The most popular books in English
from 19801 to 20000
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.

Patricia Highsmith
This Sweet Sickness is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith, about an insane young man who is obsessed with his ex-lover.

T. Coraghessan Boyle
Greasy Lake is a collection of short stories by T. Coraghessan Boyle published in 1985 by Viking Press.

Gore Vidal
Myron is the name of a 1974 novel by Gore Vidal. It was written as a sequel to his 1968 bestseller Myra Breckinridge. The novel was published shortly after an anti-pornography ruling by the Supreme Court; Vidal responded by replacing the profanity in his novel with the names of …

David Anthony Durham
Book Description The thrilling new installment in the ambitious Acacia trilogy, praised by the Washington Post as "gripping and sophisticated."A few years have passed since the conquering of the Mein, and Queen Corinn is firmly in control of the Known World--perhaps too firmly. …

Graham Greene
A Sort of Life is the first volume of autobiography by British novelist Graham Greene, first published in 1971.

Oscar Zeta Acosta
The Revolt of the Cockroach People is a novel by Oscar Zeta Acosta. The novel is a semi-autobiographical fictionalized account of the August 29, 1970 Chicano Moratorium, a mass protest of the Vietnam War. In addition to political protest, the characters engage in insurrection …

Gianluca Morozzi
“A spine-tingling novel that keeps you mesmerized from beginning to end.”—InfiniteStorie“Morozzi has a light touch. He has an uncanny ability to convey mood swings, excitement and plot twists with ever increasing velocity.”—Gazzetta di Parma“A chilling and claustrophobic …

Jack Vance
The Dirdir is the third 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 the destruction of a human starship to return to Earth from the distant planet Tschai.

Primo Levi
The Sixth Day and Other Tales, written by Primo Levi, is a collection of short stories, originally published in Storie naturali and Vizio di forma. Unlike the author's earlier and better-known works, these stories may be considered science fiction.

Aldous Huxley
The Genius and the Goddess is a novel by Aldous Huxley. It was published by Chatto & Windus in the UK and by Harper & Row in the US. It is the fictional account of John Rivers, a student physicist in the 1920s who was hired out of college as a laboratory assistant to …

Fred Saberhagen
Sightblinder's Story is a book published in 1987 and written by Fred Saberhagen.

Carolyn Keene
The Strange Message in the Parchment is the fifty-fourth volume in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series. It was first published in 1974 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The actual author was ghostwriter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. A sheep farmer receives a mysterious telephone …

Sebastian Barry
The central character in Sebastian Barry's novel Annie Dunne is a woman who has been pushed to the margins, a woman whom life has given few chances of happiness and fulfillment. Unmarried, she spends years as housekeeper for her brother-in-law because her sister is too ill to …

John Ringo
The Last Centurion is a 2008 stand-alone novel by John Ringo. It is written in "blog style" from the point of view of a U.S. Army officer known as "Bandit Six". The novel is set in a post apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by a brief ice age and disease.

Debi Gliori
Pure dead wicked is a book published in 2002 that was written by Debi Gliori.

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.

John Mortimer
Rumpole's Last Case is a 1987 collection of short stories by John Mortimer about defence barrister Horace Rumpole. They were adapted from his scripts for the TV series of the same name. The stories were: "Rumpole and the Winter Break" "Rumpole and the Blind Tasting" "Rumpole and …

Valerio Massimo Manfredi
From the pen of the international bestselling author of The Last Legion comes a new political thriller set during the tempestuous final days of Julius Caesar's Imperial Rome. It is March in the year 44 BC. The Roman Empire stretches from modern-day Syria in the east to the …

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 …

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.

Peter Spier
Noah's Ark is a picture book written and illustrated by Peter Spier, first published by Doubleday in 1977. The text includes Spier's translation of "The Flood" by Jacobus Revius, a 17th-century poem telling the Bible story of Noah's Ark. According to Kirkus Reviews, the poem …

Alan Gratz
Something Rotten is the first novel of the Horatio Wilkes mystery series by Alan Gratz. It loosely follows the plot of Hamlet by William Shakespeare, but it is modernised and set in the United States.

Lauren Beukes
A new paperback edition of Lauren Beukes's frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable that follows four narrators living in a dystopian near-future. Kendra, an art-school dropout, brands herself for a nanotech marketing program. Lerato, an ambitious AIDS baby, plots to defect …

Dave Duncan
Stricken Field is a book published in 1993 that was written by Dave Duncan.

Scott Mebus
Gods of Manhattan is a 2008 children's novel by Scott Mebus. The book was first released on April 17, 2008 through Dutton Penguin and follows a young boy that has discovered a city that runs parallel to Manhattan.

Prosper Mérimée
Carmen, Merimee's classic tale of passion and power, provided the inspiration for one of the world's most enduringly popular operas, and numerous films. Like Carmen, the other stories in this book, including Mateo Falcone, The Etruscan Vase, and The Venus of Ille, explore the …

Steven L. Kent
The Clone Republic is the first book in the Clone series of novels, set in 2508 AD. It is followed by Rogue Clone, The Clone Alliance, The Clone Elite, The Clone Betrayal, The Clone Sedition, The Clone Empire, The Clone Redemption, and The Clone Assassin.

Piers Anthony
Prostho Plus is a science-fiction novel by Piers Anthony, published in 1971. It is a humorous space opera which follows the adventures of a prosthodontist, Dr. Dillingham who is picked up by aliens who are in need of dental work. Complications develop when he makes a diplomatic …

Alex Flinn
Breaking Point in a 2002 young adult novel by Alex Flinn. It was an 'Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers' in 2003. Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books said that the book was "a dark drama of self-destruction that should make for grimly satisfying reading" while …

H. L. A. Hart
The Concept of Law is the most famous work of the legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart. It was first published in 1961 and develops Hart's theory of legal positivism within the framework of analytic philosophy. In this work, Hart sets out to write an essay of descriptive sociology …

Muriel Spark
The Comforters is the first novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark. She drew on experiences as a recent convert to Catholicism and having suffered hallucinations due to using Dexedrine, an amphetamine then available over the counter for dieting. Although completed in late 1955, …

Rankin
The Garden Of Unearthly Delights is a novel by British author Robert Rankin. Its title is a reference to the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights by the painter Hieronymus Bosch.

Pat Murphy
The Wild Girls is a children's novel written by Pat Murphy. It won the Christopher Award, as well as the children's category of the 2008 Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year Awards.

David Lubar
It's been over a year since fourteen-year-old Eddie "Trash" Thalmeyer and his friends from Edgeview Alternative School found out about their special hidden talents. Trash can move things with his mind, Torchie is a fire-starter, Cheater reads minds, Lucky finds lost objects, …

Kingsley Amis
Colonel Sun is a novel by Kingsley Amis published by Jonathan Cape on 28 March 1968 under the pseudonym "Robert Markham". Colonel Sun is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's 1964 death. Before writing the novel, Amis wrote two other Bond related …

Dan Parkinson
The Gates of Thorbardin is one of the three novels in the Heroes II trilogy of the Dragonlance novels. It was written in 1990 by Dan Parkinson.

Erich Maria Remarque
In Spark of Life, a powerful classic from the renowned author of All Quiet on the Western Front, one man’s dream of freedom inspires a valiant resistance against the Nazi war machine. For ten years, 509 has been a political prisoner in a German concentration camp, persevering in …

Jack D. Schwager
The New Market Wizards is a book by Jack D. Schwager published on January 26, 1992 by HarperCollins. The format is very similar to his 1988 Market Wizards, with a new selection of interviews with super-traders. As in the previous volume, Schwager starts with a frank discussion …

Chris Ryan
The British Army's Special Air Service is one of the world's premier special operations units. During the Gulf War, deep behind Iraqi lines, an SAS team was compromised. A fierce firefight ensued, and the eight men were forced to run for their lives. Only one, Chris Ryan, …

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.

Karl Popper
The Open Society and Its Enemies is a work on political philosophy by Karl Popper, a critique of theories of teleological historicism in which history unfolds inexorably according to universal laws. Popper criticizes and indicts as totalitarian Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich …

Elena Ferrante
The incredible story continues in book three of the critically acclaimed Neapolitan Novels!Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante’s fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has …

Jennifer Niven
The beloved New York Times bestseller that Entertainment Weekly described as “sparkling” and says “get[s] under your skin.” You won’t soon forget this heart-wrenching, unflinching story of love shared, life lived, and two teens who find each other while standing on the edge. …

Michael Moorcock
The Warlord of the Air is a 1971 British alternate history science fiction novel written by Michael Moorcock. It concerns the adventures of Oswald Bastable, an Edwardian-era soldier stationed in India, and his adventures in an alternate universe, in his own future, wherein the …

Grace Metalious
In 1956 Grace Metalious published Peyton Place, the novel that unbuttoned the straitlaced New England of the popular imagination, transformed the publishing industry, topped the bestseller lists for more than a year, and made its young author one of the most talked-about people …

Donella Meadows
The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book about the computer simulation of exponential economic and population growth with finite resource supplies. Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and commissioned by the Club of Rome it was first presented at the St. Gallen Symposium. Its authors …

Patricia Highsmith
A Suspension of Mercy is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith. It was published in the US under the title The Story-Teller.

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 …

Michael Ruhlman
Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing is a 2005 book by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn about using the process of charcuterie to cure various meats, including bacon, pastrami, and sausage. The book received extremely positive reviews from numerous food critics …

Maurice Leblanc
The Crystal Stopper is a mystery novel by Maurice Leblanc featuring the adventures of the gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. The novel appeared in serial form in the French newspaper Le Journal from September to November 1912 and was released as a novel subsequently. Maurice Leblanc …

Irwin Shaw
Beggarman, Thief is a 1977 novel written by Irwin Shaw. It was a sequel to his 1970 bestseller Rich Man, Poor Man. The miniseries adapted from the original novel had a 1976-77 sequel entitled Rich Man, Poor Man Book II, broadcast prior to the publication of Beggarman, Thief and …

Christa Wolf
When The Quest for Christa T. was first published in East Germany ten years ago, there was an immediate storm: bookshops in East Berlin were given instructions to sell it only to well-known customers professionally involved in literary matters; at the annual meeting of East …

Thomas Mann
Royal Highness is the delightfully ironic tale of a small, decadent German duchy and its invigoration by the intellect and values of an independent-minded American woman. Peopled with a range of characters from aristocrat to artisan, Royal Highness provides a microcosmic view of …

Sigmund Freud
This classic edition of The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud includes complete texts of six works that have profoundly influenced our understanding of human behavior. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud is presented here in the translation by Dr. A. A. Brill, who for almost forty …

Bertolt Brecht
Described by Brecht as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us all', Arturo Ui is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler - recast by Brecht into a small-time Chicago gangster's takeover of the city's greengrocery trade. Using a wide range of …

Peter Stamm
A new novel of artful understatement about mortality, estrangement, and the absurdity of life from the acclaimed author of Unformed Landscape and In Strange GardensOn a day like any other, Andreas changes his life. When a routine doctor’s visit leads to an unexpected prognosis, …

Elfriede Jelinek
Lust is a novel by Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek. Originally published in German in 1989, it was translated into English in 1992 by Michael Hulse.

Alexander Pushkin
Dubrovsky is an unfinished novel by Alexander Pushkin, written in 1832 and published after Pushkin’s death in 1841. The name Dubrovsky was given by the editor.

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
A Mind at Peace is an iconic Turkish novel by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, one of the pioneers of literary modernism in Turkey. Tanpınar was a poet, novelist, and critic who worked as a professor of Ottoman and Turkish literature at Istanbul University. Though he was known in his …

James Grady
Six Days of the Condor is a thriller novel by American author James Grady, first published in 1974 by W.W. Norton. The story is a suspense drama set in contemporary Washington, D.C., and is considerably different from the 1975 film version, Three Days of the Condor. It was …

Joseph Roth
Confession of a Murderer details the interior life of a man consumed by jealousy and hatred. In a Russian restaurant on Paris's Left Bank, Russian exile Golubchik alternately fascinates and horrifies a rapt audience with a wild story of collaboration, deception, and murder in …

Qian Zhongshu
Fortress Besieged was written by Qian Zhongshu, published in 1947, and is widely considered one of the masterpieces of twentieth century Chinese literature. The novel is a humorous tale about middle-class Chinese society in the late 1930s. It was made into a popular television …

Hanns Heinz Ewers
Alraune is a novel by German novelist Hanns Heinz Ewers published in 1911. It is also the name of the female lead character. The book originally featured illustrations by Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt
The Execution of Justice is a 1985 novel by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It tells the story of an attorney who is tasked to reinvestigate a man sentenced for murder. The book criticises elements of the legal system and ponders on the nature of justice. It was adapted …

Hans Fallada
The Drinker is a novel by German writer Hans Fallada, first published posthumously in 1950. Fallada began the novel, in 1944, when he was imprisoned in a criminal asylum for the attempted murder of his wife. It is autobiographical, in diary form, and tells the story of a man in …

Peter Schneider
A smartly guided romp, entertaining and enlightening, through Europe's most charismatic and enigmatic cityIt isn't Europe's most beautiful city or its oldest. Its architecture is not more impressive than that of Rome or Paris; its museums do not hold more treasures than those in …

Ricardo Pinto
The Standing Dead is a 2002 fantasy novel by Ricardo Pinto. It is the second book in The Stone Dance of the Chameleon trilogy, which concerns the harrowing experiences of the young and inexperienced heir to a ruling dynasty who is suddenly taken from his protected childhood and …

Robert Service
Lenin: A Biography is a biography of the Marxist theorist and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin written by the English historian Robert Service, then a professor in Russian History at the University of Oxford. It was first published by Macmillan in 2000 and later republished in other …

Nina Berberova
The Italics are Mine is the autobiography of Nina Berberova. It was first published in the 1960s. It was re-issued in 1992 following the success of her novellas and short story collections, written in the 1930s, which had been rediscovered in the mid 1980s and published by …

Rupert Smith
The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World is a treatise on modern warfare written by General Sir Rupert Smith and published in 2005. Smith is a retired general who spent 40 years in the British Army; he commanded the 1st Armoured Division in the First Gulf War and …

Arthur Koestler
The Roots of Coincidence is a 1972 book by Arthur Koestler, an introduction to theories of parapsychology, including extrasensory perception and psychokinesis. Koestler postulates links between modern physics, their interaction with time and paranormal phenomena. It is …

Johann D. Wyss
The Swiss Family Robinson is a novel by Johann David Wyss, first published in 1812, about a Swiss family shipwrecked in the East Indies en route to Port Jackson, Australia.

Lion Feuchtwanger
First published in 1934 but fully imagining the future of Germany over the ensuing years, The Oppermanns tells the compelling story of a remarkable German Jewish family confronted by Hitler's rise to power. Compared to works by Voltaire and Zola on its original publication, this …