Heirloom Fiction: Classic Books to Pass Down Through Generations
Timeless Literary Fiction, Childhood Classics, and New Modern Masterpieces Worth Passing Down
Some books find us at exactly the right moment, giving us what we need when we need it. But some stories feel like they’ve been with us much longer. They’re the books that helped build us. They are the ones that sat on a parent’s nightstand, lived on a classroom shelf, or were pulled from a box that had already traveled through a few generations.
These are the books that get passed down like heirlooms. Maybe you first heard one as a bedtime story, or maybe someone handed you a well-loved copy because “everyone in the family reads this eventually.” A classic doesn’t always earn that title because of age or reputation; sometimes it becomes a classic because it shaped someone we love, and then it shaped us too.
Pick from:
- General Classics
- Classics for Young People
- Modern Classics
- New Classics
Heirloom fiction and classic books are special because they carry something forward, such as a lesson or a feeling worth sharing. They remind us that stories don’t just belong to readers; they belong to families, to communities, to time itself. And when we pass them on, we’re passing on more than pages. We’re passing on something we want to last.
Classics
These are the books that have anchored readers for generations, shaping the way we understand love, loss, resilience, and our place in the world.
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen - Anna Bond
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Jane Austen x Puffin in Bloom with a gorgeous illustrated cover by Anna Bond, the artist behind the renowned lifestyle brand Rifle Paper Co.
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet live with their five daughters. Jane, the eldest daughter, falls in love with Charles Bingley, a rich bachelor who moves into a house nearby with his two sisters and friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy. Darcy is attracted to the second daughter, Elizabeth, but she finds him arrogant and self-centered. When Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, she refuses. But perhaps there is more to Darcy than meets the eye.
Beloved: Pulitzer Prize Winner
by Toni Morrison - Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, "The Old Man and the Sea" has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Using the simple. powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificnet twentieth-century classic.
Classics for Young People
Some books become heirlooms because the characters are some of our earliest childhood companions and the stories become our earliest adventures.
The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
OVER 140 MILLION COPIES SOLD
The beloved classic story about a young prince's travels through space--a profound philosophical tale about loneliness and loss, and love and friendship.
A pilot crashes in the Sahara Desert and encounters a strange young boy who calls himself the Little Prince. The Little Prince has traveled there from his home on a lonely, distant asteroid with a single rose. The story that follows is a beautiful and at times heartbreaking meditation on human nature and the wisdom of the heart.
Anne of Green Gables
by L M Montgomery - Anna Bond
The cherished classic featuring everyone's favorite red-headed orphan, in this lush hardcover edition with beautiful cover illustrations by Anna Bond, the artist behind world-renowned stationery brand Rifle Paper Co.
Anne, an eleven-year-old orphan, is sent by mistake to live with a lonely, middle-aged brother and sister on a Prince Edward Island farm and proceeds to make an indelible impression on everyone around her.
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read
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.
Modern Classics
Some stories don’t need decades to feel enduring because they prove themselves essential, offering stories that stay with readers long after the final page.
Klara and the Sun: A GMA Book Club Pick
by Kazuo Ishiguro
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is "an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness" (The Associated Press). - A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick!
Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
The Night Watchman
by Louise Erdrich
WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WASHINGTON POST, NPR, CBS SUNDAY MORNING, KIRKUS, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"?
Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money.
Sing, Unburied, Sing
by Jesmyn Ward
*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times *
Jesmyn Ward's historic second National Book Award-winner is "perfectly poised for the moment" (The New York Times), an intimate portrait of three generations of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. "Ward's writing throbs with life, grief, and love... this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it" (Buzzfeed).
Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn't lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won't acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.
His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister's lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children's father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can't put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.
All the Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr
*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES--from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti*
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.
New Classics
New books become heirlooms by reshaping how we think and feel, so by the last page, we know we’ll hand it down to future readers.
James (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
by Percival Everett
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER - A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view - In development as a feature film to be produced by Steven Spielberg
KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER - NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST - SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE - A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, TIME, and more.
"Genius"--The Atlantic - "A masterpiece that will help redefine one of the classics of American literature, while also being a major achievement on its own."--Chicago Tribune - "A provocative, enlightening literary work of art."--The Boston Globe - "Everett's most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful."--The New York Times
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Martyr!
by Kaveh Akbar
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past--toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning--in faith, art, ourselves, others.
The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
by Rabih Alameddine
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
In a tiny Beirut apartment, sixty-three-year-old Raja and his mother live side by side. A beloved high school philosophy teacher and "the neighborhood homosexual," Raja relishes books, meditative walks, order, and solitude. Zalfa, his octogenarian mother, views her son's desire for privacy as a personal affront. She demands to know every detail of Raja's work life and love life, boundaries be damned.
When Raja receives an invite to an all-expenses-paid writing residency in America, the timing couldn't be better. It arrives on the heels of a series of personal and national disasters that have left Raja longing for peace and quiet away from his mother and the heartache of Lebanon. But what at first seems a stroke of good fortune soon leads Raja to recount and relive the very disasters and past betrayals he wishes to forget.
Orbital: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)
by Samantha Harvey
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 - A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
**New York Times Book Review Book Club Pick**
**Stephen Colbert's The Late Show Book Club Pick
A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts--from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan--have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.
Every generation finds something new in the stories it inherits. Books become heirlooms not because of their age, but because of the way they stay with us and the people we share them with.They become part of our history and the history of those to come.