the historical realities of 17th-century Spain.

10. The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy

by: Gregory BasshamEric Bronson
Release date: Nov 13, 2013
Number of Pages: 336
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The Lord of the Rings is intended to be applicable to the real world of relationships, religion, pleasure, pain, and politics. Tolkien himself said that his grand tale of wizards, orcs, hobbits, and elves was aimed at truth and good morals in the actual world. Analysis of the popular appeal of The Lord of the Rings (on websites and elsewhere) shows that Tolkien fans are hungry for discussion of the urgent moral and cosmological issues arising out of this fantastic epic story. Can political power be wielded for good, or must it always corrupt? Does technology destroy the truly human? Is it morally wrong to give up hope? Can we find meaning in chance events? In The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy, seventeen young philosophy professors, all of them ardent Tolkien fans and most of them contributors to the four earlier volumes in the Popular Culture and Philosophy series, address some of these important issues and show how clues to their solutions may be found in the imaginary world of Middle-earth. The book is divided into five sections, concerned with Power and the Ring, the Quest for Happiness, Good and Evil in Middle-earth, Time and Mortality, and the Relevance

11. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by: Mark Twain
Release date: May 26, 1994
Number of Pages: 220
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Referring to “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ” H. L. Mencken noted that his discovery of this classic American novel was “the most stupendous event of my whole life”; Ernest Hemingway declared that “all modern American literature stems from this one book,” while T. S. Eliot called Huck “one of the permanent symbolic figures of fiction, not unworthy to take a place with Ulysses, Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Hamlet.” The novel’s preeminence derives from its wonderfully imaginative re-creation of boyhood adventures along the mighty Mississippi River, its inspired characterization, the author’s remarkable ear for dialogue, and the book’s understated development of serious underlying themes: “natural” man versus “civilized” society, the evils of slavery, the innate value and dignity of human beings, the stultifying effects of convention, and other topics. But most of all, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is a wonderful story filled with high adventure and unforgettable characters (including the great river itself) that no one who has read it will ever forget. Unabridged Dover (1994) republication of the text of the first American edition, published by Charles L. Webster and Company, New York, 1885. New introductory Note.”

12. The Sound and the Fury

by: William Faulkner
Release date: Oct 02, 2018
Number of Pages: 347
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The Sound and the Fury, first published in 1929, is perhaps William Faulkner’s greatest book. It was immediately praised for its innovative narrative technique, and comparisons were made with Joyce and Dostoyevsky, but it did not receive popular acclaim until the late forties, shortly before Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel reveals the story of the disintegration of the Compson family, doomed inhabitants of Faulkner’s mythical Yoknapatawpha County, through the interior monologues of the idiot Benjy and his brothers, Quentin and Jason. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.

13. Invisible Man

by: Ralph Ellison
Release date: Jan 01, 2001
Number of Pages: 581
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Ralph Ellison’s impassioned first novel, winner of the prestigious American National Book Award, tells the story of an invisible man simply because people refuse to see me. Yet his powerfully depicted adventures go far beyond the story of one man.

14. Brave New World

by: Aldous Huxley
Release date: Jan 01, 2014
Number of Pages: 296
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Aldous Huxley’s most enduring masterpiece, Brave New World, presents a darkly satiric vision of a “utopian” future that has both captivated and shocked readers for generations In the far future, the utopian World State seems like the ideal society—through the use of genetic engineering, the human race has been perfected, and all citizens are well provided for. There is no violence, babies are created in laboratories, and everyone consumes daily medication to fight depression and spends their time constantly seeking bodily pleasure through “Feelies”—movies that stimulate sight, hearing and touch. Humans are bred to be completely content with their assigned roles in society. However, not everyone is satisfied with the system. In the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, Bernard Max is unhappy, feeling that something is missing from his life. Shunning the shallow pleasures of promiscuity and mindless entertainment, Bernard longs to break free. It is with this goal in mind that he plans a visit to a Savage Reservation, where the past way of life is preserved. But his visit there will prompt dangerous questions and ignite a series of events with far-reaching consequences. Originally published in 1932, Brave New World presents a chilling imagining of a future in which humans are genetically designed and constantly drugged to be happy citizens who passively serve the ruling order. In his almost prophetic work of speculative fiction, Aldous Huxley predicted much of our current technology and social practices. His powerful novel is still as relevant as ever, both as a cautionary tale of the dangers of technology and as a provocative yet entertaining read.

15. Mrs Dalloway

by: Virginia Woolf
Release date: May 25, 2000
Number of Pages: 288
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‘One of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century’ Michael Cunningham Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Smith’s day interweaves with that of Clarissa and her friends, their lives converging as the party reaches its glittering climax. Virginia Woolf’s masterly novel, in which she perfected the interior monologue, brings past, present and future together on one momentous day in June 1923. Edited by Stella McNichol with an Introduction and Notes by Elaine Showalter

16. To the Lighthouse

by: Virginia Woolf
Release date: Jan 01, 1994
Number of Pages: 159
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“To the Lighthouse features the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests who are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf constructs a moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflicts within a marriage.”–BOOK JACKET.

17. Lord of the Flies

by: William Golding
Release date: Mar 15, 2012
Number of Pages: 176
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William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a dystopian classic: ‘exciting, relevant and thought-provoking’ (Stephen King). When a group of schoolboys are stranded on a desert island, what could go wrong? ‘One of my favorite books – I read it every couple of years.’ (Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games) A plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors are a group of schoolboys. By day, they discover fantastic wildlife and dazzling beaches, learning to survive; at night, they are haunted by nightmares of a primitive beast. Orphaned by society, it isn’t long before their innocent childhood games devolve into a savage, murderous hunt … ‘Stands out mightily in my memory … Such a strong statement about the human heart.’ (Patricia Cornwell) ‘Terrifying and haunting.’ (Kingsley Amis) ‘Beautifully written, tragic and provocative.’ (E. M. Forster) ONE OF THE BBC’S ICONIC ‘NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD’ What readers are saying: ‘Every real human being should read this … This is what we are.’ ‘It’s brilliant, it’s captivating, it’s thought provoking and brutal and for some, its truly terrifying.’ ‘It can be read and re-read many times, and every time something new will appear.’ ‘There is a reason why this is studied at school … Excellent read.’ ‘This is one of the few books I’ve read that I keep on my Kindle to read again.’ ‘I revisit this every few years and it’s always fresh and impressive … One of the best books I’ve ever read.’

18. Ulysses

by: James JoyceGeneral Press
Release date: May 04, 2016
Number of Pages: 860
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‘Ulysses’ is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal ‘The Little Review’ from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach in February 1922, in Paris. ‘Ulysses’ has survived bowdlerization, legal action and bitter controversy. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. An undisputed modernist classic, its ceaseless verbal inventiveness and astonishingly wide-ranging allusions confirm its standing as an imperishable monument to the human condition. It takes readers into the inner realms of human consciousness using the interior monologue style that came to be called stream of consciousness. In addition to this psychological characteristic, it gives a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people living in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904. The novel was the subject of a famous obscenity trial in 1933, but was found by a U.S. district court in New York to be a work of art. The furor over the novel made Joyce a celebrity. In the long run, the work placed him at the forefront of the modern period of the early 1900s when literary works, primarily in the first two decades, explored interior lives and subjective reality in a new idiom, attempting to probe the human psyche in order to understand the human condition. This richly-allusive novel, revolutionary in its modernistic experimentalism, was hailed as a work of genius by W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. Scandalously frank, wittily erudite, mercurially eloquent, resourcefully comic and generously humane, ‘Ulysses’ offers the reader a life-changing experience. Publisher : General Press

20. One Hundred Years of Solitude

by: Gabriel García Márquez
Release date: Jan 01, 1995
Number of Pages: 416
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The evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town is mirrored in the family history of the Buendias.

21. Beloved

by: Toni Morrison
Release date: Jan 01, 2004
Number of Pages: 321
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Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is haunted persistently by the ghost of the dead baby girl whom she sacrificed, in a new edition of the Nobel Laureate’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Reader’s Guide available. Reprint. 60,000 first printing.

22. Middlemarch

by: George Eliot
Release date: Jan 01, 2015
Number of Pages: 785
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George Eliot’s beloved masterpiece in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with a foreword by Rebecca Mead, author of the bestselling memoir My Life in Middlemarch A triumph of realist fiction, George Eliot’s Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of sweeping change. The proposed Reform Bill, the new railroads, and scientific advances are threatening upheaval on every front. Against this backdrop, the quiet drama of ordinary lives is played out by the novel’s complexly portrayed characters–until the arrival of two outsiders further disrupts the town’s equilibrium. Every bit as powerful and perceptive in our time as it was in the Victorian era, Middlemarch displays George Eliot’s clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge. In this elegant Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, Rebecca Mead introduces the novel that shaped her life and reflects on its joys and its timeless relevance. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 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.

23. The Grapes of Wrath

by: John Steinbeck
Release date: Jan 01, 2006
Number of Pages: 464
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STEINBECK/GRAPES OF WRATH (BC)

24. Wuthering Heights

by: Emily Brontë
Release date: Jan 01, 2008
Number of Pages: 330
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This new edition of Emily Bronte’s classic 1847 novel uses the authoritative Clarendon text. Patsy Stoneman’s introduction considers the bewildering variety of critical interpretation to which the novel has been subject, as well as offering some provocative new insights for the modernreader.

26. Madame Bovary

by: Gustave Flaubert
Number of Pages: 424
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A powerful nineteenth-century French classic depicting the moral degeneration of a weak-willed woman

27. Catch-22

by: Joseph Heller
Release date: Oct 05, 1999
Number of Pages: 415
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Presents the contemporary classic depicting the struggles of a U.S. airman attempting to survive the lunacy and depravity of a World War II base

28. Crime and Punishment

by: Fyodor DostoyevskyDavid McDuff
Release date: Jan 01, 2003
Number of Pages: 671
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Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, commits a random murder, imagining himself to be a great man far above moral law. But as he embarks on a cat-and-mouse game with police, his conscience begins to torment him and he seeks sympathy and redemption from Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute.

29. WAR AND PEACE (Aylmer & Louise Maude’s Translation)

by: Leo Tolstoy
Release date: Dec 06, 2017
Number of Pages: 1456
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This eBook edition of “WAR AND PEACE (Aylmer & Louise Maude’s Translation)” has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. War and Peace is regarded as one of the central works of world literature and was first published in its entirety in 1869. The novel charts the history of the French invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families. Time magazine ranked War and Peace third in its poll of the 10 greatest books of all time. This complete English version translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude was originally published in 1922. The Maudes are classical translators of Leo Tolstoy who worked directly with the author and gained his personal endorsement. This edition includes all 15 books + the first and second epilogue along with reminiscences. Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) which are often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.

30. Animal Farm

by: George Orwell
Release date: Aug 31, 2021
Number of Pages: 78
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Animal Farm is a satirical allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon. According to Orwell, the fable reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the May Days conflicts between the POUM and Stalinist forces during the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union had become a totalitarian autocracy built upon a cult of personality while engaging in the practice of mass incarcerations and secret summary trials and executions. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin (“un conte satirique contre Staline”), and in his essay “Why I Write” (1946), wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, “to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole”. The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, but U.S. publishers dropped the subtitle when it was published in 1946, and only one of the translations during Orwell’s lifetime kept it. Other titular variations include subtitles like “A Satire” and “A Contemporary Satire”. Orwell suggested the title Union des républiques socialistes animales for the French translation, which abbreviates to URSA, the Latin word for “bear”, a symbol of Russia. It also played on the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques.

31. The Sun Also Rises

by: Ernest Hemingway
Release date: Aug 31, 2021
Number of Pages: 160
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“The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

33. Slaughterhouse-Five

by: Kurt Vonnegut
Release date: Aug 11, 2009
Number of Pages: 240
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A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.” Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties. “Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement.”—The Boston Globe

34. Frankenstein

by: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Release date: Nov 29, 2014
Number of Pages: 148
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• This book publication is unique which includes exclusive Introduction, Historical Background and handcrafted additional content. • This edition also includes detailed Biography. • This edition has been corrected for spelling and grammatical errors.Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley’s name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.Shelley had travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim which is just 17 km (10 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments. Later, she traveled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)—where much of the story takes place—and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made; her dream later evolved into the story within the novel.Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Brian Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story, because unlike in previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, the central character “makes a deliberate decision” and “turns to modern experiments in the laboratory” to achieve fantastic results. It has had a considerable influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays.Since publication of the novel, the name “Frankenstein” is often used to refer to the monster itself, as is done in the stage adaptation by Peggy Webling. This usage is sometimes considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard the monster sense of “Frankenstein” as well-established and an acceptable usage. In the novel, the monster is identified via words such as “creature”, “monster”, “fiend”, “wretch”, “vile insect”, “daemon”, “being”, and “it”. Speaking to Victor Frankenstein, the monster refers to himself as “the Adam of your labours”, and elsewhere as someone who “would have” been “your Adam”, but is instead “your fallen angel.”

35. Great Expectations

by: Charles Dickens
Release date: Apr 01, 2018
Number of Pages: 64
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An escaped convict threatens to eat young Pip’s heart for breakfast. The ghostly Miss Havisham invites Pip to her eerie home. A mysterious benefactor makes him suddenly wealthy. Pip’s life will never be the same again. Pride, humility, love, loyalty and shame compete for Pip’s emotions. Will his quest to become a gentleman enable him to melt the cold heart of the beautiful Estella, or will it destroy his happiness? Pip’s tale is full of mystery and surprises. What is the nature of Miss Havisham’s interest in him? Why does Estella want to break his heart? Why does the dangerous convict return? Most importantly, who has given Pip his great expectations?

36. Midnight’s Children

by: Salman Rushdie
Release date: Dec 31, 2010
Number of Pages: 560
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Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Midnight’s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

37. Brothers Karamazov

by: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Release date: Nov 04, 2003
Number of Pages: 1072
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In 1880 Dostoevsky completed The Brothers Karamazov, the literary effort for which he had been preparing all his life. Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder: Dmitry, the sensualist, Ivan, the intellectual; Alyosha, the mystic; and twisted, cunning Smerdyakov, the bastard child. Frequently lurid, nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into a sordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a gripping courtroom drama. But throughout the whole, Dostoevsky searhes for the truth–about man, about life, about the existence of God. A terrifying answer to man’s eternal questions, this monumental work remains the crowning achievement of perhaps the finest novelist of all time. From the Paperback edition.

38. The Stranger

by: Albert Camus
Release date: Aug 08, 2012
Number of Pages: 144
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With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, Camus’s masterpiece gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. Behind the intrigue, Camus explores what he termed “the nakedness of man faced with the absurd” and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.

39. A Passage to India

by: E. M. Forster
Release date: Jan 01, 2010
Number of Pages: 320
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What really happened to Miss Quested in the Marabar Caves? This tantalising question provides the intense drama of racial tension at the centre of Forster’s last and greatest novel.

40. On the Road

by: Jack Kerouac
Release date: Jan 01, 1991
Number of Pages: 310
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Fictionalized narrative of travels by Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady under pseudonyms of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.

41. The Trial / Der Proceß

by: Franz Kafka
Release date: Jun 23, 2017
Number of Pages: 625
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This edition contains the English translation and the original text in German. “The Trial” (original German title: “Der Process”, later “Der Prozess”, “Der Proceß” and “Der Prozeß”) is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 but not published until 1925. One of Kafka’s best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader. Like Kafka’s other novels, “The Trial” was never completed, although it does include a chapter which brings the story to an end. Because of this, there are some inconsistencies and discontinuities in narration within the novel, such as disparities in timing. After Kafka’s death in 1924 his friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication by Verlag Die Schmiede. The original manuscript is held at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany. In 1999, the book was listed in “Le Monde”‘s 100 Books of the Century and as No. 2 of the Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century. “Der Process” (auch “Der Prozeß” oder “Der Proceß”, Titel der Erstausgabe: “Der Prozess”) ist neben “Der Verschollene” (auch unter dem Titel “Amerika” bekannt) und “Das Schloss” einer von drei unvollendeten und postum erschienenen Romanen von Franz Kafka.

42. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

by: Lewis Carroll
Release date: Feb 05, 2015
Number of Pages: 208
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Lewis Carroll’s Alice has been enchanting children for 150 years. Curious Alice, the bossy White Rabbit, the formidable Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter are among the best-loved, most iconic literary creations of all time.Macmillan was the original publisher of Alice in 1865 and is proud to remain true to the vision of its creators. Every bit as iconic are Sir John Tenniel’s remarkable black line illustrations, perfectly capturing the combination of the ordinary and the extraordinary at the heart of Wonderland.This beautiful, celebratory, edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has a gorgeous cover with shiny red foil, and is packed full of fun bonus material, including a quiz, wordsearch and a glossary. Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s book is brought to life like never before!

43. Tristram Shandy

by: Laurence Sterne
Release date: Jan 01, 1996
Number of Pages: 457
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Introduces us to a group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. This book involves the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography. It anticipates modernism and postmodernism.

44. Their Eyes Were Watching God

by: Zora Neale Hurston
Release date: May 30, 2020
Number of Pages: 192
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Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel by African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston. It is considered a classic of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and it is likely Hurston’s best known work.

45. The Hobbit

by: J.R.R. Tolkien
Release date: Feb 15, 2012
Number of Pages: 288
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A great modern classic and the prelude to The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum. “A glorious account of a magnificent adventure, filled with suspense and seasoned with a quiet humor that is irresistible . . . All those, young or old, who love a fine adventurous tale, beautifully told, will take The Hobbit to their hearts.” – New York Times Book Review

46. The Handmaid’s Tale

by: Margaret Atwood
Release date: Sep 06, 2011
Number of Pages: 368
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In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning. “From the Hardcover edition.”

47. Nostromo

by: Joseph Conrad
Release date: Jun 30, 2015
Number of Pages: 496
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Joseph Conrad’s thrilling history of a fictional South American country, its precious resources, and the men who will decide its fate The fictional country of Costaguana, loosely based on Colombia, has suffered a long string of despots more interested in lining their pockets than strengthening the nation. Discontent simmers throughout the land, but in the major port city of Sulaco, industry chugs along. Keeping the silver flowing are capable men like Nostromo, a loyal and proficient longshoreman for the shipping company that transports boatloads of the precious ore. When an unexpected military coup shakes up the country, Nostromo finds himself entrusted with hiding an untold fortune from the encroaching revolution. Nostromo must balance his loyalty to Sulaco’s industrialists against the country’s financial health and the intentions of the insurgents. In this intricate novel, Joseph Conrad combines politics, adventure, revenge, and revolution to illustrate how power and money can corrupt even the most righteous of men. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

48. Fahrenheit 451

by: Ray Bradbury
Number of Pages: 147
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A fireman in charge of burning books meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Depicts a future world in which all printed reading material is burned.

49. Of Human Bondage

by: W. Somerset Maugham
Release date: Jul 17, 2019
Number of Pages: 576
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Desperate for love and eager for experience of a wider world, Philip Carey grows up in the oppressive confines of his uncle’s vicarage. The sensitive orphan is burdened by a club foot that sets him apart from his schoolmates and heightens his loneliness. Seeking passion and inspiration, he pursues his dreams of becoming an artist in Heidelberg and Paris but returns to London, humbled by his own mediocrity. But Philip’s degradation has only just begun, as an obsession with a vulgar, cold-hearted waitress threatens to destroy what remains of his idealism. Like his protagonist’s physical deformity, W. Somerset Maugham’s homosexuality was a constant source of anxiety, alienation, and shame. He termed his masterpiece “not an autobiography, but an autobiographical novel; fact and fiction are inexorably mingled; the emotions are my own.” By combining residual Victorian values with the early twentieth century’s mood of irony and despair, Maugham offers a timeless view of emotional isolation and the possibility of redemption through self-knowledge and maturity.

50. Pale Fire

by: Vladimir Nabokov
Release date: Feb 16, 2011
Number of Pages: 320
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In Pale Fire Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreword and commentary by Shade’s self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue.

Last updated on October 16, 2021