The most popular books in English
from 23601 to 23800
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.

William Lindsay Gresham
Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a …

Margaret Mead
During her exceptional life Margaret Mead represented many things to the American public; sage, scientist, noncomformist, crusader for world peace, and archetypal grandmother. An enduring cultural icon for our century, she came to symbolize a new kind of woman, one who …

Heinrich von Kleist
Prince Friedrich of Homburg is the indisputable dramatic masterpiece of Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), a leading figure, along with Goethe and Schiller, among early German Romantics. Available until now only in verse translation, it has been newly rendered for the American …

Stephen King
Many people who write about horror literature maintain that mood is its most important element. Stephen King disagrees: "My deeply held conviction is that story must be paramount.... All other considerations are secondary--theme, mood, even characterization and language." These …

Peter Handke
Short Letter, Long Farewell is one the most inventive and exhilarating of the great Peter Handke’s novels. Full of seedy noir atmospherics and boasting an air of generalized delirium, the book starts by introducing us to a nameless young German who has just arrived in America, …

Franz Kafka
Letters to Felice is a book collecting some of Franz Kafka's letters to Felice Bauer from 1912 to 1917. Schocken Books acquired these letters from Felice Bauer in 1955, in addition to roughly half of Kafka's letters to Grete Bloch, Bauer's friend. Additional letters to Bloch …

Anthony Burgess
The Pianoplayers is a 1986 novel by Anthony Burgess, drawing heavily on his memories of his father, a pub piano-player. The narrator, Ellen Henshaw, is a prostitute who later becomes a madam. Her father, Billy, plays the piano in the cinema, accompanying silent movies. it was …

Graham Greene
Ways of Escape is ostensibly the second volume of autobiography by British novelist Graham Greene, first published in 1980, but it is not a conventional autobiography, concentrating more on the author's work than his life and often blurring the line between the two.

Martha Gellhorn
Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) was a war correspondent for nearly fifty years. From the Spanish Civil War in 1937 through the wars in Central America in the mid-eighties, her candid reports reflected her feelings for people no matter what their political ideologies, and the …

Karl-Heinz Frieser
The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West is a book by Karl-heinz Frieser and John T. Greenwood.

Herta Müller
Nadirs is a collection of largely autobiographical short stories by Romanian-German writer and Nobel laureate Herta Müller. The stories center on life in the Romanian countryside and the violent, oppressive atmosphere of Romania in the mid-20th century.

Tennessee Williams
Summer and Smoke is a two-part, thirteen-scene 1948 play by Tennessee Williams, originally titled Chart of Anatomy when Williams began work on it in 1945. The phrase "summer and smoke" probably comes from the Hart Crane poem "Emblems of Conduct" in the 1926 collection White …

Andrew McGahan
Last Drinks is a 2000 Ned Kelly Award winning novel by the Australian author Andrew McGahan. A stage version premiered at Brisbane's La Boite Theatre in August 2006.

Ruth Rendell
The Face of Trespass is a novel by British writer Ruth Rendell, first published in 1974.

P. G. Wodehouse
A Gentleman of Leisure is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse. The basic plot first appeared in a novella, The Gem Collector, in the December 1909 issue of Ainslee's Magazine. It was substantially revised and expanded for publication as a book under the title The Intrusion of Jimmy, by …

Philip Levine
What Work Is is a collection of American poetry by Philip Levine. The collection has many themes that are representative of Levine's writing including physical labor, class identity, family relationships and personal loss. Its primary focus on work and the working class led to …

José Lezama Lima
Paradiso was the only novel by Cuban poet José Lezama Lima to be completed and published during his lifetime. Written in an elaborately baroque style, the narrative follows the childhood and youth of José Cemí, and depicts many scenes which resonate with Lezama's own life as a …

John Christopher
Empty World is a science fiction novel written by John Christopher aimed at an adolescent audience. It was Christopher's eleventh such novel. The German station ZDF produced a TV adaptation of Empty World in 1987. An updated film adaptation of Empty World is currently in …

Jack N. Rakove
Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution is a non-fiction book authored by Jack N. Rakove and published on March 25, 1996 in hardcover by Knopf and on May 26, 1997 by Vintage Books in paperback. Rakove investigates the meaning of the United States …

Ariel Dorfman
How to Read Donald Duck is an early work critiquing popular cultural forms that has been labelled by some as communist propaganda written by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart. It discusses the impact of comic books featuring the Walt Disney Duck cartoon characters. The book was …

Jack London
The Scarlet Plague is a post-apocalyptic fiction novel written by Jack London and originally published in London Magazine in 1912. The story takes place in 2073, sixty years after an uncontrollable epidemic, the Red Death, has depopulated the planet. James Howard Smith is one of …

Holling C. Holling
Seabird is a 1948 book for children and young people, written and illustrated by Holling Clancy Holling. The ship's boy on an 1830 whaling ship uses his years of off duty time and walrus tusks traded from an Eskimo to carve an ivory gull, which later serves as the family mascot. …

Robert Bloch
Psycho II is a 1982 novel that Robert Bloch wrote as a sequel to his 1959 novel Psycho. The novel was completed before the screenplay was written for the unrelated 1983 film Psycho II. According to Bloch, Universal Pictures loathed the novel, which was intended to critique …

Art Spiegelman
Breakdowns is a collected volume of underground comic strips by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. The book is made up of strips dating to before Spiegelman started planning his graphic novel Maus, but includes the strip "Maus" which presaged the graphic novel, and "Prisoner on …

Philip Bobbitt
Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century is a work by Philip Bobbitt that calls for a reconceptualization of what he calls "the Wars on Terror." First published in 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and by the Allen Lane imprint of Penguin in the U.K., Terror …

William Sleator
The Duplicate, published in 1988, is a science fiction novel for young adults written by William Sleator.

Isaac Asimov
The Union Club Mysteries is a collection of mystery short stories by American author Isaac Asimov featuring his fictional mystery solver Griswold. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1983 and in paperback by the Fawcett Crest imprint of Ballantine Books in 1985. …

Niel Hancock
Calix Stay is a book published in 1977 that was written by Niel Hancock.

Antonia Forest
End of Term is a book by British children's author Antonia Forest, published in 1959. End of Term is the fourth Marlow book, between Falconer's Lure and Peter's Room.

edited by Frederik Pohl
The Far Shore of Time is a science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl which concludes The Eschaton Sequence and the adventures of Dan Dannerman, an American government agent of the near future who becomes involved with the discovery of advanced and warring aliens.

Bruce Brooks
The Moves Make The Man is a sports novel written by award-winning author Bruce Brooks that deals with many issues in society including racism, domestic violence, abuse, and family deaths. It was chosen best book of 1984 by School Library Journal, ALA Notable Children's Book, …

Clark Ashton Smith
Zothique is a collection of fantasy short stories by Clark Ashton Smith, edited by Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the sixteenth volume of its celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June 1970. It was the first themed collection of …

Rona Jaffe
Mazes and Monsters is a 1981 novel by Rona Jaffe. The novel is a cautionary tale regarding the then-new hobby of fantasy role-playing games. The book was adapted into a made-for-television movie by the same name in 1982 starring young Tom Hanks.

Andre Norton
The Stars Are Ours! is a 1954 science fiction novel written by Andre Norton. It describes the first interstellar voyage, undertaken to escape the tyranny that rules the Earth. Norton wrote a sequel, Star Born, which was published in 1957.

Thomas Sowell
Knowledge and Decisions is a non-fiction book by American economist Thomas Sowell. The book was initially published in 1980 by Basic Books and reissued in 1996.

Gary Gygax
Saga of Old City is a fantasy novel by Gary Gygax, set in the world of Greyhawk, which is based on the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.

Kevin J. Anderson
The novel follows Verne and André Nemo from their childhoods. Verne is depicted as being a sheltered, almost neurotic individual who is incapable of taking risks, while Nemo is adventurous and resourceful, especially after the death of his father. Both lust after the …

Cynthia Rylant
Old Town in the Green Groves, by Cynthia Rylant, is a novel based on some notes left by Laura Ingalls Wilder and a general knowledge about her life and the times. This book is not officially part of the Little House series, but describes the years between On the Banks Of Plum …

Ian Bremmer
The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall is a book by political scientist Ian Bremmer. It was named a "Book of the Year" in 2006 by The Economist. Bremmer's J Curve describes the relationship between a country's openness and its stability; focusing on the …

Alan Dean Foster
Patrimony is a science fiction novel by Alan Dean Foster. The book is the thirteenth chronologically in the Pip and Flinx series.

Eric Ericson
Design for Impact: 50 Years of Airline Safety Cards is a book written by Eric Ericson and Johan Pihl.

David Graeber
Now in paperback: David Graeber’s “fresh . . . fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debt Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there …

Julie Otsuka
A gorgeous novel by the celebrated author of When the Emperor Was Divine that tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago. In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary …

Katherine Boo
This enhanced eBook features exclusive video footage shot over the course of three years by the author and several children of the Annawadi slum.From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking …