Fiction
Novels valued for their writing, depth and ideas, from classics to recent prize winners. Toni Morrison's Beloved, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz and George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo are modern landmarks; Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Parable of the Sower, and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay are widely read and taught. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and William Styron's Sophie's Choice stand beside Susanna Clarke's Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which blend literature and fantasy. For readers and book clubs who want stories that stay with them; every book has discussion questions.
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Present-day stories about love, friendship and growing up. Romance readers will find Helen Hoang's The Kiss Quotient, Talia Hibbert's Get a Life, Chloe Brown, Beth O'Leary's The Flatshare, Tia Williams's Seven Days in June and Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue: warm, funny books with real emotional weight. Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia, a classic about friendship and loss, is a moving read for young readers and adults alike. Easy to start and hard to put down: good choices for book clubs and comfort reading.
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Novels that bring the past to life. Several confront the history of slavery and its legacy: Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, Edward P. Jones's The Known World, Alex Haley's Roots and Octavia E. Butler's Kindred. Others travel to medieval Italy in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Renaissance Florence in Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait, feudal Japan in James Clavell's Shogun and Lincoln's Washington in George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo. Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman and Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo bring the twentieth century closer. A wide shelf, with prize winners and book club favourites throughout.
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Science fiction from the classics to modern favourites. Frank Herbert's Dune and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed are cornerstones of the genre; Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season and Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem are award-winning modern classics. Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Parable of the Sower and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go use the genre to examine society, while Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary and Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are pure enjoyment. Browse by theme, from space exploration to time travel.
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Fantasy from timeless classics to modern bestsellers. Epic and high fantasy includes J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind and Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree. Myth and folklore inspire Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles and S. A. Chakraborty's The City of Brass. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Piranesi bring magic into English history and a strange endless house, while Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Michael Ende's The Neverending Story and Richard Adams's Watership Down are classics for every age. For readers who want other worlds, and the best way in.
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Puzzles, detectives and secrets waiting to be uncovered. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose sets a murder investigation in a medieval abbey; Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X is a Japanese crime novel built around a brilliant cover-up. Tana French's In the Woods follows a Dublin detective haunted by his own past, and Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle replays one murder through eight different hosts. Alex Michaelides's The Silent Patient and Susanna Clarke's Piranesi offer mysteries of a different kind. For readers who like to work out the answer before the last page.
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Page-turners built on tension, twists and dread. Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Alex Michaelides's The Silent Patient are among the best-known psychological thrillers of recent years; Tana French's In the Woods and Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X pair crime with deep character studies. Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a puzzle box, and Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait builds suspense around a young duchess in Renaissance Italy. Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary and Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem bring the same tension to science. For readers who want to keep turning the pages.
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Crime fiction centres on a crime, usually a murder or disappearance, and on the people who commit it, investigate it or are caught up in it. Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl is one of the defining crime novels of its era: on their fifth anniversary, Amy Dunne disappears, and her husband Nick becomes the prime suspect, as the story is told in turns by each of them and nothing is what it first seems. A sharp, twisting portrait of a marriage and of media frenzy. More crime novels will join this shelf; see Mystery & Detective Fiction and Thriller & Suspense for more.
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Love stories of every kind, from classics to recent favourites. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is still the model for the genre. Contemporary romances include Emily Henry's Beach Read, Sally Thorne's The Hating Game, Helen Hoang's The Kiss Quotient, Beth O'Leary's The Flatshare and Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue. Julia Quinn's The Duke and I opens the Bridgerton series, Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds is a sweeping family saga, and Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo looks back on a Hollywood life. Warm, funny and moving reads, and a favourite with book clubs.
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Horror classics that still keep readers up at night. Stephen King leads with Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining and The Stand: a bullied girl with terrible powers, a small town overrun by vampires, a family snowbound in a haunted hotel and a world after a deadly plague. William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, about a young girl's possession and the priests who fight for her, remains one of the most famous horror novels ever written. Read them for the fear, and for how well they understand ordinary people under extreme pressure.
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Stories of quests, journeys and survival. Frank Herbert's Dune follows Paul Atreides on a desert planet at the centre of an empire; Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea follows a young wizard who must face a shadow he set loose. Richard Adams's Watership Down sends a band of rabbits in search of a new home, and William Goldman's The Princess Bride is an adventure that laughs at itself. Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, Stephen King's The Stand and David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet round out a shelf for readers who want a story that keeps moving.
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Novels set inside families and marriages, where the biggest dramas happen at home. Alex Haley's Roots and Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds follow families across generations; John Irving's The World According to Garp follows one unforgettable mother and son. Domestic suspense comes from Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, Alex Michaelides's The Silent Patient and Stephen King's The Shining, a family isolated in a snowbound hotel. Lighter reads include Emily Henry's Beach Read, Tia Williams's Seven Days in June and Julia Quinn's The Duke and I. Something for every mood, all about the people closest to us.
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Books that make you laugh, and often make a point while doing it. Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and William Goldman's The Princess Bride are much-loved comic adventures; Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is as witty as it is romantic. Satire turns sharper in Paul Beatty's The Sellout, a Booker Prize winner about race in America, and in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. John Irving's The World According to Garp mixes comedy and tragedy, and Shel Silverstein's poems in Where the Sidewalk Ends delight children and adults alike.
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Fiction
Novels that break the usual rules of storytelling. W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn mix memory, history and photographs into long, haunting walks through the past. George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo tells of a single night through a chorus of ghosts and historical sources, and Paul Beatty's The Sellout is a fierce satire of race in America. Simon Jimenez's The Spear Cuts Through Water builds a fantasy epic from shifting voices. For readers who enjoy a challenge; see also our article on framed manuscripts and fictional footnotes.
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Fiction
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