The Road cover
Literary Fiction The Road

Cormac McCarthy

A father and son journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, clinging to each other and the last ember of hope.

4.0 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Survival
Beloved cover
Literary Fiction Beloved

Toni Morrison

An emancipated slave is haunted by the ghost of her dead daughter -- a shattering portrait of trauma, memory, and freedom.

3.9 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
The Remains of the Day cover
Literary Fiction The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

An English butler reflects on a lifetime of devoted service and the love he quietly, fatally suppressed.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Blood Meridian cover
Literary Fiction Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

A brutal, visionary epic following a teenage drifter across a landscape of near-mythic violence on the Texas-Mexico border.

4.2 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty War
One Hundred Years of Solitude cover
Literary Fiction One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Seven generations of the Buendia family in the mythical town of Macondo -- the definitive masterpiece of magical realism.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Family
To Kill a Mockingbird cover
Literary Fiction To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

A young girl in the Depression-era South watches her father defend a Black man falsely accused of a terrible crime.

4.3 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
The Catcher in the Rye cover
Literary Fiction The Catcher in the Rye

J.D. Salinger

A disillusioned teenager wanders New York for three days after being expelled -- the defining novel of adolescent alienation.

3.8 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
The Perks of Being a Wallflower cover
Literary Fiction The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stephen Chbosky

A quiet, sensitive teenager writes letters to an anonymous stranger about his first year of high school -- and what he's trying to survive.

4.2 via Goodreads
Emotional Coming of Age
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone cover
Literary Fiction Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

J.K. Rowling

An orphaned boy discovers on his eleventh birthday that he's a wizard -- and the world of magic has been waiting for him.

4.5 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Identity
The Fault in Our Stars cover
Literary Fiction The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

Two teenagers with cancer fall in love at a support group -- a story that refuses to be sentimental and earns every tear.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
The Outsiders cover
Literary Fiction The Outsiders

S.E. Hinton

A teenager from the wrong side of town navigates gang rivalries and loyalty -- written when its author was just sixteen.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Coming of Age
A Wrinkle in Time cover
Literary Fiction A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle

A misfit girl travels through time and space to rescue her father -- and faces a force that wants to erase individuality.

4.0 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Identity
Normal People cover
Literary Fiction Normal People

Sally Rooney

Two young people from the same small Irish town orbit each other from school through college -- intimately observed and profoundly honest.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
A Man Called Ove cover
Literary Fiction A Man Called Ove

Fredrik Backman

A grumpy old man who wants to die is gradually pulled back into life by his new, too-noisy neighbours.

4.4 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Love
The Midnight Library cover
Literary Fiction The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

Nora finds herself in a library between life and death where every book is a life she could have lived. Which one is the right one?

4.0 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Identity
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine cover
Literary Fiction Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Gail Honeyman

A woman with no social skills and a rigid routine is gradually, painfully, beautifully opened up by an unexpected friend.

4.0 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Identity
Anxious People cover
Literary Fiction Anxious People

Fredrik Backman

A bank robbery gone wrong leads to a hostage situation at an apartment viewing -- and eight very peculiar people who need each other.

3.8 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo cover
Literary Fiction The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Taylor Jenkins Reid

A reclusive Old Hollywood star agrees to tell her story -- and the truth is more scandalous, heartbreaking, and human than anyone expected.

4.2 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
Gilead cover
Literary Fiction Gilead

Marilynne Robinson

An ageing pastor in rural Iowa writes a letter to his young son -- a life's worth of memory, regret, and hard-won grace.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Family
A Little Life cover
Literary Fiction A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara

Four college friends build lives in New York, but one carries wounds so deep they threaten to pull them all under.

4.3 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Friendship
The Kite Runner cover
Literary Fiction The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

A boy in Kabul betrays his closest friend -- and spends the rest of his life trying to make it right.

4.3 via Goodreads
Emotional Redemption
Speak cover
Literary Fiction Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson

A high-school outcast stops speaking after a summer party no one will talk about -- and finds her voice through art.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Looking for Alaska cover
Literary Fiction Looking for Alaska

John Green

A teenager goes to boarding school looking for adventure -- and finds a brilliant, reckless girl who changes everything.

3.8 via Goodreads
Emotional Coming of Age
Where the Crawdads Sing cover
Literary Fiction Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens

A girl abandoned by her family grows up alone in the North Carolina marshes -- then becomes the prime suspect in a murder.

4.5 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Survival
Americanah cover
Literary Fiction Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A young Nigerian woman navigates race, identity, and love across three continents -- and discovers that belonging is never as simple as a passport.

4.3 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Secret History cover
Literary Fiction The Secret History

Donna Tartt

Six classics students at an elite Vermont college commit a murder -- and the real horror is how easily they justify it.

4.1 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Friendship
Daisy Jones & The Six cover
Literary Fiction Daisy Jones & The Six

Taylor Jenkins Reid

An oral history of a fictional 1970s rock band's explosive rise and mysterious breakup -- told by the people who lived it and the secrets they kept.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
The Goldfinch cover
Literary Fiction The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt

A thirteen-year-old survives a museum bombing and stumbles out with a priceless painting -- which becomes both his anchor and his curse for the next fourteen years.

3.9 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
I'll Give You the Sun cover
Literary Fiction I'll Give You the Sun

Jandy Nelson

Twin artists tell their story in split timelines -- one in words, one in art -- as a family secret threatens to tear them apart.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
Prep cover
Literary Fiction Prep

Curtis Sittenfeld

A middle-class girl arrives at an elite boarding school and spends four years observing the codes of wealth, beauty, and belonging she can never quite crack.

3.3 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Remarkably Bright Creatures cover
Literary Fiction Remarkably Bright Creatures

Shelby Van Pelt

A widowed night janitor at an aquarium forms an unlikely bond with a giant Pacific octopus -- who knows a secret about her missing son.

4.4 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Loss & Grief
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow cover
Literary Fiction Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Gabrielle Zevin

Two friends bond over video games as children, then spend decades building virtual worlds together -- while struggling to navigate the real one.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Friendship
Demon Copperhead cover
Literary Fiction Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver

David Copperfield retold in the opioid-ravaged hollows of Appalachia -- a boy fights his way through foster care, addiction, and a system that never wanted to save him.

4.5 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
Lessons in Chemistry cover
Literary Fiction Lessons in Chemistry

Bonnie Garmus

A brilliant female chemist in the 1960s is forced off the lab bench -- and accidentally becomes the star of a cooking show that teaches America to think like scientists.

4.2 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
Never Let Me Go cover
Literary Fiction Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

Three friends raised in an English boarding school discover their lives have been shaped by a terrible, hidden purpose.

3.8 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
A Gentleman in Moscow cover
Literary Fiction A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

A Russian count sentenced to perpetual house arrest in a grand Moscow hotel discovers that a confined life can still be infinitely rich.

4.5 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Identity
Three Men in a Boat cover
Literary Fiction Three Men in a Boat

Jerome K. Jerome

Three amiable men and a dog attempt a boating holiday on the Thames, managing to make every simple task into a minor catastrophe.

4.0 via Goodreads
Light & Fun Friendship
Fight Club cover
Literary Fiction Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk

An insomniac office worker creates an alter ego who leads him into a secret world of organised violence and anarchic philosophy.

4.2 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
The Lovely Bones cover
Literary Fiction The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold

A teenage girl narrates her own story from the afterlife, watching her family grieve and her killer go free.

3.8 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Loss & Grief
No Longer Human cover
Literary Fiction No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai

A man pieces together the notebooks of a stranger whose life was a sustained performance of humanity concealing a radical inability to connect.

4.1 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
Animal Farm cover
Literary Fiction Animal Farm

George Orwell

The animals of Manor Farm overthrow their human farmer and establish a new order -- which quickly proves just as tyrannical as the one they replaced.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Politics
Convenience Store Woman cover
Literary Fiction Convenience Store Woman

Sayaka Murata

A thirty-six-year-old woman has found her perfect place in the world -- the Smile Mart convenience store -- and sees no reason to want anything else.

3.7 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Alchemist cover
Literary Fiction The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

A young Spanish shepherd follows an omen across the Sahara in search of buried treasure and discovers that the journey itself is the point.

3.9 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Identity
Holes cover
Literary Fiction Holes

Louis Sachar

A boy sent to a brutal desert camp starts digging -- and begins to uncover connections between his family's curse, a century-old crime, and the warden's secret.

4.1 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Friendship
The Giver cover
Literary Fiction The Giver

Lois Lowry

A boy is selected to receive the memories of his society's true history -- and discovers the terrible price his perfect world has been paying for its peace.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Corrections cover
Literary Fiction The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen

Three adult children and their ageing parents collide during one final Christmas gathering as the family's carefully maintained fictions begin to unravel.

3.7 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Family
Catch-22 cover
Literary Fiction Catch-22

Joseph Heller

Yossarian is quite certain someone is trying to kill him. The problem is that the only way to ground a pilot for insanity is to ask -- but asking proves you are sane.

3.9 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty War
Cold Comfort Farm cover
Literary Fiction Cold Comfort Farm

Stella Gibbons

Newly orphaned and entirely practical, Flora Poste descends on her eccentric rural relatives to sort out their melodramatic lives -- whether they want her to or not.

3.9 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Family
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry cover
Literary Fiction The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rachel Joyce

Harold Fry, retired and unremarkable, receives a letter from a dying friend. Instead of posting his reply, he begins to walk to her -- five hundred miles away.

4.0 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Love
Dial A for Aunties cover
Literary Fiction Dial A for Aunties

Jesse Q. Sutanto

Meddlesome Chinese-Indonesian aunties, an accidental corpse, and a lavish wedding that cannot be cancelled -- what could possibly go wrong?

3.8 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Family
Hatchet cover
Literary Fiction Hatchet

Gary Paulsen

Thirteen-year-old Brian survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a hatchet and the knowledge that no one is coming to save him.

3.9 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Survival
The House on Mango Street cover
Literary Fiction The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros

Esperanza Cordero grows up on Mango Street in Chicago, watching and listening and building inside herself the person she is going to become.

3.8 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
I Am the Messenger cover
Literary Fiction I Am the Messenger

Markus Zusak

Ed Kennedy is a nineteen-year-old cabdriver with no direction, until he foils a bank robbery and starts receiving playing cards with addresses -- and instructions to help strangers.

4.0 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Howl's Moving Castle cover
Literary Fiction Howl's Moving Castle

Diana Wynne Jones

The eldest of three sisters and therefore (by her own resigned logic) destined for nothing, Sophie is cursed into an old woman's body -- and moves into the castle of a feared wizard.

4.3 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
Middlemarch cover
Literary Fiction Middlemarch

George Eliot

A panoramic portrait of an English provincial town where idealism collides with the limits of what society will allow -- and love proves both salvation and trap.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Crime and Punishment cover
Literary Fiction Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

A brilliant student murders a pawnbroker to prove he is above ordinary morality -- then spends the rest of the novel being destroyed by conscience.

4.3 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
The Great Gatsby cover
Literary Fiction The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

A mysterious millionaire throws lavish parties in pursuit of a woman he lost five years ago, while the American Dream rots quietly behind the spectacle.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Love
Jane Eyre cover
Literary Fiction Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte

An orphaned governess refuses to surrender her dignity or her moral convictions, even as she falls in love with a man concealing a terrible secret.

4.2 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Of Mice and Men cover
Literary Fiction Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

Two itinerant workers share a dream of owning their own land -- and the gap between that dream and a brutal, indifferent world is the whole tragedy.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Friendship
East of Eden cover
Literary Fiction East of Eden

John Steinbeck

Two families in California's Salinas Valley play out an epic struggle between good and evil across multiple generations -- and one word, timshel, changes everything.

4.4 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
The Bell Jar cover
Literary Fiction The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath

A young woman wins a coveted internship in New York and descends, step by careful step, into a depression she cannot name or escape.

4.1 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
Things Fall Apart cover
Literary Fiction Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

A proud Igbo warrior in colonial Nigeria watches the world he has built -- and the world he was born into -- fracture under the weight of change he cannot accept.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Color Purple cover
Literary Fiction The Color Purple

Alice Walker

Celie writes letters she cannot send to a God she is not sure is listening -- and slowly, through those letters, she finds her voice and her life.

4.3 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Stoner cover
Literary Fiction Stoner

John Williams

A Missouri farm boy becomes an English professor and leads a quiet life marked by failed love, academic disappointment, and the private rewards of literature.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Siddhartha cover
Literary Fiction Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse

A young Brahmin abandons everything he has been taught -- twice -- in search of an enlightenment that cannot be handed down, only lived.

4.1 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Identity
The Old Man and the Sea cover
Literary Fiction The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

An old Cuban fisherman rows out alone into the Gulf Stream and hooks the greatest fish of his life -- then must decide what winning actually means.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Survival
The Picture of Dorian Gray cover
Literary Fiction The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

A beautiful young man sells his soul for eternal youth -- and a portrait ages and corrupts in his place while he remains perfect and grows monstrous.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Mrs Dalloway cover
Literary Fiction Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf

A June day in 1923 London, seen through the consciousness of a society hostess preparing a party and a shell-shocked veteran she will never meet.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous cover
Literary Fiction On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong

A letter from a son to a mother who cannot read it -- written to explain a life shaped by war, addiction, queerness, and the impossible weight of inherited suffering.

4.2 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
Giovanni's Room cover
Literary Fiction Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin

An American in Paris falls in love with an Italian bartender while his fiancee is away -- and his inability to accept that love destroys them both.

4.3 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
The Unbearable Lightness of Being cover
Literary Fiction The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera

Two couples navigate love, infidelity, and freedom in Soviet-occupied Prague, while the narrator keeps interrupting to ask what any of it means.

4.2 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Love
Conversations with Friends cover
Literary Fiction Conversations with Friends

Sally Rooney

A college student begins an affair with a married actor and discovers that her intellectual certainties about love and autonomy do not survive contact with actual feeling.

3.7 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Love
The Virgin Suicides cover
Literary Fiction The Virgin Suicides

Jeffrey Eugenides

The neighbourhood boys spend the rest of their lives trying to understand the five Lisbon sisters, whose deaths they witnessed and could not prevent.

3.9 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
A Room with a View cover
Literary Fiction A Room with a View

E.M. Forster

An Edwardian young woman on holiday in Florence is kissed by the wrong sort of man in a field of violets -- and cannot stop thinking about it.

4.0 via Goodreads
Light & Fun Love
Invisible Man cover
Literary Fiction Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

A nameless Black man moves from the Deep South to Harlem, passing through institutions that all claim to help him while systematically erasing who he is.

4.0 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The God of Small Things cover
Literary Fiction The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy

Twins in Kerala carry for decades the weight of a single catastrophic summer -- a forbidden love, a child's death, and the caste laws that made both inevitable.

4.2 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
The Shadow of the Wind cover
Literary Fiction The Shadow of the Wind

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A boy in post-war Barcelona discovers a forgotten novel, then discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every book the author ever wrote.

4.2 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Love
A Thousand Splendid Suns cover
Literary Fiction A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini

Two women from different generations are brought together by a forced marriage in Kabul -- and the bond they forge becomes the only thing that can save them.

4.4 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
The Rosie Project cover
Literary Fiction The Rosie Project

Graeme Simsion

A genetics professor with zero social skills designs a sixteen-page questionnaire to find the perfect wife -- and then meets the spectacularly unsuitable Rosie.

3.9 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Love
Beartown cover
Literary Fiction Beartown

Fredrik Backman

A small Swedish hockey town pins its hopes on its junior team -- and then a single night shatters the community along every existing fault line.

4.3 via Goodreads
Emotional Friendship
The Heart's Invisible Furies cover
Literary Fiction The Heart's Invisible Furies

John Boyne

A man born to an unmarried mother in 1945 Ireland grows up in a country that has no place for him -- and returns every seven years to discover how much has and hasn't changed.

4.5 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Where'd You Go, Bernadette cover
Literary Fiction Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Maria Semple

A brilliant, agoraphobic architect disappears before a family trip to Antarctica -- and her daughter pieces together what happened from emails, invoices, and FBI transcripts.

4.0 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Family
Olive Kitteridge cover
Literary Fiction Olive Kitteridge

Elizabeth Strout

A retired schoolteacher from coastal Maine moves through the lives of her neighbours -- brusque, difficult, sometimes cruel -- and is the most fully human character in any of them.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
The Overstory cover
Literary Fiction The Overstory

Richard Powers

Nine Americans whose lives have been shaped by trees are drawn into the struggle to save the last old-growth forests -- in a novel told partly from the trees' point of view.

4.0 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
If Beale Street Could Talk cover
Literary Fiction If Beale Street Could Talk

James Baldwin

A pregnant young woman in Harlem narrates her fight to free her wrongfully imprisoned fiance before their child is born -- a love story built inside an indictment.

4.3 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
The Underground Railroad cover
Literary Fiction The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead

A slave escapes a Georgia plantation via a literal underground railroad -- a network of secret tunnels running beneath the American South -- and discovers that freedom is not a single destination.

4.0 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Survival
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry cover
Literary Fiction The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Gabrielle Zevin

A grieving, irritable bookseller on a small island finds an abandoned toddler in his shop -- and her arrival begins to piece his life back together in ways he didn't ask for.

3.9 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Love
The Secret Life of Bees cover
Literary Fiction The Secret Life of Bees

Sue Monk Kidd

A fourteen-year-old girl escapes her abusive father in 1960s South Carolina and finds refuge with three Black beekeeping sisters who may know what happened to her mother.

4.2 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Identity
The Cellist of Sarajevo cover
Literary Fiction The Cellist of Sarajevo

Steven Galloway

A cellist plays Albinoni's Adagio in a Sarajevo street for twenty-two days -- one for each person killed there by a mortar -- while three civilians struggle to stay alive around him.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Survival
Commonwealth cover
Literary Fiction Commonwealth

Ann Patchett

A single impulsive kiss at a christening party sets two families on a collision course across fifty years -- and one summer together as blended children shapes all of them forever.

3.8 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
The Five People You Meet in Heaven cover
Literary Fiction The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom

An old amusement park maintenance man dies in an accident and discovers that heaven consists of five meetings with people whose lives intersected with his in ways he never understood.

4.0 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Identity
Crying in H Mart cover
Literary Fiction Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner

A musician processes the death of her Korean mother through food -- and finds that cooking her mother's recipes is the closest thing to having her back.

4.3 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
The Hunger Games cover
Literary Fiction The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins

In a dystopian future, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers for a televised death match to save her younger sister.

4.3 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Survival
Divergent cover
Literary Fiction Divergent

Veronica Roth

In a future Chicago divided into five factions based on virtue, sixteen-year-old Tris must choose -- and discovers she does not fit any single faction.

4.0 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Identity
The Maze Runner cover
Literary Fiction The Maze Runner

James Dashner

Thomas wakes in a metal elevator with no memory and arrives in a glade at the center of an enormous maze -- with no idea why he is there or who sent him.

3.9 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Survival
City of Bones cover
Literary Fiction City of Bones

Cassandra Clare

Fifteen-year-old Clary discovers a world of Shadowhunters, demons, and warlocks hidden inside New York City -- and that she has been connected to it her whole life.

4.1 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Identity
Tuck Everlasting cover
Literary Fiction Tuck Everlasting

Natalie Babbitt

Ten-year-old Winnie discovers a family who drank from a spring and stopped aging a century ago -- and must decide whether to join them.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Coraline cover
Literary Fiction Coraline

Neil Gaiman

Coraline finds a door in her new home that leads to a better world -- with better food, a more attentive mother, and buttons where eyes should be.

4.1 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
The Hate U Give cover
Literary Fiction The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr is the only witness to the police shooting of her unarmed childhood friend -- and must decide how loudly to speak.

4.5 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda cover
Literary Fiction Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Becky Albertalli

Simon is not out to anyone -- but someone at school has found his emails to a boy he's been falling for online and is threatening to expose him.

4.2 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
Red Queen cover
Literary Fiction Red Queen

Victoria Aveyard

In a world divided by blood -- silver for the powerful elite, red for everyone else -- a Red girl discovers she has the abilities of the Silver ruling class.

4.0 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Identity
Thirteen Reasons Why cover
Literary Fiction Thirteen Reasons Why

Jay Asher

Clay Jensen receives a box of cassette tapes from a classmate who has died by suicide, explaining the thirteen reasons why -- and he is one of them.

3.7 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
Legend cover
Literary Fiction Legend

Marie Lu

In a fractured future America, the Republic's most brilliant young soldier is sent to capture its most wanted criminal -- a boy from the slums.

4.1 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Survival
All the Bright Places cover
Literary Fiction All the Bright Places

Jennifer Niven

Theodore Finch counts the reasons to stay alive daily. Violet Markey is counting the days until graduation. They meet on the ledge of the school bell tower.

4.0 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
Five Feet Apart cover
Literary Fiction Five Feet Apart

Rachael Lippincott

Two teenagers with cystic fibrosis meet in a hospital and fall in love -- even though the distance between them could be the thing that kills them.

4.0 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
An Abundance of Katherines cover
Literary Fiction An Abundance of Katherines

John Green

Former child prodigy Colin Singleton has been dumped by nineteen girls named Katherine and drives to rural Tennessee to find a mathematical theorem of love.

3.8 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Love
Norwegian Wood cover
Literary Fiction Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami

A young man in 1960s Tokyo navigates love, loss, and the slow dissolution of everyone he holds close.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
A Confederacy of Dunces cover
Literary Fiction A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius J. Reilly is the most magnificently insufferable protagonist in American comic fiction -- and somehow, the novel earns every page of him.

4.0 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn cover
Literary Fiction A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith

Francie Nolan grows up poor in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, and her hunger for books, beauty, and a life beyond her circumstances is one of the most quietly moving things in American fiction.

4.3 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Family
Less cover
Literary Fiction Less

Andrew Sean Greer

A minor American novelist, turning fifty and freshly dumped, flees his ex's wedding by accepting every literary invitation he has been ignoring -- and travels halfway around the world.

3.8 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
My Year of Rest and Relaxation cover
Literary Fiction My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Ottessa Moshfegh

A beautiful, privileged young woman in early-2000s New York attempts to sleep for an entire year, using a cocktail of medications prescribed by a reckless psychiatrist.

3.6 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Identity
Right Ho, Jeeves cover
Literary Fiction Right Ho, Jeeves

P.G. Wodehouse

Bertie Wooster attempts to manage the romantic catastrophes of everyone around him without his manservant Jeeves, with predictably chaotic results.

4.3 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Friendship
Brideshead Revisited cover
Literary Fiction Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

An army officer remembers his friendship with the Flyte family -- their crumbling estate, their Catholicism, and the love that shaped everything that came after.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
Children of Blood and Bone cover
Literary Fiction Children of Blood and Bone

Tomi Adeyemi

In a West African-inspired fantasy world where magic has been suppressed and its practitioners persecuted, a young woman discovers she may be able to bring it back.

4.0 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Identity
The Cruel Prince cover
Literary Fiction The Cruel Prince

Holly Black

A human girl raised in Faerie by the family who killed her parents fights to earn a place in a world that was never built for her -- and finds that the court's most dangerous prince may be her best weapon.

4.0 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Power & Ambition
The Darkest Minds cover
Literary Fiction The Darkest Minds

Alexandra Bracken

After a disease kills most children and leaves survivors with psychic abilities, the government imprisons them -- and one girl escapes to find that the rebellion waiting outside has its own costs.

4.0 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Survival
Sky in the Deep cover
Literary Fiction Sky in the Deep

Adrienne Young

A Viking warrior captures the enemy fighter she believed dead for five years -- who turns out to be her brother, fighting for the other side.

3.9 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Survival
Caraval cover
Literary Fiction Caraval

Stephanie Garber

Two sisters enter Caraval, a legendary magical performance where the audience participates -- and one sister becomes the prize.

3.9 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
The Death of Ivan Ilyich cover
Literary Fiction The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Leo Tolstoy

A judge dies slowly of a minor injury and spends his final weeks confronting the fact that he has never actually lived.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Art of Racing in the Rain cover
Literary Fiction The Art of Racing in the Rain

Garth Stein

A Formula One driver's life -- his love story, his losses, his legal battles -- told by his dog, who believes he will be reincarnated as a human and is paying close attention.

3.9 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Love
Atonement cover
Literary Fiction Atonement

Ian McEwan

A thirteen-year-old girl tells a lie that destroys two lives -- and spends the rest of hers wondering whether fiction can do what life cannot.

4.0 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
We Need to Talk About Kevin cover
Literary Fiction We Need to Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver

A mother writes letters to her estranged husband trying to understand how their son became the perpetrator of a school massacre.

3.9 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Family
The Great Alone cover
Literary Fiction The Great Alone

Kristin Hannah

A family moves to remote Alaska for a fresh start -- but the wilderness that saves them in summer becomes something else entirely in the dark.

4.2 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
The Song of Achilles cover
Literary Fiction The Song of Achilles

Madeline Miller

Patroclus narrates his love for Achilles from boyhood to Troy -- the Iliad retold from inside the relationship the poem can only circle around.

4.3 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
Wuthering Heights cover
Literary Fiction Wuthering Heights

Emily Bronte

Heathcliff and Catherine are the most destructive love story in English fiction -- gothic, obsessive, and impossible to look away from.

3.8 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Love
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Literary Fiction Lord of the Flies

William Golding

British schoolboys stranded on an island without adults create a society -- and then destroy it.

3.7 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Survival
The Stranger cover
Literary Fiction The Stranger

Albert Camus

A man kills someone on an Algerian beach and is put on trial -- not for the murder but for his emotional indifference.

3.9 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder cover
Literary Fiction A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

Holly Jackson

A high school student reopens a closed murder case for her senior project and discovers the town's version of events is wrong.

4.3 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Identity
One of Us Is Lying cover
Literary Fiction One of Us Is Lying

Karen M. McManus

Five students go into detention and only four come out -- and each survivor had motive to want the fifth dead.

3.8 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Identity
The Summer I Turned Pretty cover
Literary Fiction The Summer I Turned Pretty

Jenny Han

Every summer, Belly goes to the beach house where the Fisher family lives -- and this summer, everything is going to change.

4.0 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Love
The Scarlet Letter cover
Literary Fiction The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A woman in Puritan New England forced to wear a scarlet A chooses to transform it into something her accusers never intended.

3.4 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Power of the Dog cover
Literary Fiction The Power of the Dog

Thomas Savage

A brilliant, cruel Montana rancher sets out to destroy his brother's new wife and stepson -- and the stepson has a plan of his own.

4.1 via Goodreads
Tense & Suspenseful Power & Ambition
The Sympathizer cover
Literary Fiction The Sympathizer

Viet Thanh Nguyen

A communist spy embedded in the South Vietnamese army flees to America after the fall of Saigon -- and his confession reveals the cost of being a man of two minds in a war of two sides.

3.8 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
The Importance of Being Earnest cover
Literary Fiction The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde

Two young men maintain fictional alter egos to escape their social obligations -- and the lies escalate with increasing comic precision.

4.2 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
Cannery Row cover
Literary Fiction Cannery Row

John Steinbeck

A marine biologist, a group of affectionate bums, and the inhabitants of a Monterey canning community plan a party for the man they all love.

3.9 via Goodreads
Light & Fun Friendship
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared cover
Literary Fiction The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Jonas Jonasson

A 100-year-old man climbs out of his nursing home window on his birthday and inadvertently gets involved with gangsters -- his past turns out to have intersected with every major event of the twentieth century.

3.9 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand cover
Literary Fiction Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Helen Simonson

A recently widowed English major and a Pakistani-born shopkeeper find an unlikely friendship -- and possibly something more -- in a small Sussex village resistant to change.

3.9 via Goodreads
Hopeful & Uplifting Love
White Noise cover
Literary Fiction White Noise

Don DeLillo

A professor of Hitler Studies and his family navigate American consumer culture, a toxic cloud event, and the fear of death -- in that order.

3.8 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
A Visit from the Goon Squad cover
Literary Fiction A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan

Thirteen loosely connected stories tracking a music producer, his assistant, and the people in their orbit across forty years -- including one chapter written entirely in PowerPoint slides.

3.8 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Middlesex cover
Literary Fiction Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides

A hermaphrodite traces the gene responsible for their condition back through three generations of a Greek-American family, from Asia Minor to Detroit.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Everything Is Illuminated cover
Literary Fiction Everything Is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer

A young Jewish-American writer travels to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather during the Holocaust, accompanied by a translator whose English is spectacularly wrong.

4.0 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Identity
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close cover
Literary Fiction Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell searches New York for the lock that fits a mysterious key left by his father, who died on September 11.

3.8 via Goodreads
Emotional Loss & Grief
A Farewell to Arms cover
Literary Fiction A Farewell to Arms

Ernest Hemingway

An American ambulance driver in World War One Italy falls in love with a British nurse -- and Hemingway does not spare either of them from what the war requires.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
The Sun Also Rises cover
Literary Fiction The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway

A group of expatriates drift through Paris and Pamplona in the 1920s, circling a woman none of them can have and a wound none of them will name.

3.8 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Love
Breakfast at Tiffany's cover
Literary Fiction Breakfast at Tiffany's

Truman Capote

A young writer in New York becomes fascinated by his neighbour Holly Golightly -- a Southern girl reinvented as a Manhattan socialite, belonging nowhere.

3.9 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
The Little Prince cover
Literary Fiction The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A pilot stranded in the Sahara meets a small prince from an asteroid who is trying to understand what matters in the universe.

4.3 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Life of Pi cover
Literary Fiction Life of Pi

Yann Martel

A sixteen-year-old Indian boy survives a shipwreck and spends 227 days on a lifeboat in the Pacific with a 450-pound Bengal tiger.

3.9 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Survival
The Joy Luck Club cover
Literary Fiction The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan

Four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters, told through sixteen interconnected stories about the gap between the worlds the mothers survived and the world their daughters inhabit.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
On the Road cover
Literary Fiction On the Road

Jack Kerouac

Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty cross America again and again in the late 1940s, looking for something neither of them can name.

3.7 via Goodreads
Action-Packed Identity
Still Alice cover
Literary Fiction Still Alice

Lisa Genova

A Harvard linguistics professor is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's at fifty -- and the novel is told from inside her diminishing perspective.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue cover
Literary Fiction A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

Mackenzi Lee

A reckless eighteenth-century rake embarks on a Grand Tour of Europe with his best friend -- and falls in love with him along the way.

4.0 via Goodreads
Light & Fun Identity
The Travelling Cat Chronicles cover
Literary Fiction The Travelling Cat Chronicles

Hiro Arikawa

A man and his devoted cat travel across Japan to visit old friends, carrying a secret that changes everything.

4.1 via Goodreads
Light & Fun Friendship
Kafka on the Shore cover
Literary Fiction Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami

A teenage runaway and an old man who makes fish rain from the sky are pulled toward each other by forces neither can name.

4.1 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle cover
Literary Fiction The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami

An ordinary Tokyo man searches for his missing cat and descends into a labyrinth of violence, dreams, and collective Japanese memory.

4.2 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
Love in the Time of Cholera cover
Literary Fiction Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A man waits fifty-one years, nine months, and four days to tell a woman he loves her.

4.0 via Goodreads
Emotional Love
The Things They Carried cover
Literary Fiction The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien

A soldier carries grief, terror, love, and the weight of his dead through the jungles of Vietnam -- and never puts any of it down.

4.4 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty War
A Prayer for Owen Meany cover
Literary Fiction A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving

A boy who believes he is God's instrument kills his best friend's mother with a baseball -- and both of their lives are defined by what follows.

4.4 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity
Breathing Lessons cover
Literary Fiction Breathing Lessons

Anne Tyler

A husband and wife drive to a funeral and argue, remember, and misunderstand each other the whole way there and back.

3.8 via Goodreads
Funny & Witty Love
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant cover
Literary Fiction Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Anne Tyler

A dying woman looks back on the family she raised alone -- and what she got wrong about every one of them.

3.9 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
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Literary Fiction Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart

A boy in 1980s Glasgow loves his alcoholic mother with a devotion neither of them can afford.

4.1 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Family
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Literary Fiction Pedro Paramo

Juan Rulfo

A man travels to a Mexican ghost town to find his father and finds only the dead, still whispering.

4.0 via Goodreads
Mysterious & Atmospheric Identity
The Covenant of Water cover
Literary Fiction The Covenant of Water

Abraham Verghese

Three generations of a South Indian family share a gift and a curse -- and across a century, love and medicine keep them from drowning in it.

4.0 via Goodreads
Emotional Family
James cover
Literary Fiction James

Percival Everett

Huckleberry Finn retold from Jim's perspective -- and Jim has been performing ignorance his entire life.

4.1 via Goodreads
Thought-Provoking Identity
Prophet Song cover
Literary Fiction Prophet Song

Paul Lynch

Ireland slides into authoritarianism, and a mother watches her family disappear into a crisis she cannot believe is happening in her own country.

3.9 via Goodreads
Dark & Gritty Survival
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao cover
Literary Fiction The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz

A Dominican-American nerd from New Jersey searches for love under a family curse that has followed them from Trujillo's regime to the suburbs.

4.1 via Goodreads
Emotional Identity