The 100 Favorite Novels of Librarians by Bookman.com
Based on a survey of Librarians conducted by Brodart Co., September, 1998 - March, 1999. Brodart is an international company that services libraries around the world.
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1. Pride and Prejudice by <a href="/authors/93">Jane Austen</a>
The book is narrated in free indirect speech following the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with matters of upbringing, marriage, moral rightness and education in her aristocratic socie...
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2. To Kill a Mockingbird by <a href="/authors/81">Harper Lee</a>
As a Southern Gothic novel and a Bildungsroman, the primary themes of To Kill a Mockingbird involve racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. Scholars have noted that Lee also addresses is...
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4. Gone With the Wind by <a href="/authors/34">Margaret Mitchell</a>
Gone With the Wind is set in Jonesboro and Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War and Reconstruction and follows the life of Scarlett O'Hara, the daughter of an Irish immigrant plantation o...
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5. The Lord of the Rings by <a href="/authors/48">J. R. R. Tolkien</a>
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by philologist and Oxford University professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children'...
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6. The Catcher in the Rye by <a href="/authors/18">J. D. Salinger</a>
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1945 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, the novel has become a common part of high school and college curricula throughout the English-speaking wo...
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7. Little Women by <a href="/authors/103">Louisa May Alcott</a>
Written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, it was published in two parts in 1868 and 1869. The novel follows the lives of four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth and Am...
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8. A Prayer for Owen Meany by <a href="/authors/113">John Irving</a>
In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mo...
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10. The Great Gatsby by <a href="/authors/36">F. Scott Fitzgerald</a>
The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age". Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roar...
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11. The Mists of Avalon by <a href="/authors/1538">Marion Zimmer Bradley</a>
In Marion Zimmer Bradley's masterpiece, we see the tumult and adventures of Camelot's court through the eyes of the women who bolstered the king's rise and schemed for his fall. From their childhoo...
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12. David Copperfield by <a href="/authors/102">Charles Dickens</a>
The story of the abandoned waif who learns to survive through challenging encounters with distress and misfortune.
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13. Kristin Lavransdatter by <a href="/authors/1539">Sigrid Undset</a>
The turbulent historical masterpiece of Norway’s literary master In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life st...
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15. The Age of Innocence by <a href="/authors/115">Edith Wharton</a>
The Age of Innocence centers on an upperclass couple's impending marriage, and the introduction of a scandalous woman whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assump...
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16. The Shell Seekers by <a href="/authors/380">Rosamunde Pilcher</a>
Shifting in time, the novel tells the story of Penelope Keeling, the daughter of unconventional parents (an artist father and his much-younger French wife), examining her past and her relationships...
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18. The World According to Garp by <a href="/authors/113">John Irving</a>
The story deals with the life of T. S. Garp. His mother, Jenny Fields, is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband. She encounters a dying ball turret gunner known only as Technica...
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20. The Clan of the Cave Bear by <a href="/authors/392">Jean M. Auel</a>
The Clan of the Cave Bear is a historical fiction novel by Jean M. Auel about prehistoric times set somewhat before the extinction of the Neanderthal race after 600,000 years as a species, and at l...
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21. The Horse Whisperer by <a href="/authors/1540">Nicholas Evans</a>
His name is Tom Booker. His voice can calm wild horses, his touch can heal broken spirits. And Annie Graves has traveled across a continent to the Booker ranch in Montana, desperate to heal her inj...
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22. The Pillars Of The Earth by <a href="/authors/237">Ken Follet</a>
The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known...of Tom, the mason who bec...
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23. The Prince of Tides by <a href="/authors/1491">Pat Conroy</a>
The stirring saga of a man’s journey to free his sister—and himself—from a tragic family history Tom Wingo has lost his job, and is on the verge of losing his marriage, when he learns that his twin...
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24. Possession by <a href="/authors/65">A.S. Byatt</a>
Part historical as well as contemporary fiction, the title Possession refers to issues of ownership and independence between lovers, the practice of collecting historically significant cultural art...
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26. Follow the River by <a href="/authors/1541">James Alexander Thom</a>
Mary Ingles was twenty-three, married, and pregnant, when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement, killed the men and women, then took her captive. For months, she lived with them,...
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27. My Antonia by <a href="/authors/25">Willa Cather</a>
In Willa Cather's own estimation, My Antonia, first published in 1918, was "the best thing I've ever done." An enduring paperback bestseller on Houghton Mifflin's literary list, this hauntingly elo...
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28. The Old Man and the Sea by <a href="/authors/78">Ernest Hemingway</a>
The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordea...
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29. The Scarlet Letter by <a href="/authors/148">Nathaniel Hawthorne</a>
Hester Prynne is a beautiful young woman. She is also an outcast. In the eyes of her neighbors she has committed an unforgivable sin. Everyone knows that her little daughter, Pearl, is the product ...
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30. Sophie's Choice by <a href="/authors/20">William Styron</a>
It concerns a young American Southerner, an aspiring writer, who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish (but non-Jewish) survivor of the Nazi concentration camp...
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31. Snow Falling on Cedars by <a href="/authors/273">David Guterson</a>
Set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the northern Puget Sound region of the state of Washington coast in 1954, the plot revolves around a murder case in which Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese Americ...
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32. One Hundred Years of Solitude by <a href="/authors/188">Gabriel García Márquez</a>
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning car...
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33. The Name of the Rose by <a href="/authors/1475">Umberto Eco</a>
It is the year 1327. Franciscans in an Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, but Brother William of Baskerville’s investigation is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths. Translated by Will...
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35. Cold Mountain by <a href="/authors/454">Charles Frazier</a>
Cold Mountain is a 1997 historical fiction novel by Charles Frazier. It tells the story of W. P. Inman, a wounded deserter from the Confederate army near the end of the American Civil War who walks...
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36. Cold Sassy Tree by <a href="/authors/1485">Olive Ann Burns</a>
On July 5, 1906, scandal breaks in the small town of Cold Sassy, Georgia, when the proprietor of the general store, E. Rucker Blakeslee, elopes with Miss Love Simpson. He is barely three weeks a wi...
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37. Atlas Shrugged by <a href="/authors/116">Ayn Rand</a>
Ayn Rand's epochal novel, first published in 1957, has been a bestseller for more than four decades as well as an intellectual landmark. It is the story of a man who said that he would stop the mot...
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38. Bridge to Terabithia by <a href="/authors/1542">Katherine Paterson</a>
This Newbery Medal-winning novel by bestselling author Katherine Paterson is a modern classic of friendship and loss. Jess Aarons has been practicing all summer so he can be the fastest runner in t...
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39. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by <a href="/authors/248">Anne Tyler</a>
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is a 1982 novel by Anne Tyler set in Baltimore, Maryland. It is Anne Tyler's ninth novel. In 1983 it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,[1] the National Book Aw...
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40. The Hobbit by <a href="/authors/48">J. R. R. Tolkien</a>
A fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in a time "Between the Dawn of Færie and the Dominion of Men", The Hobbit follows the quest of home-loving Bilbo Baggins to win a share ...
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41. Les Misérables by <a href="/authors/688">Victor Hugo</a>
Les Misérables is a novel by French author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters ov...
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42. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by <a href="/authors/45">C.S. Lewis</a>
World War II has just begun and four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, are evacuated from London in 1940 to escape the Blitz. They are sent to live with Professor Digory Kirke, who ...
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43. Wuthering Heights by <a href="/authors/99">Emily Brontë</a>
The narrative is non-linear, involving several flashbacks, and two primary narrators: Mr. Lockwood and Ellen "Nelly" Dean. The novel opens in 1801, with Mr. Lockwood arriving at Thrushcross Grange,...
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44. A Tale of Two Cities by <a href="/authors/102">Charles Dickens</a>
A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With 200 million copies sold, it is the most printed original English boo...
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45. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by <a href="/authors/156">Mark Twain</a>
Revered by all of the town's children and dreaded by all of its mothers, Huckleberry Finn is indisputably the most appealing child-hero in American literature. Unlike the tall-tale, idyllic worl...
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46. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by <a href="/authors/152">Lewis Carroll</a>
In 1862 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a shy Oxford mathematician with a stammer, created a story about a little girl tumbling down a rabbit hole. Thus began the immortal adventures of Alice, perhaps th...
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47. The Wind in the Willows by <a href="/authors/101">Kenneth Grahame</a>
A classic in children's literature The Wind in the Willow is alternately slow moving and fast paced. The book focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England. T...
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48. The Bean Trees by <a href="/authors/354">Barbara Kingsolver</a>
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she ...
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50. And Then There Were None by <a href="/authors/304">Agatha Christie</a>
And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, widely considered her masterpiece and described by her as the most difficult of her books to have written.
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51. The Secret Garden by <a href="/authors/381">Frances Hodgson Burnett</a>
The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format starting in autumn 1910; the book was first published in its entirety in 1911. Its working ti...
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52. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by <a href="/authors/1544">Mildred D. Taylor</a>
The story of one African-American family fighting to stay together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks, illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s.
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53. Busman’s Honeymoon by <a href="/authors/1545">Dorothy L Sayers</a>
Lord Peter Wimsey arranged a quiet country honeymoon with Harriet Vane, but what should have been an idyllic holiday in an ancient farmhouse takes on a new and unwelcome aspect with the discovery o...
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54. Schindler's List by <a href="/authors/114">Thomas Keneally</a>
The book tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a Nazi Party member, who turns into the unlikely hero. By the end of the war, Schindler has saved 1,200 Jews from concentration camps all over Poland an...
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56. The Color Purple by <a href="/authors/107">Alice Walker</a>
Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on female black life during the 1930s in the Southern United States, addressing the numerous issues including their exceedingly low position ...
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57. The Count of Monte Cristo by <a href="/authors/145">Alexandre Dumas</a>
Set against the tumultuous years of the post-Napoleonic era, The Count of Monet Cristo recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantes, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason. The...
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58. Charlotte's Web by <a href="/authors/109">E. B. White</a>
The novel tells the story of a pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praisin...
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59. Anne of Green Gables by <a href="/authors/378">Lucy Maud Montgomery</a>
Anne of Green Gables is a bestselling novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery published in 1908. It was written as fiction for readers of all ages, but in recent decades has been considered a...
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60. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by <a href="/authors/1546">Rebecca Wells</a>
When Siddalee Walker, oldest daughter of Vivi Abbott Walker, Ya-Ya extraordinaire, is interviewed in the New York Times about a hit play she's directed, her mother gets described as a "tap-dancing ...
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61. Lady Chatterley's Lover by <a href="/authors/119">D. H. Lawrence</a>
Lyric and sensual, D.H. Lawrence's last novel is one of the major works of fiction of the twentieth century. Filled with scenes of intimate beauty, explores the emotions of a lonely woman trapped i...
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62. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by <a href="/authors/1483">Betty Smith</a>
The American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended ...
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63. East of Eden by <a href="/authors/35">John Steinbeck</a>
A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it ...
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64. The Once and Future King by <a href="/authors/1547">T. H. White</a>
The world's greatest fantasy classic is "richly imagined and unfailingly eloquent and entertaining" (Booklist). The Once and Future King is T.H. White's masterful retelling of the saga of King Arth...
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65. Ender's Game by <a href="/authors/1442">Orson Scott Card</a>
Child hero Ender Wiggin must fight a desperate battle against a deadly alien race if mankind is to survive.
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66. The Fountainhead by <a href="/authors/116">Ayn Rand</a>
The Fountainhead's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an individualistic young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision. The book follows hi...
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67. A Patchwork Planet by <a href="/authors/248">Anne Tyler</a>
A Patchwork Planet is a novel by Anne Tyler. Published in 1998, it tells the story of Barnaby Gaitlin, anti-hero and failure who suffers from more than the usual quota of misfortune. The book is no...
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68. Gaudy Night by <a href="/authors/1548">Dorothy L. Sayers</a>
Back at Oxford for her reunion, Harriet Vane, Lord Peter’s beloved, finds herself in mortal danger Since she graduated from Oxford’s Shrewsbury College, Harriet Vane has found fame by writing novel...
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69. The Grapes of Wrath by <a href="/authors/35">John Steinbeck</a>
Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a ...
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71. The Handmaid's Tale by <a href="/authors/12">Margaret Atwood</a>
The Handmaid's Tale is a feminist dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction, written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985...
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72. Lonesome Dove by <a href="/authors/246">Larry McMurtry</a>
Lonesome Dove, written by Larry McMurtry, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning western novel and the first published book of the Lonesome Dove series. The story focuses on the relationship of several retire...
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74. Pigs in Heaven by <a href="/authors/354">Barbara Kingsolver</a>
When six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, her insistence on what she has seen, and her mother's belief in her, lead to a man's dramatic rescue. But Turtle's momen...
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75. Slaughterhouse-Five by <a href="/authors/73">Kurt Vonnegut</a>
An anti-war science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier called Billy Pilgrim.
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76. Jude the Obscure by <a href="/authors/161">Thomas Hardy</a>
In 1895 Hardy’s final novel, the great tale of Jude the Obscure, sent shock waves of indignation rolling across Victorian England. Hardy had dared to write frankly about sexuality and to indict the...
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77. Time and Again by <a href="/authors/1487">Jack Finney</a>
When advertising artist Si Morley is recruited to join a covert government operation exploring the possibility of time travel, he jumps at the chance to leave his twentieth-century existence and st...
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79. A Christmas Carol by <a href="/authors/102">Charles Dickens</a>
A Christmas Carol (originally, A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas) is a novella by English author Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) about a curmudgeon and h...
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80. The Accidental Tourist by <a href="/authors/248">Anne Tyler</a>
The Accidental Tourist is a 1985 novel by Anne Tyler that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Set in Baltimore, Maryland, the plot rev...
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81. Giants in the Earth by <a href="/authors/1551">Ole Edvart Rolvaag</a>
The classic story of a Norwegian pioneer family's struggles with the land and the elements of the Dakota Territory as they try to make a new life in America.
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82. Persuasion by <a href="/authors/93">Jane Austen</a>
Of all Jane Austen’s great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving. It is the story of a second chance. Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish, spendthrift Sir Walte...
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83. Fried Green Tomatoes by <a href="/authors/1552">Fannie Flagg</a>
The remarkable novel of two Southern friendships--the basis of the hit film--available for the first time in large print. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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85. The Thorn Birds by <a href="/authors/384">Colleen McCullough</a>
The Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel by Colleen McCullough, an Australian author. In 1983 it was adapted as a television mini-series that, during its television run March 27-30, became t...
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87. Lost Horizon by <a href="/authors/1555">James Hilton</a>
Hilton’s bestselling classic about a man who stumbles on the world’s last great hope for peace: Shangri-La Hugh Conway saw humanity at its worst while fighting in the trenches of the First World Wa...
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88. The Little Prince by <a href="/authors/746">Antoine de Saint-Exupéry</a>
Since 1943, the wise little boy from Asteroid B-612 has led children and their adults to deeper understandings of love, friendship, and responsibility. The Little Prince is a cherished story, read ...
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89. Fahrenheit 451 by <a href="/authors/1400">Ray Bradbury</a>
A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners suddenly realizes their merit
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90. For Whom the Bell Tolls by <a href="/authors/78">Ernest Hemingway</a>
It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a communist guerilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is ...
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91. Frankenstein by <a href="/authors/141">Mary Shelley</a>
At this challenge, Mary Shelley began work on the 'ghost story' that was to evolve into the most celebrated horror novel in literary history. Frankenstein was published the next year and become the...
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92. Bleak House by <a href="/authors/102">Charles Dickens</a>
Bleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly instalments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of ...
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93. Boy's Life by <a href="/authors/1556">Robert R. McCammon</a>
In Zephyr, Alabama, a bizarre murder is only the beginning Small town boys see weird sights, and Zephyr has provided Cory Jay Mackenson with his fair share of oddities. He knows the bootleggers who...
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94. Chesapeake by <a href="/authors/219">James A. Michener</a>
A panoramic narrative of human and animal life on Maryland's Eastern Shore focuses on a ten-square-mile area at the mouth of the Choptank River and the families that settle there, from 1583 to the ...
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95. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by <a href="/authors/95">Douglas Adams</a>
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the title of the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams. The novel is an adaptation of th...
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96. How Green Was My Valley by <a href="/authors/1557">Richard Llewellyn</a>
Winner of the National Book Award in 1940 and the basis for the Academy Award Best Picture film of the same name, How Green Was My Valley is full of memorable characters, richly crafted language, a...
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97. Howards End by <a href="/authors/121">E. M. Forster</a>
"Only Connect," Forster's key aphorism, informs this novel about an English country house, Howards End, and its influence on the lives of the wealthy and materialistic Wilcoxes; the cultured, ideal...
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99. Of Mice and Men by <a href="/authors/35">John Steinbeck</a>
Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California. Based on Steinbeck's own experiences a...
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100. A Passage to India by <a href="/authors/63">E.M. Forster</a>
A Passage to India is set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. The story revolves around four characters: Dr. Aziz, his British friend Cyril Fi...
