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DeutschThe most popular books in English.
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.
Ingeborg Bachmann
This is collection of the stories written by a distinguished German author who died in 1973. Reading these stories entails abandoning the terms of one's own comfort. The author's relentless vision demands that readers allows themselves to be hypnotised, taken over by her …
Wolfgang Koeppen
"A recovered masterpiece....Remarkable as a sidelong, searing appraisal of the legacy of the Nazi years."―Publishers Weekly, starred review A masterpiece by a writer long neglected in America, The Hothouse created a literary stir when it appeared in hardcover. Evoking …
Alfred Andersch
The Father of a Murderer takes place in a classroom of the Wittelsbach Gymnasium in 1920s Munich over the course of a single Greek lesson. Head-master Himmler (the father of Heinrich Himmler) enters the classroom, apparently to observe the students' progress. However, he soon …
John Banville
Hugo von Hoffmannsthal made his mark as a poet, as a playwright, and as the librettist for Richard Strauss’s greatest operas, but he was no less accomplished as a writer of short, strangely evocative prose works. The atmospheric stories and sketches collected here—fin-de-siècle …
Jacques Tardi
Spectacular faux-woodcut vistas make Tardi’s groundbreaking “icepunk” story a retro classic. In its ongoing quest to showcase the wide range of Jacques Tardi’s bibliography, Fantagraphics reaches all the way back to one of his earliest, and most distinctive graphic novels: A …
Bertolt Brecht
Stories of Mr. Keuner gathers Bertolt Brecht's fictionalized comments on politics, everyday life, and exile. Written from the late 1920s till the late 1950s, Stories of Mr. Keuner is the precipitate of Brecht's experience of a world in political and cultural flux, a world of …
Jack Higgins
Midnight Runner is a novel by Jack Higgins published in 2002. It is his tenth Sean Dillon novel.
Evangeline Walton
The Island of the Mighty is a fantasy novel by Evangeline Walton, the earliest in a series of four based on the Welsh Mabinogion. It was first published in 1936 under the publisher's title of The Virgin and the Swine. Although it received warm praise from John Cowper Powys, the …
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Shiloh is a Newbery Medal-winning children's novel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor published in 1991. The 65th book by Naylor, it is the first in a trilogy about a young boy and the title character, an abused dog. Naylor decided to write Shiloh after an emotionally taxing experience …
John C. Bogle
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns is a 2007 book on index investing, by John C. Bogle, the founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group. He focuses on index funds, which will give the investor the average …
Francie Lin
The Foreigner is a crime thriller and debut novel by author Francie Lin. The novel was published on May 27, 2008 and won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
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.
Gaston Leroux
The Phantom of the Opera is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialisation in Le Gaulois from September 23, 1909, to January 8, 1910. It was published in volume form in April 1910 by Pierre Lafitte. The novel is partly inspired by historical …
Louise Penny
The #1 New York Times Bestseller"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." ―Leonard CohenChristmas is approaching, and in Québec it's a time of dazzling snowfalls, bright lights, and gatherings with friends in front of blazing hearths. But shadows are …
Hans Keilson
Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II, The Death of the Adversary is the self-portrait of a young man helplessly fascinated by an unnamed "adversary" whom he watches rise to power in 1930s Germany. It is a tale of horror, not only in its evocation of …
Michel Leiris
"Not only one of the frankest of autobiographies, but also a brilliantly written book, Leiris' Manhood mingles memories, philosophic reflections, sexual revelation, meditations on bullfighting, and the life-long progress of self-discovery."—Washington Post Book World "Leiris …
Robert Antelme
Arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Dachau, Robert Antelme recovered his freedom a year later when François Mitterand, visiting the camp in an official capacity, recognized the dying Antelme and had him spirited to Paris. Antelme's story of his experiences in Germany--his …
Pierre Michon
Small Lives (Vies minuscules), Pierre Michon’s first novel, won the Prix France Culture. Michon explains that he wrote it "to save my own skin. I felt in my body that my life was turning around. This book born in an aura of inexpressible joy and catharsis rescued me more …
Alina Reyes
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS is an erotic adventure story in which the reader can choose what happens next. The book is divided into two halves(men read from one end,women the other)and each chapter gives a choice of sexual fantasies or 'doors'to open next.The story opens,in both …
Stendhal
Lucien Leuwen is the second major novel written by French author Stendhal in 1834, following The Red and the Black. It remained unfinished due to the political culture of the July Monarchy in the 1830s and Stendhal's fears of losing his government position by offending the …
Georg Büchner
Lenz is a novella fragment written by Georg Büchner in Strasbourg in 1836. It is based on the documentary evidence of Jean Frédéric Oberlin's diary. Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, a friend of Goethe, is the subject of the story. In March 1776 he met Goethe in Weimar. Later he …
Martha Ostenso
Wild Geese is a Canadian novel of the historical fiction genre written by the author Martha Ostenso, first published in 1925 by Dodd, Mead and Company. The story is set on the prairies of Manitoba, Canada in the 1920s. The novel details characters struggling against …
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and …
Ludwig von Mises
Liberalism is an influential book by Austrian School economist and libertarian thinker Ludwig von Mises, containing economic analysis and indicting critique of socialism. It was first published in 1927 by Gustav Fischer Verlag in Jena and defending classical liberal ideology …
Oswald Spengler
The Decline of the West, or The Downfall of the Occident, is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler, the first volume of which was published in the summer of 1918. Spengler revised this volume in 1922 and published the second volume, subtitled Perspectives of World History, in …
Willard V. Quine
Word and Object is a 1960 work by Willard Van Orman Quine, his most famous book. In it, Quine expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in From a Logical Point of View, and reformulates some of his earlier arguments, such as his attack on the analytic-synthetic …
Jacques Lacarrière
Gnostics have always sought to know” rather than to accept dogma and doctrine, often to their peril. This inquiry into Gnosticism examines the character, history, and beliefs of a brave and vigorous spiritual quest that originated in the ancient Near East and continues into the …
Richard Price
The Wanderers is a novel by the American author Richard Price. It was first published as a book in 1974. The plot is set in the Bronx, New York City, from mid 1962 to mid 1963.
Gary Berntsen
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander is an autobiographical book by CIA agent Gary Berntsen describing the time he spent in Afghanistan at the beginning of the American campaign against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and …
Michel Foucault
The Archaeology of Knowledge is a 1969 book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is a methodological and historiographical treatise promoting what Foucault calls "archaeology" or the "archaeological method", an analytical method he implicitly used in his previous works …
Elke Heidenreich
A bold and self-serving tom cat reigns supreme both in the farmyard in Italy where he was born and later in the comfortable home in Germany to which a vacationing couple takes him and his helpless sister. A bold and self-serving tom cat reigns supreme both in the farmyard in …
Günter Grass
The Call of the Toad, published in Germany in 1992 as Unkenrufe, is a novel by Danzig-born German author Günter Grass. It describes the love story between the German widower Alexander Reschke and Alexandra Polin widowed Piatkowska. It was adapted into a 2005 film directed by …
Patricia Hill Collins
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment is a 1990 book by Patricia Hill Collins.
Franz Kafka
The Zürau Aphorisms are 109 aphorisms of Franz Kafka, written from September 1917 to April 1918 and published by his friend Max Brod in 1931, after his death. They are selected from his writing in Zürau in West Bohemia where he stayed with his sister Ottla, suffering from …
Jack Kerouac
Orpheus Emerged is a novella written by Jack Kerouac in 1945 when he was at Columbia University. The novella was discovered after his death and published in 2002. Orpheus Emerged chronicles the passions, conflicts, and dreams of a group of bohemians searching for truth while …
Patrick Rambaud
The Retreat is a historic novel by the French author Patrick Rambaud that was first published in 2000. The English translation by Will Hobson appeared in 2004. The Retreat describes the occupation of Moscow by the French Army in 1812 and its disastrous retreat. The action in the …
John Brockman
The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century is a 2002 collection of essays by twenty-five well-known scientists, edited by Edge Foundation founder John Brockman, who wrote the introduction. The essays contain speculation by the authors about the …
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Fable for Another Time is a 1952 novel by the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline. The narrative recounts Céline's experiences during what seems to be a hypothetical bombing of an area of Montmartre by the allies on the days preceding D-day. The whole of the action of this …
J.-H. Rosny
The Quest for Fire is a 1911 Belgian novel by "J.-H. Rosny", the pseudonym of two brothers; the author was likely the elder of the two, Joseph Henri Honoré Boex. It was first published in English in 1967. It was made into a feature film of the same name in 1981. The film stars …
Stan Nicholls
Quicksilver Rising is a book published in 2003 that was written by Stan Nicholls.
Marie NDiaye
Rosie Carpe is a 2001 novel by the French writer Marie NDiaye. It received the 2001 Prix Femina. It was originally published in France by Les Éditions de Minuit. The English translation by Tamsin Black was published in 2004 in the USA by the University of Nebraska press.
Andrei Alexandrescu
Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied is a book written by Andrei Alexandrescu, published in 2001 by Addison-Wesley. It has been regarded as "one of the most important C++ books" by Scott Meyers. The book makes use of and explores a C++ programming …
John Robinson
Honest to God is a book written by the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich John A.T. Robinson, criticising traditional Christian theology. It aroused a storm of controversy on its original publication by SCM Press in 1963. Robinson had already achieved notoriety by his defence of the …
Alan Dean Foster
Voyage to the City of the Dead is a science fiction novel written by Alan Dean Foster.
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 …
Derek Robinson
Piece of Cake is a 1983 novel by Derek Robinson which follows a fictional Royal Air Force fighter squadron through the first year of World War II, and the Battle of Britain. It was later made into a television series. Although a work of fiction, the novel purports to be as …
Gilles Kepel
Jihad The Trail of Political Islam is a book by French author and scholar Gilles Kepel. It was originally published in French in 2000 by Gallimard, with English translations by Anthony F. Roberts from Belknap Press in 2002 and I.B. Tauris in 2006. The book provides a detailed …
Tom Harpur
The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light is a 2004 best-selling non-fiction book by Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest, journalist and professor of Greek and New Testament at the University of Toronto, which supports the Christ myth theory. W. Ward Gasque described him as …
Charlotte Zolotow
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, written by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, is a 1962 picture book published by HarperCollins. It was a Caldecott Medal Honor Book for 1963 and was one of Sendak's Caldecott Honor Medal of a total of seven during his career. …
Manuel Puig
Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages is a 1980 novel by Argentine novelist Manuel Puig. As in other works by Puig, the story is formally experimental, consisting of mostly unattributed dialogue, digressing into stories within stories. It also bears many of Puig favorite …
Reinaldo Arenas
Published in 1987, Farewell to the Sea is the third book in Reinaldo Arenas' Pentagonia which critics have often argued as his best. Set on a Cuban beach immediately following the revolution, a disenchanted poet mourns for the new suppression while his wife longs for the …
Roberto Arlt
Mad Toy is the first novel of the Argentinean author Roberto Arlt. Published in 1926 by Editorial Latina, it is markedly autobiographical in nature. The original manuscripts were written in the 1920s and were drafted by Arlt in the mountains of Córdoba, in a time when his wife, …
