Recommend a classic novel that's also a page-turner?

Cafe Society
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Lady Chatterly’s Lover
Madame Bovary
Jane Eyre

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I see the OP was trying Emma, which I found the least enjoyable of Austen’s works. As Thudlow says, Pride & Prejudice is a really good read!

I agree with most of Thudlow’s other recommendations - except for **The Moonstone. **Couldn’t get through that. & I’ve never read Robinson Crusoe.

I’d also add The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.

& not exactly a classic, but Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor for a great example of an anti-heroine.

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Only on the first chapter, but I can tell it’s going to be the stuff to give the troops.

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If it’s summer, I’m reading (and re-reading) Ray Bradbury’s short stories, of which there are umpteen volumes…Also, the collected short stories of William Somerset Maughm are mesmerizing. He wrote some excellent spy stories but mostly wrote about the colonial British vs. the “natives” in what is now VietNam, the Malay rubber plantations - think “Red Dust” the movie with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, or “Rain” with Joan Crawford…Is “Forever Amber” by Kathleen Winsor considered a classic? It most certainly is a page turner, covering life in the royal court, the Great Fire of London, and the Plague.
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And this was my recommendation! I’ve heard it described as the best adventure novel ever written, and I can totally believe it. It’s huge, and it may help to keep a printed-out cast of characters handy, but it’s totally engrossing. Great stuff. I also second the recommendation for Three Musketeers and Treasure Island.

Every summer I make it a goal to read one classic. Last year’s was Tale of Two Cities. I recommend against that one: it really didn’t do it for me.

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I was surprised and pleased how much I enjoyed Les Miserables. I was expecting something much dryer.

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If* Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde* is available, I’d suggest that. One of my favorite reads. You know the story so it is an easy read.

48

Ditto, but there’s two translations. The Penguin Classic edition is superior to the Signet Classic edition.

It’s slow in spots, but once I got through the battle of Waterloo (only about the last 5 pages are relevant), it flew.

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Lord of the Rings

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I don’t know if it’s your thing, but *Gone With the Wind *is always a page-turner for me. There’s a lot more to it than the film shows, so you might give it a try even if you didn’t care for the movie.

51

I’ll second Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde It’s surprisingly good, even though you know the story.
I’m a big Jules Verne fan. If his stuff counts as “classic”, I’ll recommend it, but YMMV. If you’re going to read it – DON’T read the Project Gutenberg version. The “standard” translation is abysmal,. and cuts out 1/3 of the text! There have been at least four good translations since about 1960. get one of those. I recommend The Annotated 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with Walter James Miller’s annotations, but it’s not in print. Miller himself is co-translator of the US Naval Academy version, which is still in print.
I’d also recommen Edgar Allen Poe. I think his stories the Gold Bug, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, The Black Cat, and others are page-turners. But some of his stuff is wordy and obscure.
Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain, definitely.
I also think Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is superb. So is Voltaire’s Candide.