The most popular books in English
from 1601 to 1800
What books are currently the most popular and which are the all time classics? Here we present you with a mixture of those two criteria. We update this list once a month.
Władysław Szpilman
Written immediately after the end of World War II, this morally complex Holocaust memoir is notable for its exact depiction of the grim details of life in Warsaw under the Nazi occupation. "Things you hardly noticed before took on enormous significance: a comfortable, solid …
Michael Pollan
Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and …
Shannon Hale
A Newbery Honor WinnerA New York Times Bestseller Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince will choose …
Scott Smith
The Ruins is the second novel by American author Scott Smith, whose first novel was A Simple Plan. The Ruins is a horror story set on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. It was released on July 18, 2006. A film adaptation of the novel was released in the United States and Canada on …
Anna Quindlen
Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 1998: "The first time my husband hit me I was nineteen years old," begins Fran Benedetto, the broken heroine of Anna Quindlen's Black and Blue. With one sweeping sentence, the door to an abused and tortured world is swung wide open and the …
Robert Ludlum
A KILLER WITH NO FACE, NO IDENTITY, AND A NAME THE WORLD WANTED TO FORGET: JASON BOURNE Reenter the shadowy world of Jason Bourne, an expert assassin still plagued by the splintered nightmares of his former life. This time the stakes are higher than ever. For someone else has …
Tove Jansson
Finn Family Moomintroll is the third in the series of Tove Jansson's Moomins books, published in Swedish in 1948 and translated to English in 1950. It owes its title in translation to the fact that it was the first Moomin book to be published in English, and was actually …
James Patterson
2nd Chance is the second novel in the Women's Murder Club series written by James Patterson with Andrew Gross. It is the sequel to 1st to Die.
Robert Charles Wilson
Spin is a science fiction novel by author Robert Charles Wilson. It was published in 2005 and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2006. It is the first book in the Spin trilogy, with Axis published in 2007 and Vortex published in July 2011. In January 2015 it was announced that …
Kurt Vonnegut
Hocus Pocus, or What's the Hurry, Son? is a 1990 novel by Kurt Vonnegut.
Heike Brandt
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a 1976 novel by Mildred D. Taylor, sequel to her 1975 novella Song of the Trees. It is a book about racism in America. The novel won the 1977 Newbery Medal. It is followed by two more sequels, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, The Road to Memphis, and a …
Laura Ingalls Wilder
On the Banks of Plum Creek is a children's book written in 1937 by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The fourth of nine books written in her Little House series, it is based on Laura's childhood at Plum Creek near Walnut Grove, Minnesota in the late nineteenth century.
Tom Robbins
What if the Second Coming didn’t quite come off as advertised? What if “the Corpse” on display in that funky roadside zoo is really who they say it is—what does that portend for the future f western civilization? And what if a young clairvoyant named Amanda reestablishes the …
Alexander McCall Smith
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies is the sixth in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Gaborone, Botswana, and featuring the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe.
Kim Stanley Robinson
In the Nebula Award winning Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson began his critically acclaimed epic saga of the colonization of Mars, Now the Hugo Award winning Green Mars continues the thrilling and timeless tale of humanity's struggle to survive at its farthest frontier. Nearly a …
Tom Clancy
The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a novel by Tom Clancy, featuring his character Jack Ryan. It is a sequel to The Hunt for Red October, based on the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative and its Soviet equivalent, covering themes including intelligence gathering and …
Simon Beckett
Three years ago, David Hunter moved to rural Norfolk to escape his life in London, his gritty work in forensics, and a tragedy that nearly destroyed him. Working as a simple country doctor, seeing his lost wife and daughter only in his dreams, David struggles to remain …
Anne Rice
"The reader is held captive, and, ultimately, seduced."SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Ramses the Great has awakened in Edwardian London. Having drunk the elixir of life, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be …
Orson Scott Card
Seventh Son is an alternate history/fantasy novel by Orson Scott Card. It is the first book in Card's The Tales of Alvin Maker series and is about Alvin Miller, the seventh son of a seventh son. Seventh Son won a Locus Award and was nominated for both the Hugo and World Fantasy …
Lewis Carroll
When Trough the Looking glass was published in 1871, readers were as delighted with that book as they were with Lewis Carroll's first masterpiece, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the topsy-turvy world that lies beyond the looking-glass, Alice meets such fantastical …
Herbert George Wells
The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, who called it "an exercise in youthful blasphemy". The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, …
Amy Tan
Saving Fish From Drowning is a 2005 novel written by Amy Tan. It is Tan's sixth work. The book is about twelve American tourists who travel to China and Burma. The novel was awarded an honorable mention from the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature.
Terry Goodkind
Soul of the Fire is the fifth book in Terry Goodkind's epic fantasy series The Sword of Truth.
Anne Rice
Just when you thought it was safe for a bloodsucker to go out in the dark in New Orleans, along comes Merrick Mayfair, a sultry, hard-drinking octoroon beauty whose voodoo can turn the toughest vampire into a marionette dancing to her merry, scary tune. In Merrick, Anne Rice …
Jean Webster
Excerpt: ...likes a few surprises; it's a perfectly natural human craving. But I never had one until Mrs. Lippett called me to the office to tell me that Mr. John Smith was going to send me to college. And then she broke the news so gradually that it just barely shocked me. You …
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
The Fencing Master is a historical novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte set in Spain at the middle of the 19th century. Amid the political turmoil of the Glorious Revolution where conspiracy and intrigue are commonplace, fencing master Don Jaime Astarloa tries to live as he always has. …
Patricia Wrede
Dealing with Dragons is a young adult fantasy novel written by Patricia C. Wrede, in which the princess Cimorene escapes her tediously ordinary family to be a dragon's princess. It is the first book in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles series.
Agatha Christie
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. It was written in the middle of World War I, in 1916, and first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head on 21 January 1921. The US edition …
Timothy Zahn
It’s five years after the Rebel Alliance destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, and drove the remnants of the old Imperial Starfleet to a distant corner of the galaxy. Princess Leia and Han Solo are married and expecting Jedi twins. And Luke Skywalker …
Meg Cabot
Mia Thermopolis is your average urban ninth grader. Even though she lives in Greenwich Village with a single mom who is a semifamous painter, Mia still puts on her Doc Martens one at a time, and the most exciting things she ever dreams about are smacking lips with sexy senior …
E. B. White
For decades, E.B. White's charming, bittersweet tales of friendship and adventure have enchanted audiences young and old alike. Now the magic of this beloved classic comes to life in a delightful and completely unabridged recording, read by award-winning actress Julie Harris. …
Arthur Japin
Lucia works as a servant girl in Italy and is engaged to be married. But after the pox disfigures her face, she flees in shame without telling her lover. Years later, as a reknowned Amsterdam courtesan who never goes out without her veil, Lucia is at the theater when she …
Anne Brontë
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel by the English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her …
Hunter S. Thompson
Made into a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary—a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book—is Hunter S. Thompson’s brilliant love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent lust in the Caribbean.Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. …
William Gibson
All Tomorrow's Parties is the third and final novel in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Like its predecessors, All Tomorrow's Parties is a speculative fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, postcyberpunk future. The novel borrows its title from a song by Velvet …
Kate Atkinson
One Good Turn is a 2006 crime novel by Kate Atkinson set in Edinburgh during the Festival. 'People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a brutal road rage incident - an incident that changes the lives of everyone involved.' It is the second novel to feature former private …
Ian McEwan
In this tour de force of psychological unease--now a major motion picture starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sinead Cusack--McEwan excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most adults have spent a lifetime forgetting--or denying. "Possesses the suspense and …
Iain Banks
The Algebraist, a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first appeared in print in 2004. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2005. It was his third science fiction novel not to be based or set in The Culture, and the first not to be potentially …
John Grisham
The Appeal is a 2008 novel by John Grisham, his twentieth book and his first fictional legal thriller since The Broker was published in 2005. It was published by Doubleday and released in hardcover in the United States on January 29, 2008. A paperback edition was released by …
Caleb Carr
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—the brilliant hero of The Alienist, now a TNT original series—returns in a “whopping thriller” (The Washington Post) that showcases Caleb Carr “at his strongest” (USA Today).June 1897. A year has passed since Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a …
Robert Kiyosaki
Rich Dad Poor Dad is a 2000 book written by American businessman, author and investor Robert Kiyosaki. It advocates financial independence and building wealth through investing, real estate investing, starting and owning businesses, as well as increasing one's financial …
Shaun Tan
"Tan's lovingly laid out and masterfully rendered tale about the immigrant experience is a documentary magically told." -- Art Spiegelman, author of Maus"An absolute wonder." -- Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis"A magical river of strangers and their stories!" -- Craig …
Paulo Coelho
The Pilgrimage paved the way to Paulo Coehlo's international bestselling novel The Alchemist. In many ways, these two volumes are companions—to truly comprehend one, you must read the other.Step inside this captivating account of Paulo Coehlo's pilgrimage along the road to …
David Mitchell
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the fifth novel by British author David Mitchell. It is a historical novel set during the Dutch trading concession with Japan in the late 18th century, during the period of Japanese history known as Sakoku.
Rebecca Stead
When You Reach Me is a Newbery Medal-winning science fiction and mystery novel by Rebecca Stead, published in 2009. It takes place in the Upper West Side in New York during 1978 and 1979 and follows the protagonist, Miranda Sinclair. She receives a strange note asking her to …
Fernando Pessoa
The prizewinning, complete and unabridged translation—“the best English-language version we are likely to see for a long time, if ever” (The Guardian)—of a work of unclassifiable genius: the crowning achievement of Portugal’s modern master Winner of the Calouste Gulbenkian …
Shannon Hale
In this first book in New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor-winning author Shannon Hale's beloved YA fantasy series Books of Bayern, Princess Ani must become a goose girl before she can become queen. Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, spends the …
John Fowles
Hailed as the first modern psychological thriller, The Collector is the internationally bestselling novel that catapulted John Fowles into the front rank of contemporary novelists. This tale of obsessive love--the story of a lonely clerk who collects butterflies and of the …
Clive Barker
Weaveworld is a novel by Clive Barker. It was published in 1987 and could be categorised as dark fantasy. It deals with a parallel world, like many of Barker's novels, and contains many horror elements. It was nominated in 1988 for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
Michel Foucault
The History of Sexuality is a three-volume study of sexuality in the western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault. The first volume, The Will to Knowledge, was first published in 1976 by Éditions Gallimard, before being translated into English by Robert …
David Baldacci
Conspiracy theories--everybody has one. The difference with this conspiracy is that it's all too real. David Baldacci's The Camel Club takes readers inside the Beltway as four unlikely misfits struggle not only to survive, but to save their president and their country from a …
Tom Clancy
The President is dead--and the weight, literally, of the world falls on Jack Ryan's shoulders, in Tom Clancy's newest and most extraordinary novel.I don't know what to do. Where's the manual, the training course, for this job? Whom do I ask? Where do I go?Debt of Honor ended …
Ryū Murakami
Coin Locker Babies, 1980 is a novel by Ryu Murakami about coin-operated-locker babies, translated into English by Stephen Snyder. The translation was published in 1995 by Kodansha International Ltd and republished in 2013 by Pushkin Press. A Bildungsroman novel, Coin Locker …
Anne Enright
The Gathering is the fourth novel by Irish author Anne Enright. It won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, eventually chosen unanimously by the jury after having largely been considered an outsider to win the prize. Although it received mostly favorable reviews on its first publication, …
Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic is a 1995 novel by Alice Hoffman. The book was adapted into a 1998 film of the same name.
Michael Moore
The people of the United States, according to author and filmmaker Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Stupid White Men), have been hoodwinked. Tricked, he says, by Republican lawmakers and their wealthy corporate pals who use a combination of concocted bogeymen and lies to …
Tamora Pierce
Trickster's Choice is a book published in 2003 that was written by Tamora Pierce.
Frank Beddor
The Looking Glass Wars is a series of novels by Frank Beddor, heavily inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The basic premise is that the two books written by Lewis Carroll are a distortion of the 'true story' portrayed in …
Curt Gentry
Helter Skelter is a true crime book by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry. Bugliosi had served as the prosecutor in the 1970 trial of Charles Manson. The book presents his firsthand account of the cases of Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and other members of the …
Patricia Highsmith
One of the great crime novels of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley is a blend of the narrative subtlety of Henry James and the self-reflexive irony of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the best modernist fiction, Ripley works on two levels. First, it is the …
James W. Loewen
This updated and revised edition of the American Book Award-winner and national bestseller revitalizes the truth of America’s history, explores how myths continue to be perpetrated, and includes a new chapter on 9/11 and the Iraq War.Americans have lost touch with their history, …
Fred Vargas
The popular Parisian mystery by the international bestselling mystery writer, Fred Vargas, whom the French have hailed as the next Henning Mankell.In a small Parisian square, the ancient tradition of the town crier continues into modern times. The self-appointed crier, Joss Le …
Marc Levy
What do you do when you find a stranger in your closet; particularly when she's surprised that you can even see her -- and she can disappear and reappear at whim? What if she then tells you that her body is actually in a coma on the other side of town? Should you have her see a …
Frederic Beigbeder
Octave seems to have everything going for him: a good mind, a great job in advertising, a lavish apartment, girls, and a cocaine habit he can afford. But it soon becomes clear that he also has a serious problem with his life. From the moment when he storms out of the offices of …
Juliet Marillier
A beautiful retelling of the Celtic "Swans" myth, Daughter of the Forest is a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love... To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known and embarks on a journey filled with pain, …
Armistead Maupin
The first novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga, soon to return to television as a Netflix original series once again starring Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis.For almost four decades Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the …
Chuck Palahniuk
From the master of literary mayhem and provocation, a full-frontal Triple X novel that goes where no American work of fiction has gone before Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With …
Tom Clancy
Over the course of nine novels, Tom Clancy's genius for big, compelling plots and his natural narrative gift (The New York Times Magazine) have mesmerized hundreds of millions of readers and established him as one of the preeminent storytellers of our time. Rainbow Six, however, …
Аркадий Стругацкий
Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black …
Yasunari Kawabata
Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes is a luminous story of desire, regret, and the almost sensual nostalgia that binds the living to the dead. While attending a traditional tea ceremony in the aftermath of his parents’ deaths, Kikuji encounters his father’s …
Max Barry
In the horrifying, satirical near future of Max Barry's Jennifer Government, American corporations literally rule the world. Everyone takes his employer's name as his last name; once-autonomous nations as far-flung as Australia belong to the USA; and the National Rifle …
Stanisław Lem
Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is …
Scott McCloud
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art is a 1993 non-fiction work of comics by American cartoonist Scott McCloud. It explores formal aspects of comics, the historical development of the medium, its fundamental vocabulary, and various ways in which these elements have been used. …
Ursula K. Le Guin
Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea is a fantasy novel by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin, published by Atheneum in 1990. It was the fourth novel set in the fictional archipelago Earthsea; a sequel following almost twenty years after the Earthsea trilogy; and not the last, …
Kelley Armstrong
Stolen, a fantasy novel written by Canadian author Kelley Armstrong, is the second book in the Women of the Otherworld series.
Judy Blume
Summer Sisters is a 1998 novel by Judy Blume. It focuses on the life of two fictional characters, the girls Victoria Leonard and Caitlin Somers. Because of its heavy sexual content—including lesbianism—this Blume novel is aimed squarely at an adult audience, not her pre-teen …
Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Long Winter is a Newbery Honor novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, first published in 1940. The story is set in South Dakota during the severe winter of 1880–1881, when Laura turned fourteen. It is the sixth book in the Little House series.
Philip Pullman
"Her name was Sally Lockhart; and within fifteen minutes, she was going to kill a man." Philip Pullman begins his Sally Lockhart trilogy with a bang in The Ruby in the Smoke--a fast-paced, finely crafted thriller set in a rogue- and scalawag-ridden Victorian London. His …
Laurell K. Hamilton
Incubus Dreams is the twelfth in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series of horror/mystery/erotica novels by Laurell K. Hamilton.
Neil Gaiman
THE SANDMAN: THE DREAM HUNTERS is a comics adaptation of Gaiman's original prose novella by the same name illustrated by Yoshitako Amano. This graphic novel was illustrated by the legendary P. Craig Russell. A humble young monk and a magical, shape-changing fox find themselves …
Kathy Reichs
Déjà Dead is the first novel by Kathy Reichs starring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. It won the 1998 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.
Dr. Seuss
Inspirational yet honest, and always rhythmically rollicking, Oh, the Places You'll Go! is a perfect sendoff for children, 1 to 100, entering any new phase of their lives. Kindergartners, graduate students, newlyweds, newly employeds--all will glean shiny pearls of wisdom about …
Frank Miller
He will become the greatest crimefighter the world has ever known. A Dark Alley. A faceless man with a gun. A child's life shattered forever. You know why Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, but do you know how? Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli produced this groundbreaking …
Pan Macmillan Limited Staff
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. Sadly, …
Sergei Lukyanenko
Last Watch is a fantasy novel by Russian writer Sergey Lukyanenko. It is the sequel to Night Watch, Day Watch, and Twilight Watch and prequel to New Watch.
Terry Brooks
ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR FANTASY TALES OF ALL TIME. NOW AN EPIC SPIKE TV SERIES. Thousands of years after the destruction of the age of man and science, new races and magic now rule the world, but an imminent danger threatens. A horde of evil Demons is beginning to escape and …
MaryJanice Davidson
Undead and Unwed is a paranormal romance novel by MaryJanice Davidson. It is the first adventure of Elizabeth Anne "Betsy" Taylor in the Undead series after her transformation into a vampire.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Wise witty and wonderful A great book in a great historical tradition Commentary The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images a glittering time of crusades and castles cathedrals and chivalry and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony a world plunged into a chaos …
Dee Brown
Eloquent, heartbreaking, and meticulously documented, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee follows the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the 19th century. Upon its publication in 1970, the book was universally lauded and became a cultural …
Bret Easton Ellis
From the New York Times bestselling author or Less Than Zero and American Psycho—a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England with no plans for the future—or even the present—who become entangled in a …
Alan Hollinghurst
The Line of Beauty is a 2004 Booker Prize-winning novel by Alan Hollinghurst.
Joe Abercrombie
The second novel in the wildly popular First Law Trilogy from New York Times bestseller Joe Abercrombie. Superior Glokta has a problem. How do you defend a city surrounded by enemies and riddled with traitors, when your allies can by no means be trusted, and your predecessor …
David Eddings
Belgarath the Sorcerer is a book by David Eddings and Leigh Eddings. Set in the same universe as the Eddings' The Belgariad and The Malloreon, it is a prequel to the other series, although the framework story is set after the events of The Malloreon. The book opens shortly after …
Michael Crichton
Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in A.D. 922 is a 1976 novel by Michael Crichton. The story is about a 10th-century Muslim who travels with a group of Vikings to their settlement. Crichton explains in an appendix that …
Christopher Moore
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove is the fifth novel by author Christopher Moore, published in 1999. It is set in the same fictional town of Pine Cove, California, as his first novel, Practical Demonkeeping, and also brings back some of the same characters.
Jonathan Littell
The Kindly Ones is a historical fiction novel written in French by American-born author Jonathan Littell. The book is narrated by its fictional protagonist Maximilien Aue, a former SS officer of French and German ancestry who helped to carry out the Holocaust and was present …
Alex Haley
One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold over one million …
Jeanne DuPrau
The People of Sparks, a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by Jeanne DuPrau that was published in 2004. It is the second "Book of Ember" in the series, and a sequel to The City of Ember; other books in the series include The Prophet of Yonwood and The Diamond of Darkhold. …
Jennifer Donnelly
A Northern Light, or A Gathering Light in the U.K., is an American historical novel for young adults, written by Jennifer Donnelly and published by Harcourt in 2003. The story is known as Realistic Fiction because of the untrue life story of Mattie Gokey, the real death of Grace …
Mike S. Miller
New Spring is a prequel novel in the Wheel of Time fantasy series by American author Robert Jordan. New Spring consists of 26 chapters and an epilogue.
Anthony Horowitz
Alex Rider will soon be a star in his very own TV series! Meet the orphan turned teen superspy who's saving the world one mission at a time—from #1 New York Times bestselling author! They said his uncle Ian died in a car accident. But Alex Rider knows that’s a lie, and the …
Christopher Moore
Island of the Sequined Love Nun is the fourth novel by absurdist author Christopher Moore, published in 1997. It is based partly on the author's personal experiences in Micronesia.
Zoë Heller
Notes on a Scandal is a 2003 novel by Zoë Heller. It is about a female teacher at a London comprehensive school who begins an affair with an underage pupil. The novel was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize. A film version was released in 2006 and stars Judi Dench and Cate …
Nevil Shute
Nevil Shute’s most powerful novel—a bestseller for decades after its 1957 publication—is an unforgettable vision of a post-apocalyptic world.After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive …
Raymond Chandler
Ed Bishop stars as Philip Marlowe in a powerful and atmospheric full-cast dramatisation of Raymond Chandler's classic noir novel. The first time Marlowe sets eyes on Terry Lennox, he is lying drunk in the passenger seat of a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith. The next time, he's on Skid …
Thomas Harris
Discover the origins of one of the most feared villains of all time in Thomas Harris's Hannibal Rising, a novel that promises to reveal the "evolution of Hannibal Lecter's evil." Thomas Harris first introduced readers to Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon, a tale wrapped around FBI …
Dan Simmons
The Terror is a 2007 novel by American author Dan Simmons. The novel is a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to the Arctic to force the Northwest Passage in 1845–1848. In the novel, while Franklin and his crew are …
Hunter S. Thompson
Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs is a book written by counterculture icon Hunter S. Thompson, first published in 1966 by Random House. It was widely lauded for its up-close and uncompromising look at the Hells Angels motorcycle club, …
Pat Conroy
With the spectacular worldwide success of his unforgettable novel The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy established himself as a major international writer. He is known for his anguished and painfully honest insights into families and the human heart. He now returns with Beach Music, …
Brent Weeks
The Way of Shadows is a 2008 fantasy novel written by Brent Weeks and is the first novel in The Night Angel Trilogy.
Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell's classic cross-cultural study of the hero's journey has inspired millions and opened up new areas of research and exploration. The first popular work to combine the spiritual and psychological insights of modern psychoanalysis with the archetypes of world …
Shel Silverstein
Millie McDeevit screamed a scream So loud it made her eyebrows steam.She screamed so loud Her jawbone broke,Her tongue caught fire,Her nostrils smoked...Poor Screamin' Millie is just one of the unforgettable characters in this wondrous new book of poems and drawings by the …
Agatha Christie
This BBC Radio FullCast dramatization of one of Agatha Christie's most imaginative mysteries stars John Moffatt as the great Belgian detective, Simon Williams as his faithful sidekick Captain Hastings, and Philip Jackson as Chief Inspector Japp. Alice Asher, a poor, elderly …
Rick Riordan
The Blood of Olympus is the fifth book in the bestselling Heroes of Olympus series - set in the high-octane world of Percy Jackson.Though the Greek and Roman crew members of the Argo II have made progress in their many quests, they still seem no closer to defeating the earth …
Neal Shusterman
Unwind is a 2007 science fiction novel by young adult literature author Neal Shusterman. It takes place in the United States, after a civil war somewhere in the near future. After a civil war—known as the Second Civil War or the Heartland War—is fought over abortion, a …
Tana French
New York Times bestselling author Tana French, author of The Witch Elm, is “the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (The Washington Post) and “inspires cultic devotion in readers” (The New Yorker). “Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, …
Richelle Mead
Shadow Kiss is a vampire novel written by Richelle Mead. It is the third novel in the Vampire Academy series, and was preceded by Frostbite. The release of the book pushed the Vampire Academy series into the New York Times Best Seller list for the first time, making its debut at …
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero, commonly known as Quo Vadis, is an historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish. "Quo vadis Domine" is Latin for "Where are you going, Lord?" and alludes to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, in which Peter flees Rome but on his …
Michael Chabon
Eagerly awaited new novella by the much -acclaimed Michael Chabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Advertures of Kavalier and Clay. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, prose magician Michael Chabon conjured up the …
Jane Green
Jemima J: A Novel About Ugly Ducklings and Swans is a 2000 novel by British author Jane Green.
Anne Tyler
Breathing Lessons covers the events of a day in the life of Maggie Moran, nearing fifty, married to Ira and with two children.
Scott Westerfeld
A year ago, Cal Thompson was a college freshman more interested in meeting girls and partying than in attending biology class. Now, after a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman named Morgan, biology has become, literally, Cal's life. Cal was infected by a parasite that has …
Chuck Hogan
Amazon Best of the Month, June 2009: Who better to reinvent the vampire genre than Guillermo Del Toro, the genius behind Pan's Labyrinth, and Chuck Hogan, master of character-driven thrillers like Prince of Thieves? The first of a trilogy, The Strain is everything you want from …
Okakura Kakuzō
The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō is a long essay linking the role of tea to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of Japanese life. Addressed to a western audience, it was originally written in English and is one of the great English tea classics. Okakura had been taught at a …
Ursula K. Le Guin
The Lathe of Heaven is a 1971 science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. The plot revolves around a character whose dreams alter reality, including past events. The story was first serialized in the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. The novel received …
Barbara Kingsolver
In The Lacuna, her first novel in nine years, Barbara Kingsolver, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, tells the story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds—an …
Terry Goodkind
Faith of the Fallen is the sixth book in Terry Goodkind's epic fantasy series The Sword of Truth.
William Strunk, Jr.
The Elements of Style is a prescriptive American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was composed by William Strunk Jr., in 1918, and published by Harcourt, in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of …
Andrzej Sapkowski
Blood of Elves is the first novel in the Witcher Saga written by Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski, first published in Poland in 1994. It is a sequel to the Witcher short stories collected in the books The Last Wish and The Sword of Destiny and is followed by Time of …
Thomas Keneally
The acclaimed bestselling classic of Holocaust literature, winner of the Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, and the inspiration for the classic film—“a masterful account of the growth of the human soul” (Los Angeles Times Book Review).A stunning novel …
Joseph O'Neill
Netherland is a novel by Joseph O'Neill. It concerns the life of a Dutchman living in New York in the wake of the September 11 attacks who takes up cricket and starts playing at the Staten Island Cricket Club.
Alessandro Baricco
In Alessandro Baricco's celebrated debut, it was silk that exerted a fatal attraction. This time it's the ocean, whose watery charms cause an entire cast of characters to convene at the isolated Almayer Inn. The guests include a seductress, an eccentric professor, and a painter …
Salman Rushdie
Immediately forget any preconceptions you may have about Salman Rushdie and the controversy that has swirled around his million-dollar head. You should instead know that he is one of the best contemporary writers of fables and parables, from any culture. Haroun and the Sea of …
Kingsley Amis
Lucky Jim is a novel by Kingsley Amis, published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It is Amis' first novel and won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. Set sometime around 1950, Lucky Jim follows the exploits of the eponymous James Dixon, a reluctant medieval history lecturer at an …
Bohumil Hrabal
TOO LOUD A SOLITUDE is a tender and funny story of Hant'a - a man who has lived in a Czech police state - for 35 years, working as compactor of wastepaper and books. In the process of compacting, he has acquired an education so unwitting he can't quite tell which of his thoughts …
Karel Capek
An unjustly forgotten masterpiece of anti-utopian fantasy that is possibly the equal of Orwell's Animal Farm. Capek writes of an avaricious Dutch seaman who discovers a race of bipedal and intelligent newts in Sumatra that is initially lauded as the equal of the human race, but …
Kelley Armstrong
Dime Store Magic is a fantasy novel by written by Kelley Armstrong
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
‘Here was the house of the living dead, a life like none other upon earth’In January 1850 Dostoyevsky was sent to a remote Siberian prison camp for his part in a political conspiracy. The four years he spent there, startlingly re-created in The House of the Dead, were the most …
Marcel Proust
In Search of Lost Time—also translated as Remembrance of Things Past—is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust (1871–1922). His most prominent work, it is known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the …
Jean-Paul Sartre
The first volume in his Roads to Freedom trilogy, Jean-Paul Sartre's The Age of Reason is a philosophical novel exploring existentialist notions of freedom, translated by Eric Sutton with an introduction by David Caute in Penguin Modern Classics. Set in the volatile Paris summer …
Lori Lansens
The Girls is the second novel by Canadian novelist and screenwriter Lori Lansens. It was first published in 2005 by Knopf Canada It is the life story of a pair of conjoined twins, Rose and Ruby Darlen, narrated by the twins themselves. Rose, a budding writer, also details key …
Graham Greene
"Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him..."Graham Greene's chilling exposé of violence and gang warfare in the pre-war underworld is a classic of its kind. Pinkie, a teenage gangster on the rise, is devoid of compassion or human …
Raymond E. Feist
Magician is a fantasy novel by Raymond E. Feist. It is the first book of the Riftwar Saga and was published in 1982. It led to many books written by Feist in the world of Midkemia, which was the setting for this book. Originally reduced in size by his editors, it was …
Tim Burton
This unassuming hardcover in black buckram with a dark lavender title plate is the door into a world of twisted pleasures. Filmmaker Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas) tells 23 winsomely macabre stories about boys and girls who don't …
Tanizaki Junichiro Dzsunicsiro
In Praise of Shadows is an essay on Japanese aesthetics by the Japanese author and novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. It was translated into English by the academic students of Japanese literature Thomas Harper and Edward Seidensticker.
Robert A. Heinlein
A fast-paced, science fiction romp through multiple universes from the bestselling author of Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land.“[Heinlein] is, if possible, a greater genius than ever before...this time by giving us a thinking man’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the …
Graham Greene
MI6’s man in Havana is Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then …
Anne McCaffrey
Dragondrums is a young adult science fiction novel by the American-Irish author Anne McCaffrey. Published by Atheneum Books in 1979, it was the sixth to appear in the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne or her son Todd McCaffrey. Dragondrums completed the Harper Hall of Pern …
Joseph Conrad
When Lord Jim first appeared in 1900, many took Joseph Conrad to task for couching an entire novel in the form of an extended conversation--a ripping good yarn, if you like. (One critic in The Academy complained that the narrator "was telling that after-dinner story to his …
Jacquelyn Mitchard
"Masterful...A big story about human connection and emotional survival" - Los Angeles Times The first book ever chosen by Oprah's Book ClubFew first novels receive the kind of attention and acclaim showered on this powerful story—a nationwide bestseller, a critical success, and …
Mary Roach
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex was written by Mary Roach in 2008. The book follows the winding history of science and its exploration of human sexuality, going back as far as Aristotle and finally ending with recent discoveries about the origination and anatomy of …
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Nabokov's third novel, The Luzhin Defense, is a chilling story of obsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge from the anxiety …
Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby returns to his roots-music and messy relationships-in this funny and touching new novel which thoughtfully and sympathetically looks at how lives can be wasted but how they are never beyond redemption. Annie lives in a dull town on England's bleak east coast and is …
Boris Akounine
Murder on the Leviathan is the third novel in the Erast Fandorin historical detective series by Boris Akunin, although it was the second book in the series to be translated into English. Its subtitle is герметический детектив. Akunin conceived of the Fandorin series as a summary …
Anne Rice
“RICE WRITES WITH HER USUAL EROTIC AND HISTORICALLY EVOCATIVE FLAIR.”–PeopleOnce a proud Senator in Imperial Rome, Marius is kidnapped and forced into that dark realm of blood, where he is made a protector of the Queen and King of the vampires–in whom the core of the …
Alessandro Baricco
This startling, sensual, hypnotically compelling novel tells a story of adventure, sexual enthrallment, and a love so powerful that it unhinges a man's life. In 1861 French silkworm merchant Hervé Joncour is compelled to travel to Japan, where, in the court of an enigmatic …
Lincoln Child
The Cabinet of Curiosities is a thriller novel by American writers Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, released on June 3, 2002 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the third installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series.
W. G. Sebald
If the mark of a great novel is that it creates its own world, drawing in the reader with its distinctive rhythms and reverberations, then W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz may be the first great novel of the new century. An unnamed narrator, resting in a waiting room of the Antwerp rail …
Amos Oz
Winner of the National Jewish Book AwardInternational Bestseller "[An] ingenious work that circles around the rise of a state, the tragic destiny of a mother, a boy’s creation of a new self." — The New YorkerA family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the …
Jonathan Lethem
The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It’s a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also …
Margaret Weis
Dragons of Autumn Twilight sets 'em up, and Dragons of Winter Night knocks 'em down. The second volume in Dragonlance's seminal trilogy stokes the action with a big ol' blast of dragon breath. The War of the Lance has begun in earnest, and the Companions--Tanis, Flint, the twins …
José Saramago
Death with Interruptions, published in Britain as Death at Intervals, is a novel written by José Saramago. First released in 2005 in its original Portuguese, the novel was translated into English by Margaret Jull Costa in 2008. The novel centers around death as both a …
Thomas Hardy
Some regard this book as Hardy's masterpiece. Here again we have a rural setting and a powerful and moving plot. The characters, too, are striking and well drawn, and one of them, Clym Yeobright, the hero, just misses greatness. Unlike Mr. Hardy's previous works, it is …
Tom Wolfe
A Man in Full is a novel by Tom Wolfe, published on November 12, 1998 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It is set primarily in Atlanta, with a significant portion of the story also transpiring in the East Bay region of Northern California.
Frederick Forsyth
The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man. One man with a rifle who can change the course of …
Arthur C. Clarke
2061: Odyssey Three is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke that was published in 1987. It is the third book in Clarke's Space Odyssey series. It returns to one of the lead characters of the previous novels, Heywood Floyd, and depicts Floyd's adventures, which take him …
Eric Carle
"In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf." So begins Eric Carle's modern classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. More than 12 million copies of this book have been sold in its original, full-sized edition, and the beloved tale of science and gluttony has been …
Tim Powers
Author Tim Powers evokes 17th-century England with a combination of meticulously researched historic detail and imaginative flights in this sci-fi tale of time travel. Winner of the 1984 Philip K. Dick Award for best original science fiction paperback, this 1989 edition of the …
Muriel Spark
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel by novelist Muriel Spark, the best known of her works. It first saw publication in The New Yorker magazine and was published as a book by Macmillan in 1961. The character of Miss Jean Brodie brought Spark international fame and brought …
Simon Singh
xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution "I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain."With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to …
Chuck Palahniuk
Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories is a non-fiction book by Chuck Palahniuk, published in 2004. It is a collection of essays, stories, and interviews written for various magazines and newspapers. Some of the pieces had also been previously published on the internet. The book is …
Jose Saramago
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago. A fictional re-telling of Jesus Christ's life, it depicts him as a flawed, humanised character with passions and doubts. The novel garnered controversy with some critics, especially among the …
Tom Clancy
Without Remorse is a thriller novel published in 1993 by Tom Clancy and is a part of the Jack Ryan universe series. While not the first novel of the series to be published, it is first in plot chronology. The main setting of the book is set during the Vietnam War, in the …
Erich Marx
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for …
Ha Jin
"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." Like a fairy tale, Ha Jin's masterful novel of love and politics begins with a formula--and like a fairy tale, Waiting uses its slight, deceptively simple framework to encompass a wide range of truths …
Nicholas Sparks
Message in a Bottle is the second romance novel written by American author Nicholas Sparks. The story, which explores the romance theme of love after grief, is set in the mid-late 1990s, then-contemporary Wilmington, North Carolina. The 1999 film Message in a Bottle produced by …
Tracy Kidder
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World is a non-fiction, biographical work by American writer Tracy Kidder. The book traces the life of physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer with particular focus on his work fighting …
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt is considered one of the most significant playwrights of our time. During the years of the Cold War, arguably only Beckett, Camus, Sartre, and Brecht rivaled him as a presence in European letters. In this ALTA National Translation Awardwinning new …
Jeannette Walls
Jeannette Walls s memoir The Glass Castle was nothing short of spectacular Entertainment Weekly Now in Half Broke Horses she brings us the story of her grandmother told in a first person voice that is authentic irresistible and triumphant Those old cows knew trouble was coming …
Jim Butcher
Furies of Calderon is a 2004 high fantasy novel by Jim Butcher. It is book one of the Codex Alera novel series.
Sven Regener
It's 1989 and, whenever he isn't hanging out in the local bars, Herr Lehmann lives entirely free of responsibility in the bohemian Berlin district of Kreuzberg. Through years of judicious sidestepping and heroic indolence, this barman has successfully avoided the demands of …
Philip Roth
Philip Roth's new novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The bestselling author of The Plot Against America now turns his attention from "one family's harrowing encounter with history" (New York Times) to one man's lifelong skirmish with …
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little House on the Prairie is a children's novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder, published in 1935. This book is the third of the series of books known as the Little House series. The book is about the months the Ingalls family spent on the Kansas prairie around the town of …