Best Books Ever

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Book Depository, 100 Books

"Whatever it's called we love a list of what we think are the best books of all time so we've compiled an entirely arbitrary and personal selection of 100 titles below for you to disagree with."

This list was originally published in 2006 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
168 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald 1934 American English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
387 Our Mutual Friend Charles Dickens 1864 British English
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
2132 The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick 1962 American English
448 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
278 A Wizard Of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 1968 American English
84 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
322 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
750 Money Martin Amis 1984 British English
1819 Carry On, Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse 1925 British English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
150 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 1953 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
947 Bel Canto Ann Patchett 2001 American English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
644 The English Patient Michael Ondaatje 1992 Canadian English
1085 The Book Thief Markus Zusak 2005 Australian English
759 Thérèse Raquin Émile Zola 1867 French French
413 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
2486 The Golden Compass Philip Pullman 1995 British English
117 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 British English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
1042 Franny and Zooey J. D. Salinger 1961 American English
48 Journey to the End of The Night Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932 French French
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
547 Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll 1871 British English
735 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth 1993 Indian English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
549 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 1995 Indian English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
432 Lost Illusions Honoré de Balzac 1837 French French
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
57 The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky 1869 Russian Russian
128 The Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Chekhov 1900 Russian Russian
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
14788 The Unconscious Sigmund Freud 1915 Austrian German
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
835 The Art of War Sun Tzu -500 Chinese Classical chinese
3486 The Fault in Our Stars John Green 2012 American English
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
13559 The Path to Power Robert Caro 1982 American English
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
524 A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving 1989 American English
502 Another Country James Baldwin 1962 American English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
159 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
374 Ethics Baruch de Spinoza 1677 Dutch Latin
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
453 I, Claudius Robert Graves 1934 British English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
161 The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler 1953 American English
803 Sophie's Choice William Styron 1979 American English
761 Goodbye to Berlin Christopher Isherwood 1939 British English
1104 Maus Art Spiegelman 1980 American English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
506 The Affluent Society John Kenneth Galbraith 1958 American English
3249 A Distant Mirror Barbara Wertheim Tuchman 1978 American English
580 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West 1941 British English
173 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
704 Breakfast at Tiffany's Truman Capote 1958 American English
17120 The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar Roald Dahl 1977 British English
2233 Resurrection Leo Tolstoy 1899 Russian Russian
2331 The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault Charles Perrault 1697 French French
981 It Stephen King 1986 American English
5916 The Magic Toyshop Angela Carter 1967 British English
1347 Story of the Eye Georges Bataille 1928 French French
15899 Grundrisse Karl Marx 1857 German German
14939 Man and His Symbols Carl Jung 1964 Swiss English
2063 Watt Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish English
12724 The Shock of the New Robert Hughes 1980 Australian English
1529 Orientalism Edward W. Said 1978 Palestinian English
1159 Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt 1963 German English