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The ReadDown

100 Essential Penguin Classics

Fan of classic fiction or looking for a new read? Here’s a list of important Penguin Classics. And if you’re looking for even more timeless tales, pick up these classics by Black authors.

  1. 1

    East of Eden

    by John Steinbeck

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    $18.00

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  2. 2

    America Is in the Heart

    by Carlos Bulosan

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    Hardcover
    $28.00

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  3. 3

    Wuthering Heights

    by Emily Bronte

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    Hardcover
    $27.00

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  4. 4

    Little Women

    by Louisa May Alcott

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    Hardcover
    $30.00

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  5. 5

    Cane

    by Jean Toomer

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    Paperback
    $15.00

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  6. 6

    Twelve Years a Slave

    by Solomon Northup

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    $18.00

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  7. 7

    Devil on the Cross

    by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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    $17.00

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  8. 8

    Amiable with Big Teeth

    by Claude McKay

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    Paperback
    $18.00

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  9. 9

    Dark Tales

    by Shirley Jackson

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    $17.00

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  10. 10

    The Joy Luck Club

    by Amy Tan

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    Paperback
    $18.00

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  11. 11

    The Bloody Chamber

    by Angela Carter

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    $17.00

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  12. 12

    The Sun Also Rises

    by Ernest Hemingway

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    Hardcover
    $27.00

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  13. 13

    The River Between

    by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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    $16.00

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  14. 14

    Les Miserables

    by Victor Hugo

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    Paperback
    $27.00

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  15. 15

    Something to Remember Me By

    by Saul Bellow

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    $17.00

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  16. 16

    Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

    by Frederick Douglass

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    Hardcover
    $25.00

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  17. 17

    On Being Different

    by Merle Miller

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    Paperback
    $15.00

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  18. 18

    My Inventions and Other Writings

    by Nikola Tesla

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    $17.00

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  19. 19

    The Beautiful and Damned

    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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    Hardcover
    $27.00

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  20. 20

    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

    by Mark Twain

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    $18.00

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  21. 21

    Revolutionary Suicide

    by Huey P. Newton

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    $18.00

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  22. 22

    Pride and Prejudice

    by Jane Austen

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    Hardcover
    $27.00

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  23. 23

    Candide

    by Francois Voltaire

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    Hardcover
    $28.00

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  24. 24

    Lady Chatterley’s Lover

    by D. H. Lawrence

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    Hardcover
    $20.00

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  25. 25

    The Snow Leopard

    by Peter Matthiessen

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    $18.00

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  26. 26

    On the Road: the Original Scroll

    by Jack Kerouac

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    $18.00

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  27. 27

    Metamorphosis and Other Stories

    by Franz Kafka

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    $18.00

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  28. 28

    The Pillow Book

    by Sei Shonagon

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    $19.00

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  29. 29

    Under the Sea-Wind

    by Rachel L. Carson

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    $17.00

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  30. 30

    Ceremony

    by Leslie Marmon Silko

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    $18.00

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  31. 31

    The Haunting of Hill House

    by Shirley Jackson

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    $18.00

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  32. 32

    The Odyssey

    by Homer

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    $18.00

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  33. 33

    Gravity’s Rainbow

    by Thomas Pynchon

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    $24.00

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  34. 34

    The Divine Comedy

    by Dante Alighieri

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    Hardcover
    $30.00

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  35. 35

    Twelve Angry Men

    by Reginald Rose

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    Paperback
    $14.00

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  36. 36

    Jane Eyre

    by Charlotte Bronte

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    Hardcover
    $27.00

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  37. 37

    The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

    by Leo Tolstoy

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    $12.00

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  38. 38

    Kokoro

    by Natsume Soseki

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    $17.00

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  39. 39

    Therese Raquin

    by Emile Zola

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    $13.00

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  40. 40

    The Quiet American

    by Graham Greene

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    $18.00

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  41. 41

    The Aleph and Other Stories

    by Jorge Luis Borges

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    $18.00

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  42. 42

    Anna Karenina

    by Leo Tolstoy

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    Hardcover
    $30.00

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  43. 43

    East Goes West

    by Younghill Kang

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    Hardcover
    $28.00

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  44. 44

    Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

    by Pablo Neruda

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    $14.00

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  45. 45

    Sixty Stories

    by Donald Barthelme

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    $19.00

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  46. 46

    Not Without Laughter

    by Langston Hughes

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    Hardcover
    $25.00

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  47. 47

    The Hanging on Union Square

    by H. T. Tsiang

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    $18.00

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  48. 48

    The Count of Monte Cristo

    by Alexandre Dumas

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    Hardcover
    $30.00

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  49. 49

    Frankenstein

    by Mary Shelley

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    Hardcover
    $25.00

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  50. 50

    Utopia

    by Thomas More

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    $12.00

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  51. 51

    Lysistrata and Other Plays

    by Aristophanes

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    $12.00

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  52. 52

    Dracula

    by Bram Stoker

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    $25.00

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  53. 53

    Robinson Crusoe

    by Daniel Defoe

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    $23.00

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  54. 54

    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

    by Lewis Carroll

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    $26.00

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  55. 55

    How the García Girls Lost Their Accents

    by Julia Alvarez

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    $27.00

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  56. 56

    The Crucible

    by Arthur Miller

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    $16.00

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  57. 57

    Middlemarch

    by George Eliot

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    $26.00

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  58. 58

    The Bhagavad Gita

    by Anonymous

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    $11.00

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  59. 59

    Gulliver’s Travels

    by Jonathan Swift

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    Hardcover
    $22.00

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  60. 60

    Don Quixote

    by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

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    $17.00

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  61. 61

    Herzog

    by Saul Bellow

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    $19.00

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  62. 62

    The Canterbury Tales

    by Geoffrey Chaucer

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    Hardcover
    $25.00

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  63. 63

    Pygmalion

    by George Bernard Shaw

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    $12.00

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  64. 64

    Passing

    by Nella Larsen

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    Hardcover
    $24.00

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  65. 65

    The Prince

    by Niccolo Machiavelli

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    $8.00

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  66. 66

    The Picture of Dorian Gray

    by Oscar Wilde

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    Hardcover
    $24.00

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  67. 67

    Great Expectations

    by Charles Dickens

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    $18.00

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  68. 68

    Madame Bovary

    by Gustave Flaubert

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    Hardcover
    $24.00

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  69. 69

    Moby-Dick

    by Herman Melville and Coralie Bickford-Smith

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    Hardcover
    $32.00

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  70. 70

    Siddhartha

    by Hermann Hesse

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    $17.00

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  71. 71

    One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

    by Ken Kesey

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    $18.00

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  72. 72

    The Scarlet Letter

    by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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    $8.00

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  73. 73

    The Tale of Genji

    by Murasaki Shikibu

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    Paperback
    $36.00

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  74. 74

    The Communist Manifesto

    by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

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    Hardcover
    $22.00

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  75. 75

    Hamlet

    by William Shakespeare

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    $10.00

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  76. 76

    A Room with a View

    by E. M. Forster

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    $12.00

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  77. 77

    Treasure Island

    by Robert Louis Stevenson

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    Hardcover
    $23.00

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  78. 78

    The Women of Brewster Place

    by Gloria Naylor

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