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DeutschThe most popular books in English
from 19401 to 19600
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.
Len Deighton
The classic spy thriller of lethal computer-age intrigue and a maniac’s private cold war, featuring the same anonymous narrator and milieu of The IPCRESS File.The fourth of Deighton’s novels to be narrated by the unnamed employee of WOOC(P) is the thrilling story of an …
Christopher Isherwood
Originally published in 1945, Prater Violet is a stingingly satirical novel about the film industry. It centers around the production of the vacuous fictional melodrama Prater Violet, set in nineteenth-century Vienna, providing ironic counterpoint to tragic events as Hitler …
Carolyn Keene
Aunt Eloise Drew invited Nancy and her friends to Mirror Bay Bide-a-Wee cabin near Cooperstown, New York, for a visit and a chance to solve the mystery of the woman who glides across the water. Upon their arrival, Nancy becomes mixed up in a vacation hoax and is nearly arrested …
Will Self
British satirist Will Self spins four interconnected stories into a brilliantly insightful commentary on human foibles and resilience. Will Self's remarkable new stories center on the disease and decay that target the largest of human organs: the liver. Set in locales as toxic …
José Saramago
Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago. It was first published in 1977. An English translation by Giovanni Pontiero was published in 1993.
Li Cunxin
At the age of eleven, Li Cunxin was one of the privileged few selected to serve in Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution by studying at the Beijing Dance Academy. Having known bitter poverty in his rural China home, ballet would be his family's best chance for a better future. From …
Mary Wesley
An Imaginative Experience is a novel by British author Mary Wesley. The story concerns a young mother who has lost her husband and son in a car crash and the guilt and self-reproach she has to go through as a consequence of her loss.
Walter Scott
Kenilworth. A Romance is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, first published on 8 January 1821.
George Tenet
At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA is a memoir co-written by former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet with Bill Harlow, former CIA Director of Public Affairs. The book was released on April 30, 2007 and outlines Tenet's version of 9/11, the …
Jack Vance
Servants of the Wankh is the second science fiction adventure novel in the tetralogy Tschai, Planet of Adventure. Written by Jack Vance, it tells of the efforts of the sole survivor of a human starship destroyed by an unknown enemy to return to Earth from the distant planet …
James Ellroy
Because the Night is a crime fiction novel written by James Ellroy. Released in 1984, it is the second installment of a trilogy often titled "Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy", after its main character, or "L.A Noir", after the hard-book copy that was released containing all three books in …
John Galsworthy
In Chancery is the second novel of the Forsyte Saga trilogy by John Galsworthy and was originally published in 1920, some fourteen years after The Man of Property. Like its predecessor it focuses on the personal affairs of a wealthy upper middle class English family.
Lawrence Durrell
Monsieur, published in 1974 and sub-titled The Prince of Darkness, is the first volume in Lawrence Durrell's The Avignon Quintet. As a group, the five novels narrate the lives of a group of Europeans prior to and after World War II. Monsieur begins the quincunx of novels with a …
Frances Temple
The Ramsay Scallop is a young adult historical romance written by Frances Temple. It is set around 1300, and involves a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostella. The novel was first published in 1994.
Richard Garfinkle
Celestial Matters is a science fantasy novel, set in an alternate universe with different laws of physics, written by Richard Garfinkle and published by Tor Books in 1996. It is a work of alternate history and meticulously elaborated "alternate science", as the physics of this …
Garry Disher
The Dragon Man is a 1999 crime novel by the Australian author Garry Disher.
Harry Turtledove
Between the Rivers is a fantasy novel by Harry Turtledove. The book centers on a fantasy realm that is analogous to ancient Mesopotamia based on the myths and legends of Sumer and Babylon.
Olaf Stapledon
Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest is a 1935 science fiction novel by the British author Olaf Stapledon. The novel explores the theme of the Übermensch in the character of John Wainwright, whose supernormal human mentality inevitably leads to conflict with normal human …
Scott Westerfeld
The Risen Empire is a science fiction novel by Scott Westerfeld.
Elaine Cunningham
The Dream Spheres is a book published in 1999 that was written by Elaine Cunningham.
Gerald Durrell
The Overloaded Ark, first published in 1953, is the debut book by British naturalist Gerald Durrell. It is the chronicle of a six months collecting trip to the West African colony of British Cameroon - now Cameroon - - that Durrell made with the highly regarded aviculturist and …
Carolyn Keene
The Sky Phantom is the fifty-third volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1976 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams.
Christina Hoff Sommers
Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women is a 1994 book by Christina Hoff Sommers, a writer who was at that time a philosophy professor at Clark University. It received wide attention for its attack on American feminism, and it was given highly polarized reviews divided …
Nancy Mitford
Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy is a book that purports to be edited by Nancy Mitford, illustrated by Osbert Lancaster, caricaturist of English manners, and published by Hamish Hamilton. The anthology comprises four …
Roger Zelazny
Today We Choose Faces is a 1973 science fiction novel by Roger Zelazny. As originally constructed, Part 1 was an extensive flashback which followed Part 2, but the order of the sections was changed at the request of editor David Hartwell, who felt that the novel worked better in …
Keiji Nishitani
Religion and Nothingness is a 1961 book by the Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani.
Barry Williams
Growing Up Brady: I Was A Teenage Greg is a 1992 autobiography written by actor Barry Williams with Chris Kreski. In Growing Up Brady, Williams discusses his childhood, the production of the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch, his relationship with co-star Maureen McCormick, disputes …
Carolyn Keene
The Ghost of Blackwood Hall is the twenty-fifth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1948 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson.
John Ringo
Von Neumann's War is a book published in 2006 that was written by John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor.
William R. Forstchen
Rally Cry is the first novel in William Forstchen's Lost Regiment series of science fiction novels. The book follows the Union Army's 35th Maine Volunteer Infantry and 44th New York Light Artillery as they board a transport ship, the Ogunquit, in City Point, Virginia on January …
Yasuko Aoike
Follows the adventures of a British aristocrat, who sidelines as an international art thief, and his partner, a straight-laced N.A.T.O. officer, as they travel around the world in the late 1970s.
Sesyle Joslin
What Do You Say, Dear? is a book written by Sesyle Joslin and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
Ruth Rendell
Put on by Cunning is a novel by British crime-writer Ruth Rendell. It was first published in 1981, and features her popular series protagonist Inspector Wexford. It is the 11th in the series. The title comes from a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act V Scene II: "How these …
Desmond Bagley
Running Blind is a first person narrative espionage thriller novel by English author Desmond Bagley, first published in 1970 with a cover by Norman Weaver.
Charles Bukowski
To his legions of fans, Charles Bukowski was—and remains—the quintessential counterculture icon. A hard-drinking wild man of literature and a stubborn outsider to the poetry world, he wrote unflinchingly about booze, work, and women, in raw, street-tough poems whose truth has …
Fred Saberhagen
The Second Book of Swords is a book published in 1983, written by Fred Saberhagen.
Morgan Llywelyn
Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas is a historical fiction about Gráinne O'Malley, the so-called "Sea Queen of Connemara", by American-born Irish author Morgan Llywelyn.
Gael Baudino
Maze of Moonlight is a novel written by Gael Baudino in 1993. It is the second in the Strands of Starlight tetralogy. The other novels are Strands of Starlight, Shroud of Shadow, and Strands of Sunlight.
Julie Burchill
Sugar Rush is Julie Burchill's first novel aimed at teenagers, published in 2004. It charts the progress of Kim Lewis as she is forced to leave her posh high school and attend the infamous local comprehensive, Ravendene. This coincides with a fight with her best friend, Zoe …
Walter Kirn
Mission to America is a novel by American novelist Walter Kirn. The novel is narrated by Mason LaVerle, a member of a tiny religious sect in rural Bluff, Montana, called the Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostles, whose complicated views involve a kind of highly incorporative theology …
Philip Palmer
Debatable Space is a 2008 science fiction novel by novelist and screenwriter Philip Palmer. The book alternates between telling the story of the main character, Lena Smith, in the form of a diary and a first-person narrative of events which take place roughly 1000 years from the …
Geraldine McGaughrean
When Pepper Roux was born his aunt foretold that he would not live past 14 years of age. Throughout his childhood his parents haven't bothered with him much, knowing that his life would be short-lived. So when Pepper wakes up on his 14th birthday he knows this will be the day …
Brandon Mull
Jason tumbles into a quest to save a magical in this #1 New York Times bestselling start to Brandon Mull’s Beyonders fantasy series.Jason Walker has often wished his life could be a bit less predictable—until a routine day at the zoo ends with Jason suddenly transporting from …
Francisco Coloane
"These stories, well translated from the Spanish, describe the severe beauty and cruelty of southern Chile—cold, inhospitable, full of craggy, treacherous channels—the end of the world. As in Jack London’s stories, the environment forms a crucible in which man’s true—or perhaps …
César Aira
New in the New Directions Pearls series: an extremely rich mad scientist attempts to clone a leading genius in a bid to take over the world. César is a translator who’s fallen on very hard times due to the global economic downturn; he is also an author, and a mad scientist …
Beverly Cleary
Mitch and Amy is a children's novel by Beverly Cleary, illustrated by George Porter. The story follows the escapades of the fraternal Huff twins, Mitch and Amy, in Berkeley, California. Although the book was written in the late 1960s, the book stays true to Cleary's penchant for …
Plato
The collected dialogues of Plato is a book written by Plato.
Benito Pérez Galdós
Doña Perfecta is a 19th-century realist novel by Benito Pérez Galdós from what is called the first of Galdós's three epochs in his novels of social analysis.
Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill
The Subjection of Women is the title of an essay written by John Stuart Mill in 1869, possibly jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, stating an argument in favour of equality between the sexes. At the time it was published in 1869, this essay was an affront to European …
Jane Gardam
God on the Rocks is a novel written by Jane Gardam and published in 1978.
George Santayana
The great philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist masterfully offers his fascinating outline of Aesthetics Theory. Drawing on the art, literature, and social sciences involved, Santayana discusses the nature of beauty, form, and expression.
Helen Dunmore
The Tide Knot is a children's novel by English writer Helen Dunmore, published in 2006 and the second of the Ingo tetralogy. It won the Nestlé Children's Book Prize Silver Award and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
