What are the top book recommendations for 'too much purple prose'?

"The murderer is with us-on the train now . . ."

Just after midnight, the famous Orient Express is stopped in its tracks by a snowdrift. By morning, the millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door ... Read more about Murder on the Orient Express

It was five o’clock on a winter’s morning in Syria. Alongside the platform at Aleppo stood the train grandly designated in railway guides as the Taurus Express. It consisted of a kitchen and dining ca...

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This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for ge... Read more about The House of the Seven Gables

WHEN a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to ass...

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"A big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage" (The Washington Post) by the celebrated author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini

Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered-and shadowed-by tra... Read more about South of Broad

Nothing happens by accident. I learned this the hard way, long before I knew that the hard way was the only path to true, certain knowledge. Early in my life, I came to fear the power of strange conve...

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Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That's because he's being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he's really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to atten... Read more about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or...

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Aldous Huxley's profoundly important classic of world literature, Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to pas... Read more about Brave New World

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRALLONDONHATCHERY ANDCONDITIONINGCENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABIL...

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As seen through the eyes of his children, this is the legendary, wrenching story of lawyer Atticus Finch, who takes on a case that cuts deeply into the heart of racism in the 1930s Deep South. Mature content*

* Title may contain language or content c... Read more about To Kill a Mockingbird

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious abou...

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The opening novel of The Lord of the Rings-the greatest fantasy epic of all time-which continues in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

The dark, fearsome Ringwr... Read more about The Fellowship of the Ring

Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever since his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his trav...

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In 1962, Madeleine L'Engle debuted her novel A Wrinkle in Time, which would go on to win the 1963 Newbery Medal. Bridging science and fantasy, darkness and light, fear and friendship, the story became a classic of children's literature and is beloved... Read more about A Wrinkle in Time

In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded fr...

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A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in eac... Read more about The Color Purple

Harpo girl daddy say Harpo not good enough for her. Harpo been courting the girl a while. He say he sit in the parlor with her, the daddy sit right there in the corner till everybody feel terrible. Th...

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Set in a city torn apart by feuds and gang warfare, Romeo and Juliet is a dazzling combination of passion and hatred, bawdy comedy and high tragedy.

A young man and woman meet by chance and instantly fall in love. But their families are bitter enemie... Read more about Romeo and Juliet

In recent years, ways of dealing with Shakespeare’s texts and with the interpretation of his plays have been undergoing significant change. This edition, while retaining many of the features that have...

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