Modern American Classics

Step into Ernest Hemingway’s unforgettable world with a version designed for today’s reader. This refreshed edition of The Sun Also Rises: Adapted for Modern Readers keeps Hemingway’s spare, powerful voice while offering lightly clarified language, clean, contemporary formatting, and readable typography. Obsolete usages are gently updated, dense passages subtly smoothed, and dialogue punctuation modernized, helping you move effortlessly through the story without footnotes—so the emotions, not the mechanics of the page, command your attention. Set among the cafés of 1920s Paris and ...

THIS EDITION of The Great Gatsby not only preserves the charm and elegance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale but also carefully adapts the language for today’s readers. By modernizing vocabulary and clarifying cultural references, this version remains faithful to the original story while making it accessible and engaging for a new generation. Perfect for casual reading, book clubs, educational use, or family discussions, this adaptation offers a fresh take on a timeless masterpiece. Step into the opulent world of Jay Gatsby and the Jazz Age, where ambition, love, and the American ...

Step into Gatsby’s glittering Jazz Age—without tripping over the prose. This edition tells the complete story of Fitzgerald’s classic in contemporary English. Follow Nick Carraway into a summer of champagne dreams and fragile illusions, as the mysterious Jay Gatsby pursues the one thing money can’t buy. The parties dazzle; the heartbreak lingers. If you’ve ever meant to read The Great Gatsby (or revisit it with fresh eyes), this contemporary-language edition invites you in—and doesn’t let you go.

Dive into the life of one of America's founding fathers with "Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Adapted for Modern Readers." This refreshed edition breathes new life into Franklin's timeless narrative with clean formatting and contemporary typography, making it accessible to today’s readers. We've retained Franklin's original tone and themes, while lightly clarifying the language for a smoother reading experience, allowing you to appreciate the wit and wisdom of this visionary thinker without barriers. Set in the vibrant era of American independence, Franklin’s journey from humble ...

Answer the call of adventure with this refreshed edition of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, adapted for modern readers without losing its rugged soul. Clean, contemporary typography and carefully clarified language make London’s powerful prose more accessible while preserving his original tone, pacing, and intensity. Whether you’re discovering Buck’s story for the first time or revisiting a favorite classic, this edition offers a smooth, engaging reading experience for today’s audiences. Set against the harsh beauty of the Klondike Gold Rush, The Call of the Wild explores ...

"[Narrator Therese] Plummer's talented performance is both illuminating and poignant." -- AudioFile Magazine Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award Fortieth Anniversary Edition This program includes a bonus conversation with the author. A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story...

Join Tom Sawyer on his unforgettable adventures along the mighty Mississippi River in this modernized edition of Mark Twain's classic tale. Crafted for today's readers, this adaptation offers a seamless reading experience with clean formatting and contemporary typography. The language has been gently updated for clarity, ensuring that Twain's wit and charm shine through without losing the essence of the original narrative. Dive into a timeless story with ease and enjoyment like never before. Set in the vibrant world of 19th-century Missouri, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer explores themes of ...

“Tender, immersive, and thrilling." —Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow "One of the best novels I’ve ever read about friendship.” —Stephen King, #1 bestselling author "I can't remember the last time I cared about fictional characters as desperately as I...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice For decades, affirmative action reshaped not just American higher education but the broader society, opening doors that had been closed for centuries and transforming who entered the pathways to power. But the Supreme Court in 2023 killed...

When European missionaries first arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering. Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan mess: the worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to...

Rediscover one of America’s greatest adventures — now told in clear, modern language that captures all the wit, humor, and heart of Mark Twain’s classic masterpiece. Join young Huck Finn as he escapes his troubled home life and journeys down the Mississippi River with Jim, a runaway slave seeking freedom. Their daring voyage is filled with danger, laughter, and moral awakening — a timeless story about friendship, courage, and the fight for what’s right.

With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story and instantly became both the recognized master of the form and one of our best-loved fiction writers. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people; his stories are the classics of our time.

FINALIST FOR THE GILLER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE Bold and lyrical, sensual and highly charged, Cereus Blooms at Night is the beautifully written, sensational first novel by Shani Mootoo, one of Canada’s most exciting literary voices. At the core of this...

Narrator Jenna Ushkowitz is an award-winning actress, singer, producer, and podcast host best known for her role as Tina Cohen-Chang on Glee. Meet Anna K! Every happy teenage girl is the same, while every unhappy teenage girl is miserable in her own special way... At seventeen, Anna K is at the...

A dazzling novel from one of our finest writers—an epic yet intimate family saga about three generations of all-American radicals At the center of Jonathan Lethem’s superb new novel stand two extraordinary women: Rose Zimmer, the aptly nicknamed Red Queen of Sunnyside, Queens, is an...

The foundations of society are more seriously shaken today than they were in Socrates’s time. Men who, reasonably enough, see no hope of preserving the ancestral order, are building new societies of one sort or another, from all of which certain fundamental values are absent. It seems worthwhile, then, to recall a man who under similar circumstances stood for the spirit of free inquiry, for the inviolability of the individual, with that lonely honesty and courage which are the badge of human dignity. — From the “Author’s Note” “Mask of Silenus deserves both reading and pondering...

The late 16th-century penal debt bond, which allowed an unsatisfied creditor to seize the body of his debtor, set in motion a series of precedents that would shape the legal, philosophical, and moral issue of property-in-person in England and America for centuries. Focusing on this historical juncture at which debt litigation was not merely an aspect of society but seemed to engulf it completely, Of Bondage examines a culture that understood money and the body of the borrower as comparable forms of property that impinged on one another at the moment of default.

A remarkable series of audiobooks, featuring distinguished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare...

Two teenagers fresh out of stir set their sights on what looks like easy money in Dolores Hitchens’s Fools’ Gold (1958)—and get a painful education in how quickly and drastically a simple plan can spin out of control. The basis for Jean-Luc Godard’s film Band of Outsiders, Fools’...

An uncompromising and sensually charged collection from one of the great practitioners of the short story The debut story collection from Los Angeles writer Kate Braverman assembles a vivid patchwork of interconnected narratives set in Southern California. Through brief, often haunting snapshots...