The most popular books in English
from 19001 to 19200
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.

Wolfgang Koeppen
Here is an English translation of a post-war German classic. The events of the novel take place during the course of a single day in an unnamed city in occupied Germany where the endless drone of allied planes overhead increases the already heightened tension. Throughout this …

Théophile Gautier
Romantic provocateur, flamboyant bohemian, precocious novelist, perfect poet—not to mention an inexhaustible journalist, critic, and man-about-town—Théophile Gautier is one of the major figures, and great characters, of French literature. In My Fantoms Richard Holmes, the …

Dino Buzzati
A New York Review Books Original There’s a certain street—via Saterna—in the middle of Milan that just doesn’t show up on maps of the city. Orfi, a wildly successful young singer, lives there, and it’s there that one night he sees his gorgeous girlfriend Eura disappear, “like a …

Marcel Proust
In this conclusion to this section of Proust’s classic, we get to understand what he means by budding grove.’ As the summer on the beach winds down, the adolescent Proust is increasingly smitten by the young beauties his age he passes by but never gets to meet... until a …

Gregor von Rezzori
This is a European classic. Set in Rumania, Austria, Germany and Italy between the last century's world wars, this is a novel of great beauty about men and the histories that define them. Our hero tells of his childhood: his passion for hunting, his love of the wild landscape of …

Olivier Ka
"Peter was a populist priest. He was cool. He was funny. He was no priest, just a regular guy. It’s like I had another uncle. A great one, who laughed, who sang, who tickled. Until he took us for summer camp. Until we were so close, temptation came in the picture." Based on a …

Florian Zeller
The Catcher in the Rye with a French accent. Even if it blows your mind, I want to tell you about this unbelievable thing that happened to me last year. I’m not bragging, but things as unbelievable as the one I’m going to tell you about don’t happen every day, I swear. In fact, …

Frédérick Leboyer
The classic guide to gentle birth that revolutionized the way we welcome our children into the world. • The first book to express what mothers have always known: babies are born complete human beings with the ability to experience a full range of emotions. • Shows how gentle …

Marek Halter
The ancient world and its politics come to life through the eyes of a young Jewish woman, Mary of Nazareth Miriam–also known as Mary–was born into a Palestine oppressed by Herod the Great; she is accustomed to living with uncertainty and unrest. But when her beloved father is …

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
Paul et Virginie is a novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, first published in 1788. The novel's title characters are friends since birth who fall in love. The story is set on the island of Mauritius under French rule, then named Île de France. Written on the eve of …

Tonino Benacquista
Praise for Holy Smoke, the first in the Antoine series:“A terrific black comedy …both a blasphemously funny satire of provincial Italian chicanery and a wry acknowledgment of the ambivalence that ambitious immigrants feel about their roots.”—The New York Times“Unexpected deadly …

Jean-Claude Izzo
"Izzo digs deep into what makes men weep."-Time Out New York In this moving investigation into the human comedy, the men aboard an impounded freighter in the port of Marseilles are divided: Wait for the money owed them, or accept their fate and abandon ship? Captain Abdul Aziz …

Herta Müller
From the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature!“[The Passport] has the same clipped prose cadences as Nadirs, this time applied to evoke the trapped mentality of a man so desperate for freedom that he views everything through a temporal lens, like a prisoner staring at a …

Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole: From Minor to Major is a compilation of the first three books The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole and The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole. The book also contains the specially written bonus, Adrian Mole and the Small …

Tahar Djaout
This elegant, haunting novel takes us deep into the world of bookstore owner Boualem Yekker. He lives in a country being overtaken by the Vigilant Brothers, a radically conservative party that seeks to control every element of life according to the laws of their stringent moral …

Emile Zola
Doctor Pascal is the twentieth and final novel of the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola, first published in June 1893 by Charpentier. Zola's plan for the Rougon-Macquart novels was to show how heredity and environment worked on the members of one family over the course of the …

Georges Bernanos
Under the Sun of Satan was the first novel published by Georges Bernanos. It was #45 on Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century.

T. J. Stiles
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt is a 2009 biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, a 19th-century American industrialist and philanthropist who built his fortune in the shipping and railroad industries, becoming one of the wealthiest Americans in the history of …

Claude Lévi-Strauss
The Raw and the Cooked is the first volume from Mythologiques, a structural study of Amerindian mythology written by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. It was originally published in French as Le Cru et le Cuit. Although the book is part of a larger volume Lévi-Strauss …

John Gardner
Icebreaker, first published in 1983, was the third novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and is the first Bond novel to be published in …

Gillian Bradshaw
In Winter's Shadow is the final book in a trilogy of fantasy novels written by Gillian Bradshaw. It tells the story of King Arthur's downfall, as recounted by his wife Gwynhwyfar.

Barbara Emberley
Drummer Hoff is the title and main character of a children's book by Barbara and Ed Emberley. Ed Emberley won the 1968 Caldecott Medal for the book's illustrations. Written by Barbara Emberley, it tells a cumulative tale of seven soldiers who build a cannon named the "Sultan", …

Ingri D'Aulaire
Abraham Lincoln is a book by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire about Abraham Lincoln. Released by Doubleday Publishers, it was the recipient of the Caldecott Medal for illustration in 1940.

Faith Ringgold
Tar Beach, written and illustrated by Faith Ringgold, is a children's picture book published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991. Tar Beach, Ringgold's first book, was a Caldecott Medal Honor Book for 1992. For that work she won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award and the Coretta …

James A. Owen
The Indigo King, released on October 21, 2008, is the third book of The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, a series of books begun by Here, There Be Dragons, by James A. Owen. It follows The Search for the Red Dragon and precedes The Shadow Dragons, which was released in …

Tanith Lee
Delirium's Mistress is the fourth novel in Tales From The Flat Earth by Tanith Lee.

Chris Bunch
Sten is the first book in Chris Bunch and Allan Cole's The Sten Adventures.

Nancy Springer
The White Hart is the first novel in the five-volume "The Book of the Isle" series by US fantasy author Nancy Springer. It was first published in the United States by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster in 1979. It is set in a land much like pre-Roman Britain. It …

Robin Jarvis
The Crystal Prison is the second novel in the Deptford Mice Trilogy by Robin Jarvis.

Julie Anne Peters
Rage: A Love Story is a young adult novel by Julie Anne Peters. It was first published in hardback in 2009. The story follows Johanna who falls in love with Reeve who has suffered much abuse in her life. When their relationship struggles, Reeve begins to physically abuse Johanna …

Patricia McKissack
Friendship For Today is an award nominated book written by Patricia McKissack.

Omar Tyree
Flyy Girl is young adult/new adult literature and an urban fiction book written by Omar Tyree. The book was originally published by Mars Productions in 1993 and republished by Simon & Schuster for adults in 1996. The novel is regarded to be the genesis of the modern …

Pope John Paul II
The Jeweler's Shop is a three-act play, written by Pope John Paul II in 1960, that looks at three couples as their lives become intertwined and mingled with one another. The play looks at humanity's ideas and expectations of romantic love and marriage. It is a truthful and …

Drew Karpyshyn
Mass Effect: Retribution is a novel by Drew Karpyshyn.

Rafik Schami
Spænder over et århundredes syrisk historie og fortæller samtidig om to klaners indbyrdes kamp gennem tre generationer.

Stephen Wright
The Amalgamation Polka is the fourth novel by writer Stephen Wright. The setting of novel is during the time of the Civil War of the United States. The plot is wrapped around the story of Liberty Fish and his travels after joining the Union army. The New York Times has compared …

Ousmane Sembène
Xala is a 1973 novel by Ousmane Sembène. It is about El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a businessman who is struck by impotence on the night of his wedding to his third wife. It was adapted into a movie, also called Xala and directed by Sembene.

V.S. Naipaul
A Turn in the South is a travelogue of the American South written by Nobel Prize-winning writer V. S. Naipaul. The book was published in 1989 and is based upon the author's travels in the southern states of the United States. Naipaul has written fiction and non-fiction about …

Primo Levi
This is the principal English language collection of poems by the Italian author Primo Levi.

Max Frisch
Montauk is a story by Swiss writer Max Frisch. It first appeared in 1975 and takes an exceptional position in Frisch's work. While fictional stories previously served Frisch for exploring the possible behavior of his protagonists, in Montauk, he tells an authentic experience: a …

Harry Turtledove
Darkness Descending by Harry Turtledove, is the second book in the Darkness series.

Enid Blyton
Five Have Plenty Of Fun is the 14th novel in The Famous Five series by Enid Blyton. It was first published in 1955. An American girl, Berta, stays with the five. Mysterious visitors to Kirrin island and a kidnapping combine to make this the adventure of a lifetime. Berta is …

Patrick Modiano
La Place de l'étoile is the first novel of the French writer Patrick Modiano. It was published by Gallimard in 1968 and won the Roger Nimier Prize and Fénéon Prize. The novel, which draws on elements of autobiography, recounts the story of Raphael Schlemilovitch, a French Jew …

Seamus Heaney
The Spirit Level is a poetry collection written by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It won the poetry prize for the 1996 Whitbread Awards. Heaney has been recorded reading this collection on the Seamus Heaney Collected Poems album.

Christopher Priest
The Extremes is a 1998 science fiction novel by the English writer Christopher Priest. The novel received the BSFA Award.

Georges Simenon
Maigret and the Yellow Dog is a detective novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon.

Dinesh D'Souza
Letters to a Young Conservative is a book published in 2002 that was written by Dinesh D'Souza.

Joe Haldeman
The Hemingway Hoax is a short novel by science fiction writer Joe Haldeman. It weaves together a story of an attempt to produce a fake Ernest Hemingway manuscript with themes concerning time travel and parallel worlds. A shorter version of the book won both a Hugo award and a …

Isaac Asimov
Magic is a collection of short stories and essays by Isaac Asimov, all within the fantasy genre, collected and released after his death. The first seven stories are part of his Azazel series, while the remainder are three more traditional medieval fantasies and one mystery story …

Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Der Auftrag is a 1986 novella by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The first English publication appeared in 1988, translated by Joel Agee. The experimental narrative is divided into twenty-four parts, each one a single sentence spanning many pages. In his forward to the …

Gudrun Pausewang
The Last Children of Schewenborn is a 1983 novel by Gudrun Pausewang, depicting life in Germany in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The story is fictional, but as the author states in the epilogue, Schewenborn, where the story takes place is modeled on the small town of Schlitz …

Ludwig von Mises
Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis is a book by Austrian School economist and libertarian thinker Ludwig von Mises, first published in German by Gustav Fischer Verlag in Jena in 1922 under the title Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus. It was …

Kate Chopin
The Awakening, originally titled A Solitary Soul, is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox …

Spider Robinson
Mindkiller is a 1982 novel by science fiction writer Spider Robinson. The novel, set in the late 1980s, explores the social implications of technologies to manipulate the brain, beginning with wireheading, the use of electric current to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain …

Michael Shermer
Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown is a 2004 book by Michael Shermer, a historian of science and founder of The Skeptics Society. It contains thirteen essays about "personal barriers and biases that plague and propel science, especially when scientists push …

Tucker Max
Assholes Finish First is a book by Tucker Max, detailing anecdotal stories, usually revolving around drinking and sex. It is the sequel to I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. The book debuted at Number 3 on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover nonfiction on October 17, …

Adrienne Rich
On Lies, Secrets and Silence is a 310-page, non-fiction book written by Adrienne Rich and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1979. The book follows the author, Adrienne Rich telling and informing the readers about themes and aspects of her life and work. Other topics …

Søren Kierkegaard
On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates is Søren Kierkegaard's university thesis paper that he submitted in 1841. This thesis is the culmination of three years of extensive study on Socrates, as seen from the view point of Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Plato. …

Willa Cather
Alexander's Bridge is the first novel by American author Willa Cather. First published in 1912, it was re-released with an author's preface in 1922. It also ran as a serial in McClure's, giving Cather some free time from her work for that magazine.

Jacques Derrida
Limited Inc is a 1988 book by Jacques Derrida, containing two essays and an interview. The first essay, "Signature Event Context," is about J. L. Austin's theory of the illocutionary act outlined in his How To Do Things With Words. The second essay, "Limited Inc a b c...", is …

Jessica Mitford
The American Way of Death is an exposé of abuses in the funeral home industry in the United States, written by Jessica Mitford and published in 1963. Feeling that death had become much too sentimentalized, highly commercialized, and, above all, excessively expensive, Mitford …

Gabriel Wilensky
Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Teachings About Jews Paved the Road to the Holocaust is a history book by author Gabriel Wilensky. The book examines the role Christian teachings about Jews played in enabling the racial eliminationist antisemitism that gave rise to the …

Philip José Farmer
Behind the Walls of Terra is a book published in 1970 that was written by Philip José Farmer.

Jack L. Chalker
Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold is the second book in the Four Lords of the Diamond series by author Jack L. Chalker. First published as a paperback in 1982. It continues the saga started in Lilith: A Snake in the Grass, and is followed by Charon: A Dragon at the Gate and Medusa: A …

Peter Goldsworthy
Maestro is a 1989 novel written by Australian author Peter Goldsworthy. It is a bildungsroman which deals with the themes of art and life. The novel was shortlisted for the 1990 Miles Franklin Award. It has been translated into German, and is a set text on year-twelve syllabuses …

John Vornholt
Voices is the first book in the series of original science fiction novels based on the Emmy Award-winning series Babylon 5 created by J. Michael Straczynski. The book was written by John Vornholt.

H. Beam Piper
The Cosmic Computer is a book published in 1963 that was written by H. Beam Piper.

William C. Dietz
Legion of the Damned is a science fiction novel by William C. Dietz, first published by Ace Books in 1993. This is the first book in the nine book Legion of the Damned series by William C. Dietz. The final novel was released in November 2011. Dietz has since begun a prequel …

Joel C. Rosenberg
Epicenter is a 2006 non-fiction Christian book by political column poster Joel C. Rosenberg. The book was released on September 1, 2006 through Tyndale House Publishers, Inc and concerns how current events in the Middle East and other places in the world resemble prophecies from …

Jacqueline Wilson
The Bed and Breakfast Star is a children's novel by British author Jacqueline Wilson.