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Explore our hand-picked book collections, each built around a common theme.

Showing 21 collections

Banned books you can read for free

Each of these has an authority, a date and a reason attached. Where the famous story is wrong, the page says so.

22 books

Featured

Classic dystopian and utopian novels

The books that built the genre, from More's Utopia (1516) to Rand's Anthem (1938).

11 books

Featured

Classic books under 100 pages

Short enough to finish today — and none of them minor. Page count and reading time on every card.

34 books

Featured

Victorian ghost stories and Gothic classics

Haunted houses, moral doubles and slow-burn dread — from Dickens to the Edwardian ghost story.

20 books

Featured

Must-read Russian classics

Moral dilemmas and vast inner lives — and eight of these are under eighty pages.

24 books

Featured

Pulitzer Prize-winning novels in the public domain

Thirteen novels won the prize between 1918 and 1931. Ten of them are here.

10 books

Featured

The Modern Library 100 Best Novels you can read free

The 1998 list, in its own order — and which of the hundred we can legally give you.

42 books

Featured

Harlem Renaissance books you can read free

Poetry, fiction, and essays of a cultural rebirth—jazz rhythm, modern voices, and fierce debate.

6 books

Featured

The best books of the 19th century

The century’s defining works—from Gothic shadows and social epics to radical experiments in style.

41 books

Featured

The 9th grade reading list, free to download

Freshman English, with the page count and the reading time on every book — and a straight answer about the ones you will have to borrow.

15 books

The self-help books that started it all

The 1900s originals behind a century of self-help — short, strange and free.

12 books

Occult and hermetic classics

Grimoires, hermetic philosophy and Masonic commentary — the primary sources, unabridged.

7 books

Classic horror, from the Gothic to Lovecraft

From ghostly atmospheres to relentless chases: classics of fear, suspense, and the uncanny.

24 books

Classic detective novels: the cornerstones of crime fiction

A map of detective fiction—foundation to Golden Age, curated for readers who want pace, puzzle, and influence. These are the Haycraft–Queen Cornerston...

18 books

Classic romance novels worth reading

Love tested by money, class and time — including the six Austen novels and all seven the Brontë sisters wrote.

47 books

The high school reading list, free to download

Four years of assigned reading, sorted by how long each book will take you — and a straight answer about the ones you will have to borrow.

31 books

Classic books that became famous movies

Every book here names the film it became, and links to it. Read the book before, or after, the version you have seen.

33 books

The greatest villains in classic literature

The Telegraph picked the 50 greatest villains in literature. These are the ones old enough to be free — and the ones that are not.

24 books

Coming-of-age classics

Journeys from innocence to experience—friendship, identity, and hard-won self-knowledge.

19 books

Classic books by women writers

Voices that transformed literature—women authors redefining form, freedom, and the lives of their characters.

24 books

Pulitzer Prize–winning plays in the public domain

Major American plays across the decades—voices, conflicts, and stages that changed theater.

5 books

Want to suggest a collection?

Have an idea for a new collection? Send it to hello(at)aliceandbooks.com and our team will consider it.