Roundtop Books

Reading lists

Classic reading lists by theme

Every book on these lists was first published in 1930 or earlier, so it is in the public domain in the United States and easy to borrow or download for free. Each entry gives the title, the author and the basic premise.

How to use these lists

The lists are unranked. Pick a theme that matches your mood, then whichever premise sounds most interesting. Your library will have most of these in print, as ebooks and as audiobooks.

Books originally written in another language are often best read in a recent translation, which may still be under copyright. Older translations are free, but some read stiffly to modern readers. Your librarian can suggest a translation.

Classics by theme

Long novels for a long winter

  • War and Peace Leo TolstoySeveral Russian families live through the Napoleonic wars.
  • Middlemarch George EliotThe lives and marriages of people in an English country town around 1830.
  • Les Misérables Victor HugoA former convict tries to build an honest life in nineteenth-century France.
  • Bleak House Charles DickensA long-running inheritance lawsuit and the people caught up in it.
  • The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre DumasA young sailor, wrongly imprisoned, plans his return.
  • Moby-Dick Herman MelvilleA whaling voyage led by a captain set on finding one particular whale.

Short classics for a weekend

  • The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis StevensonA London lawyer looks into his friend's link to a violent stranger.
  • The Metamorphosis Franz KafkaA traveling salesman wakes up transformed into a giant insect.
  • The Awakening Kate ChopinA young wife spends a summer on the Louisiana coast.
  • Ethan Frome Edith WhartonA farmer lives through a hard winter in rural New England.
  • A Christmas Carol Charles DickensA miser is visited by ghosts on Christmas Eve.
  • The Turn of the Screw Henry JamesA governess takes charge of two children at a remote country house.

Adventure and travel

  • The Odyssey HomerA soldier spends years trying to sail home after the Trojan War.
  • Around the World in Eighty Days Jules VerneAn English gentleman bets he can circle the globe in eighty days.
  • Treasure Island Robert Louis StevensonA boy joins a voyage to find buried pirate treasure.
  • Robinson Crusoe Daniel DefoeA shipwrecked sailor survives alone on an island.
  • Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas Jules VerneA professor is taken aboard a mysterious submarine.
  • The Three Musketeers Alexandre DumasA young man arrives in Paris hoping to join the king's guards.

Gothic and ghostly

  • Frankenstein Mary ShelleyA young scientist creates a living being.
  • Dracula Bram StokerAn English solicitor travels to a castle in Transylvania on business.
  • Jane Eyre Charlotte BrontëAn orphan becomes a governess at a manor house with secrets.
  • Wuthering Heights Emily BrontëTwo families on the Yorkshire moors are bound together across generations.
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar WildeA young man wishes that his portrait would age instead of him.
  • The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan PoeA man visits a childhood friend in a decaying family mansion.

Love, marriage and money

  • Pride and Prejudice Jane AustenFive sisters, a mother keen on marriages, and some poor first impressions.
  • Persuasion Jane AustenA woman meets again the man she was persuaded not to marry.
  • North and South Elizabeth GaskellA minister's daughter moves from the south of England to an industrial northern town.
  • The Age of Innocence Edith WhartonA young lawyer in 1870s New York society is engaged to a suitable match.
  • The House of Mirth Edith WhartonA woman in New York society needs to marry well, and soon.
  • Anna Karenina Leo TolstoyA married woman in Russian high society falls in love with an officer.

Early science fiction

  • The Time Machine H. G. WellsAn inventor travels far into the future.
  • The War of the Worlds H. G. WellsMartians land in the English countryside.
  • Journey to the Center of the Earth Jules VerneA professor and his nephew climb down into a volcano.
  • Herland Charlotte Perkins GilmanThree explorers find a country where only women live.
  • R.U.R. Karel ČapekA play about a factory that builds artificial workers.

Mysteries and detection

  • The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan DoyleSherlock Holmes looks into a family legend on Dartmoor.
  • The Moonstone Wilkie CollinsA famous diamond disappears from a country house.
  • The Woman in White Wilkie CollinsA drawing teacher meets a mysterious woman on a moonlit road.
  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles Agatha ChristieHercule Poirot's first case, at an English country house.
  • The Murders in the Rue Morgue Edgar Allan PoeAn amateur detective in Paris takes on a baffling crime.

Nature, ideas and lives

  • Walden Henry David ThoreauTwo years living simply in a cabin by a pond in Massachusetts.
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick DouglassDouglass tells of his life in slavery and how he escaped.
  • A Room of One's Own Virginia WoolfAn essay on women, money and the conditions needed to write.
  • My First Summer in the Sierra John MuirA naturalist's journal of a summer in the California mountains.
  • Self-Reliance Ralph Waldo EmersonAn essay urging readers to trust their own judgment.

Growing up

  • Little Women Louisa May AlcottFour sisters grow up in New England during and after the Civil War.
  • Great Expectations Charles DickensA poor orphan receives money from an unknown benefactor.
  • Anne of Green Gables L. M. MontgomeryAn orphan girl is sent by mistake to a farm on Prince Edward Island.
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark TwainA boy and a man escaping slavery travel down the Mississippi on a raft.
  • The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson BurnettAn orphan finds a locked, neglected garden at her uncle's house.

Reading them with others

Long, older books are easier with a group. Our classics for book clubs page gives discussion angles, and a reading journal helps you keep track of large casts.