Random House: Must-Read Classics

Inspired by Truman Capote’s birthday (he would have been 95 today!), we’re recommending In Cold Blood and other literary classics of the highest caliber.

“If Austen was the first queen of the contemporary romance . . . Heyer is the first of the historical romance.”—From the foreword by Sarah MacLean, New York Times bestselling author of Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a RakePhilip Jettan doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with a man preferring manly things, but he’ll do whatever it takes to win Cleone’s heart. So Philip travels to Paris, where, under the tutelage of the Marquis de Château-Banvau, he learns to duel, to write poetry, and find the perfect accessory for any outfit. But when the country bumpkin returns home a stylish dandy, he faces an unexpected challenge: convincing Cleone that he’s still the same boy who’s always loved her. READ MORE »Order The Transformation of Philip Jettan    

A special 50th-anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the 20th century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds.Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a 23-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war.READ MORE »Order Slaughterhouse-Five      

From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote—also available are Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms (in one volume), Portraits and Observations, and The Complete Stories.Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965. The intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959, is the seminal work of the “new journalism.” READ MORE »Order In Cold Blood      

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. READ MORE »Order I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings      

James Baldwin was beginning to be recognized as the most brilliant black writer of his generation when his first book of essays, Notes of a Native Son, established his reputation in 1955. No one was more pleased by the book’s reception than Baldwin’s high school friend Sol Stein.A rising New York editor, novelist, and playwright, Stein had suggested that Baldwin do the book and coaxed his old friend through the long and sometimes agonizing process of putting the volume together and seeing it into print. In this fascinating book, Sol Stein documents the story of his intense creative partnership with Baldwin through newly uncovered letters, photos, inscriptions, and an illuminating memoir of the friendship that resulted in one of the classics of American literature. READ MORE »Order Native Sons      

Ambitious and wholeheartedly materialistic, Undine Spragg is a beautiful heiress who sees men as a means to an end. New York millionaires and French aristocrats fall at her feet, but each conquest is merely a stepping-stone in Undine’s quest for power and position—and in her elusive search for happiness.A biting satire from one of America’s greatest writers, The Custom of the Country features an antiheroine as compelling and driven as Scarlett O’Hara, a sharp-eyed critique of the marriage market and its objectification of women, and a knowing send-up of Gilded Age snobbery. READ MORE »Order The Custom of the Country