Suggested American Novel /Drama Reading List
Many titles listed here can be used in Advanced Placement English and Language Exams. This list is not EXCLUSIVE. Ask about other titles by these authors. Student may read books from Classic American Author Book lists. Goodreads PBS Book List Top American Titles
Alcott, Louisa May
Little Women
Four young women growing up in a loving Civil War-era family. This book accurately reflects Alcott's own family life. Little Men (what Bronson Alcott's dream of a farm and school at Fruitlands might have been) and Jo's Boys (the little men all grown up) are sequels.
Eight Cousins
Young Rose, stuck in the conventions and restrictions of Victorian womanhood, is led into a Alcott's ideas of a more liberated life by the dashing Uncle Alec and her seven boy cousins. Louisa, herself, admitted she'd always wanted brothers and this book creates that dream.
Anaya, Rudolfo
Bless Me , Ultima
New Mexico, coming of age story
Anderson, Sherwood
Winesburg, Ohio
The people of a small Ohio town are portrayed in a series of portraits which influenced the styles of writers like Hemingway and Faulkner.
Baldwin, James
Go Tell it on the Mountain
A child growing up in Harlem sees both the joy and the brutality of the ghetto as he searches for a religious conversion.
Baldwin, James
If Beale Street Could Talk
When Sonny is jailed in a frame-up, he and his girl friend are supported by a loyal family.
Bellow, Saul
Henderson, the
Bellow's characters try to find some kind of moral way to make sense out of lives filled with "too much otherness."
Borland, Hal
When Legends Die
Torn between his world and that of the white man, a young Indian returns to his ancestral way of life.
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
One summer in the life of a twelve-year-old in a small town in Illinois in 1928.
Fahrenheit 451
Book-burning is an accepted government policy in this futuristic novel of a totalitarian state.
Buck, Pearl
Good Earth
Nobel Prize winner Buck created realistic sagas of changing China where she grew up as the daughter of American missionaries.
Caldwell, Erskine
God's Little Acre
An earthy picture of the rural south
Capote, Truman
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly Golightly encounters Manhattan in a dauntless quest for utter happiness.
In Cold Blood
his non-fiction fiction work about a family in Kansas that is murdered
Cather, Willa
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Modeled after Bishop Almy of the Cathedral of St. Francis in Sante Fe, Cather's novel paints a portrait of a complex man.
My Antonia
Describing the hardships of a Bohemian immigrant girl in pioneer Nebraska, Cather told the story of a girlhood friend Annie Pavelka.
O Pioneers!
Alexandra dedicates her life to the settling of the Nebraska panhandle, dreaming of an easier life for her younger brother Emil. Emil loses his chances in a forbidden love affair with a Bohemian girl.
Chopin, Kate
The Awakening
An early feminist novel of a woman's search for identity.
Cisneros, Sandra
House on Mango Street
Clark, Walter Von Tilburg
Oxbow Incident
The lawless American west and a look at law and order
Cooper, James Fenimore
The Last of the Mochicans - 1757 historical narrative about the French and Indian Wars - two sisters seek out their military father who is at a frontier fort - Fort William Henry. They are led by frontiersman Natty Bumppo and two Native American who are the last of their tribe.
Cormier, Robert
Fade
Can the power to disappear, inherited family trait given to one son in each generation, turn from mischief and mystery to horrifying evil?
Chocolate War
-about a student that refuses to sell chocolates as a school fundraiser - leads to larger issues
After the First Death
-Terrorists take over a school bus and hold it hostage -
I am the Cheese
-child loses his entire family and is put into witness protection - he recounts the events to his therapist
Crane, Stephen
The Red Badge of Courage
Henry moves from cowardice to courage in the greatest of all novels of the Civil War.
Maggie, Girl of the Streets
Story about a country girl who is forced into prostitution because of poverty and other circumstances.
Dickey, James
Deliverance
A friendly trip down a wilderness river ends in a savage hunt of man against man.
Dillard, Annie
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Dillard, a naturalist and poet by trade, wrote a collection of essays and stories that read like a journal or an autobiographical novel.
An American Childhood
Dillard traces her own growing up in this amazing autobiographical study of a bright child's developing mind.
Dorris, Michael
Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Three women, three generations weave together in this novel which reveals hidden identities, family loyalty, a growing up.
Dorris, Michael and Louise Erdrich.
Crown of Columbus
A beautiful Native American professors discovers a manuscript which leads her lover and her teenage son to danger as they track an artifact left on a Caribbean island by Columbus himself.
Dos Passos, John
Manhattan Transfer
View of various types of life in New York City during the twenties.
Dreiser, Theodore
An American Tragedy
The story of Clyde Griffiths, on overly ambitious poor young man eventually electrocuted for murder.
Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man
The terrifying experiences of a young black seeking identity during his high school and college days, and later in New York's Harlem.
Erdrich, Louise
Love Medicine
Pulitzer-prize winning look at the lives of a Native American family caught in the snags of alcohol and broken dreams.
Beet Queen
Rebellious but ugly Dot, pushed by her crazy aunts and the local businessman who loves them all, to reign as queen over the local sugar beet festival. Erdrich is the master at capturing the love and complexities of Native American families and off-reservation life. Erdrich is funny and sad all at once.
Farrell, James T.
Studs Lonigan
A tough Irish kid in the alleys and pool rooms of south side Chicago in realistic detail.
Fast, Howard
April Morning
The battles of LAexington and Concord come to life in this well-written historical novel of the American Revolution.
Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying
Story of the death of Addie Bundren and the ordeals her family undergoes in carrying the body home for burial in Mississippi. Each section narrated by one of the characters who reveals his or her memories.
"The Bear" in Portable Faulkner
A boy goes on his first hunting trip and comes to understand his own growing sense of self.
The Sound and the Fury
The tragic life of the Compsons, a degenerate Southern family, is described by Benjy, a 33 year old idiot
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Tender is the Night
Expatriate Americans wander from one fashionable European resort to another in the kind of aimless frivolous 20's life portrayed in The Great Gatsby.
This Side of Paradise
-His first novel - about the college days in the 1920s Ivy League setting
The Beautiful and the Damned
A novel about the flaming youth of the 1920's . Story of a rich playboy and of the downward spiral of his marriage during the wild excesses of the jazz age.
Gilbreth, Frank B.
Cheaper By the Dozen
Dad and Mom are efficiency experts who use all their skills to organize the care, feeding, and education of their twelve children.
Guthrie, A.B.
The Big Sky
A mountain man exploring frontier Montana form the framework of this novel of violence and liberty.
The Way West
Conquering the land and paying the price and themes of Guthrie's superb western.
Hammett, Dashiell
Maltese Falcon
Hammett invented the trench-coated tough detective in his classic mysteries. Imagine Bogart's voice and demeanor as you read Hammett.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
House of Seven Gables
Matthew Maul's curse, the greed of old Judge Pyncheon, and a redeeming love that finally breaks the curse shows classic Hawthorne themes and style.
The Scarlet Letter
This story explores on a literal and symbolic level the effect on a Puritan community of Hester Prynne's adultery.
Heller, Joseph
Catch-22
Heller's picture of war's absurdity as Yossarian frantically tries to just stay alive thru endless bombings. Who is crazy in a bureaucracy?
Hemingway, Ernest
Farewell to Arms
Love story of Catherine Barkley, an English nurse, and Lt. Henry, a wounded American ambulance driver in WWI.
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Robert Jordan, a young American professor fighting for the Loyalist cause in Spain, discovers love, destroys a bridge as assigned.
The Old Man and the Sea
An old, Cuban fisherman tests his courage and remaining strength as he battles the sea and a fish for survival with dignity.
The Sun Also Rises.
The disillusioned and wounded Lost Gneration gathers in Paris and Spanish towns to watch bullfights and discover why they can't care about life after world War I. A courageous young bullfighter is a contrast.
Herbert, Frank
Dune
A desert planet is the exotic scene of a detailed space fantasy in which the freemen of Dune battle the emperor of the known universe. The sci fi class was a cult book of the 60s.
Hersey, John
A Single Pebble
A young American engineer comes to understand the difference between Orient and Occident as he journeys up the Yangtze on a junk.
Hiroshima
No one has portrayed the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima more movingly than Hershey and he shows what happened to victims and survivors.
Hurston, Zora Neale
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Realistic look at the struggles of families and culture in the rural south, an African American novel that influence Walker, Morrison and others
Irving, John
Prayers for Owen Meany
Is Owen Meany's sense of destiny the result of his ridiculous ego, his multiple abilities, or his sense of being somehow chosen by God? Irving is irreverent, funny, and profound. The block-buster story of two friends growing up in the 60's.
James, Henry
Turn of the Screw
A governess tries to break the spell she believes evil spirits have cast over the two innocent children in her care. Also Daisy Miller
Jones, James
From Here to Eternity
Men and women in a classic picture of World War II, one of the great action war novels.
Kesey, Ken
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
An irrepressible rebel leads fellow inmates of a mental hospital in a struggle with the tyrannical nurse Ratchet.
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
After an experiment on a mouse named Algernon triples its intelligence, the same operations is performed on Charlie, a 32 year-old.
Knowles, John
A Separate Peace
Against the backdrop of World War II, the rivalry of two roommates at a boys' school turns into a private war.
Kosinski, Jerry
Painted Bird
An abandoned child wandering alone through the villages of Eastern Europe is exposed to grotesque superstitions and monstrosities that characterize WWII.
Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird
A A young girl tells of life in a small Alabama town and her father's defense in court of a Negro accused of raping a white woman.
LeGuin, Ursula
Left Hand of Darkness
Science fiction often asks tough philosophical and moral questions as LeGuin does here about the sexual roles of men and women. Also LeGuin's famous Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is a favorite of fantasy fans.
Lewis, Sinclair
Arrowsmith
A young doctor must decide between worldly success and money and his own desire to devote his life to scientific research.
Babbitt
Picture of American middle-class life, through the story of a conservative Republican real estate agent. ()
Elmer Gantry
An attack on the hypocrisy of the times centering around the story of the sensational rise of an evangelist.
It Can't Happen Here
Doremus Jessup, editor of a small New England newspaper, follows the rise to the presidency of the U.S. of a Fascist demagogue, Berzelius
Main Street
A young doctor's wife tries to change the ugliness, dullness and ignorance which prevail in the small town of Gopher Prairie.
Mailer, Norman
The Naked and the Dead
Assault and capture of a Pacific island in WWII forms the setting or Mailer's harsh and satirical portrayal of war's brutality.
Malmud, Bernard
The Fixer
Victim of a vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy and sent to prison, Yakov Bok dramatizes the difference between generations in Russia.
The Natural
Good and evil played out in this allegory of baseball.
Manfred, Frederick
Lord Grizzly
Hugh Glass, mauled by a bear and abandoned for dead by his fellow trappers, crawls down the Missouri valley swearing revenge. You can see the Glass's monument at Mobridge, SD today! Conquering Horse and Scarlet Plume are two other Manfred novels set in South Dakota.
Marquand, John P.
Late George Apley
Critical novel of the manners of the business community.
McCullers, Carson
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
A deaf-mute befriends a teenage girl and wordlessly supports her search for identity.
Member of the Wedding
A girl has made up her mind to go on her brother's honeymoon whether she's invited or not.
Melville, Herman
Billy Budd
Handsome Billy, forced to serve on a British battleship, does well until the cruel master-at-arms starts a vicious plot against him.
Moby Dick
In a classic of the sea, Captain Ahab goes in revengeful, relentless pursuit of the white whale.
Michener, James A.
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Brubaker, a pilot during the Korean War, faces the fact that he is afraid to attempt an assigned mission. His collection, Tales of the South Pacific, makes great reading for WWII fans. Rogers and Hammerstein based their musical on some of the stories.
Michener, James
Hawaii
This and any of Missioners massive historical novels represent good
writing and superb research of one of America's most popular writers.
Miller, Arthur
The Crucible
Fictional treatment of the Salem witchcraft trials was Miller's mirror for the hysteria of the 1950s communist "witch hunts" under Senator McCarthy.
Death of a Salesman
Willie Loman's boasting talk and phony optimism hides the failure in his personal and family life.
Mitchell, Margaret
Gone With The Wind
Scheming beautiful Scarlett O'Hara and unscrupulous Rhett Butler make this story of the Civil War adventurous and absorbing.
Momaday, N. Scott
House Made of Dawn
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
A savage look a slavery and its aftermath in the life of an American black family and of Sethe--"iron eyes and backbone to match." Morrison just won the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature.
The Bluest Eye
Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. She thought if she only had blue eyes her brother would stop running away and her father would stop drinking. Blue-eyed children were loved, weren't they?
Song of Solomon
Milkman's (Macon) "oreo" father forbids him to visit his disreputable aunt Pilate. But in Pilate's house Milkman finds the key which help him trace his family's roots to their beginnings in the plantations of the American south.
Tar Baby
Jadine, a gorgeous young black model, is the protege of a wealthy white man and his neurotic wife. When she meets and falls in love with Son, an earthy laborer, she questions all her dreams of wealth and the while world she has known.
Nichols, John
Milagro Bean Field War
Joe illegally taps into an irrigation ditch and begins a Bean Field which soon becomes the symbol of lost rights and lost lands. A joyous story of a Latino village in New Mexico.
O'Connor, Edwin
Last Hurrah
Manipulation, dirty politics, and power in the American political scene in this portrait of a demagogue.
O'Hara, John
Butterfield 8
The romantic, the tragic, the exploitative all meet and mingle in this melodramatic novel of the moral vacuum of the big city.
O'Brien, Tim
The Things They Carried
May be the most involving look at the Vietnam War's tragedy and guts
OConner, Flannery
Wise Blood
Bizarre religious fanatics try to prove the existence of good in acts of violence in this startling southern gothic.
Parks, Gordon
Learning Tree
Small town in Kansas in the 1920's is the setting for a year in the life a young black boy.
Paulsen, Gary
Sentries
An Indian girl, an illegal migrant worker, the daughter of a Montana sheep rancher, a soldier in a firefight--these young people are caught in the symbolic crossfire of a sentry--they face critical life choices. Or are they themselves sentries of changing values?
Plath, Sylvia
The Bell Jar
An autobiographical look at Plath's adolescent struggle for sanity.
Portis, Charles
True Grit
A 14 year old girl is determined to hunt down the person who is responsible for her father's murder.
Potok, Chaim
My Name is Asher Lev
An artist whose finest work in a figure of Christ and Mary finds his values in question because of his family's roots in the conservative community of Brooklyn's Hadassim Jews.
Rand, Ayn
Anthem
In a future world, the collectivists have taken over and no man is allowed to be himself.
Rawlings, Marjorie
The Yearling
A story of the Florida country and the conflicts in a boy's mind as he
has to face up to many unpleasant aspects of adult life. 1938
Richter, Conrad
A Country of Strangers
A companion volume to A Light in the Forest, this is the story of a
white girl captured by the Indians who must return to her original. parents
Rolvaag, Ole
Giants in the Earth
Early Norwegians settlers in South Dakota battle the forces of of nature of but old beliefs and practices.
No better picture of our Midwest heritage anywhere! Peder Victorious and Our Father's God are great sequels.
Salinger, J.D.
Catcher in the Rye
Holden Caulfield is the quintessential American adolescent and Salinger was the first to write an honest novel of how teenagers felt, though few are as "mouthy" as Holden.
Franny and Zooey : Two Novellas
The story of two unusual siblings trying to make it into the world of adults.
Saroyan, William
The Human Comedy
Incidents in the life of a family during World War II
Silko, Leslie
Ceremony
Mystery, tradition mingle as a a man tries to find answers beyond the darker sides of modern American Indian life. Healing ceremonies and family ties offer hope beyond the alcohol and violence which occur in many communites today.
Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle
A harsh look at unregulated American manufacturing bosses and the meat-packing industry
Steinbeck, John
Of Mice and Men
George and Lennie, migrant workers during the depression, travel from ranch to ranch in an attempt to find some place where Lennie will not be degraded because of his mental retardation. 1937
Grapes of Wrath
Follows the Joad family from Oklahoma to California in search of jobs during the Great Depression
Stone, Irving
Love is Eternal
Misunderstandings, sorrows, and devotion of Lincoln and his wife
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Lincoln called this the novel that started the Civil War because of its melodramatic portrayal of the evils of slavery.
Styron, William
Lie Down in Darkness
Psychological novel on the moral breakdown of the rural South by one of Faulkner's proteges.
Swarthout, Glendon
Bless the Beasts and the Children
A group of misfit boys at a summer camp vow that they will save a herd of buffalo destined to be slaughtered.
Tan, Amy
Joy Luck Club
Traces the lives and 40-year friendships of four American Chinese women. American's hottest Asian American author. Also The Kitchen God's Wife
Thomas, Joyce Carol
Marked by Fire
Abby was a joyful child until she was raped by a neighbor at the age of ten. The nurturing of the towns women and her own inner strength help Abby recover and find love again.
Thurber, James
The Thirteen Clocks
An adult fairy tale about monsters and prisoners, heroes, and fair ladies.
Toole, John
A Confederacy of Dunces
Ignatius Reilly's goal of reforming the 20th century doesn't leave him much time for a 9-5 job until Mrs. Reilly finally pushes her 30 year-old son into the working world.
Twain, Mark
The Mysterious Stranger
A pessimistic story of how one of God's angels comes to earth and helps a boy learn that life does not usually turn out for the best.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A classic boyhood adventure plus Twain's satirical look at the stuffiness of the post-war culture
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Maybe America's most American novel and its best! Easy-going but clear-minded Huck's hilarious journey down the Mississippi with the Jim, a black man, surveys both what's good and what's sentimental and corrupt in mid-19th century America.
Tyler, Anne
Dinner at Homesick Restaurant
Two brothers and a sister try to escape their mother's habit of denial by developing their own odd coping mechanisms toward life.
If Morning Ever Comes
Ben has been surrounded by women his whole life and he feels like an outsider--a worrier. Home at last from Law school, Ben finds himself thrown into a unexpected battle with his own heart.
Accidental Tourist
Why be a travel writer when you hate strangeness of new places. Grounded by loneliness, Macon Leary meets a dog obedience trainer who promises to turn him into a happy traveler.
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Finding themselves on the imaginary island of St. Lorenzo, Vonnegut's bizarre characters learn about ice-nine and espouse a new religion.
Slaughterhouse Five
Billy Pilgrim survives the allied bombing of Dresden only to find himself captured by the creatures from Tralfamdore. 1969
Walker, Alice
The Color Purple
Celie's search for self-esteem is one of modern literature's most powerful portrayals of the birth of person-hood.
Temple of My Familiar
Walker returns to several minor characters from Color Purple in this funny and complex novel full of characters who work hard to keep love alive and rich in what Walker sees as the stressed and somewhat sterile white culture.
Warren, Robert Penn
All the King's Men
Young journalist Jack Burden becomes involved in the drive for political power of soon-to-be-governor Willie Stark--modeled after Louisiana's Huey Long
Welch, James
Winter in the Blood, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven
West, Nathaniel
Days of the Locust
Nondescript actors on the fringe of Hollywood in its early days
Wharton, Edith
Age of Innocence
Wharton's satirical picture of New York social life describing the marriage of May Welland and Newton Archer is a currently popular film.
Ethan Frome
A desolate New England farmhouse holds three tortured people, bound together in tragic destiny.
Wiesel, Elie
Night
How a young boy, a prisoner of the Germans, loses his family and his faith in God. A companion volume, Dawn, describes the moral struggles of an young Israeli who must execute a British soldier.
Wilder, Thornton
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
When a collapsing bridge tosses five travelers to their death in the chasm below, Brother Juniper is impelled to find the answer to the question, "Why those five?"
Skin of Our Teeth or The Matchmaker
Our Town
Emily learns the precious nature of ordinary life and the fragility of time when she views it from the cemetery after her death.
Williams, Tennessee
Glass Menagerie
Amanda's unrealistic dreams and tragic denials prevent her grown children from finding love and goals of their own in William's vision of a dying southern romanticism. This may be American Literature's most read play.
Wister, Owen
The Virginian
A classic western
Wolfe, Thomas
Look Homeward, Angel.
Complex portraits of southern family life and an individual's search for love were among Wolfe's common themes.
Wright, Richard
Native Son
Tragic story of a young black man caught in the racism of mid-century
Alcott, Louisa May
Little Women
Four young women growing up in a loving Civil War-era family. This book accurately reflects Alcott's own family life. Little Men (what Bronson Alcott's dream of a farm and school at Fruitlands might have been) and Jo's Boys (the little men all grown up) are sequels.
Eight Cousins
Young Rose, stuck in the conventions and restrictions of Victorian womanhood, is led into a Alcott's ideas of a more liberated life by the dashing Uncle Alec and her seven boy cousins. Louisa, herself, admitted she'd always wanted brothers and this book creates that dream.
Anaya, Rudolfo
Bless Me , Ultima
New Mexico, coming of age story
Anderson, Sherwood
Winesburg, Ohio
The people of a small Ohio town are portrayed in a series of portraits which influenced the styles of writers like Hemingway and Faulkner.
Baldwin, James
Go Tell it on the Mountain
A child growing up in Harlem sees both the joy and the brutality of the ghetto as he searches for a religious conversion.
Baldwin, James
If Beale Street Could Talk
When Sonny is jailed in a frame-up, he and his girl friend are supported by a loyal family.
Bellow, Saul
Henderson, the
Bellow's characters try to find some kind of moral way to make sense out of lives filled with "too much otherness."
Borland, Hal
When Legends Die
Torn between his world and that of the white man, a young Indian returns to his ancestral way of life.
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
One summer in the life of a twelve-year-old in a small town in Illinois in 1928.
Fahrenheit 451
Book-burning is an accepted government policy in this futuristic novel of a totalitarian state.
Buck, Pearl
Good Earth
Nobel Prize winner Buck created realistic sagas of changing China where she grew up as the daughter of American missionaries.
Caldwell, Erskine
God's Little Acre
An earthy picture of the rural south
Capote, Truman
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly Golightly encounters Manhattan in a dauntless quest for utter happiness.
In Cold Blood
his non-fiction fiction work about a family in Kansas that is murdered
Cather, Willa
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Modeled after Bishop Almy of the Cathedral of St. Francis in Sante Fe, Cather's novel paints a portrait of a complex man.
My Antonia
Describing the hardships of a Bohemian immigrant girl in pioneer Nebraska, Cather told the story of a girlhood friend Annie Pavelka.
O Pioneers!
Alexandra dedicates her life to the settling of the Nebraska panhandle, dreaming of an easier life for her younger brother Emil. Emil loses his chances in a forbidden love affair with a Bohemian girl.
Chopin, Kate
The Awakening
An early feminist novel of a woman's search for identity.
Cisneros, Sandra
House on Mango Street
Clark, Walter Von Tilburg
Oxbow Incident
The lawless American west and a look at law and order
Cooper, James Fenimore
The Last of the Mochicans - 1757 historical narrative about the French and Indian Wars - two sisters seek out their military father who is at a frontier fort - Fort William Henry. They are led by frontiersman Natty Bumppo and two Native American who are the last of their tribe.
Cormier, Robert
Fade
Can the power to disappear, inherited family trait given to one son in each generation, turn from mischief and mystery to horrifying evil?
Chocolate War
-about a student that refuses to sell chocolates as a school fundraiser - leads to larger issues
After the First Death
-Terrorists take over a school bus and hold it hostage -
I am the Cheese
-child loses his entire family and is put into witness protection - he recounts the events to his therapist
Crane, Stephen
The Red Badge of Courage
Henry moves from cowardice to courage in the greatest of all novels of the Civil War.
Maggie, Girl of the Streets
Story about a country girl who is forced into prostitution because of poverty and other circumstances.
Dickey, James
Deliverance
A friendly trip down a wilderness river ends in a savage hunt of man against man.
Dillard, Annie
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Dillard, a naturalist and poet by trade, wrote a collection of essays and stories that read like a journal or an autobiographical novel.
An American Childhood
Dillard traces her own growing up in this amazing autobiographical study of a bright child's developing mind.
Dorris, Michael
Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Three women, three generations weave together in this novel which reveals hidden identities, family loyalty, a growing up.
Dorris, Michael and Louise Erdrich.
Crown of Columbus
A beautiful Native American professors discovers a manuscript which leads her lover and her teenage son to danger as they track an artifact left on a Caribbean island by Columbus himself.
Dos Passos, John
Manhattan Transfer
View of various types of life in New York City during the twenties.
Dreiser, Theodore
An American Tragedy
The story of Clyde Griffiths, on overly ambitious poor young man eventually electrocuted for murder.
Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man
The terrifying experiences of a young black seeking identity during his high school and college days, and later in New York's Harlem.
Erdrich, Louise
Love Medicine
Pulitzer-prize winning look at the lives of a Native American family caught in the snags of alcohol and broken dreams.
Beet Queen
Rebellious but ugly Dot, pushed by her crazy aunts and the local businessman who loves them all, to reign as queen over the local sugar beet festival. Erdrich is the master at capturing the love and complexities of Native American families and off-reservation life. Erdrich is funny and sad all at once.
Farrell, James T.
Studs Lonigan
A tough Irish kid in the alleys and pool rooms of south side Chicago in realistic detail.
Fast, Howard
April Morning
The battles of LAexington and Concord come to life in this well-written historical novel of the American Revolution.
Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying
Story of the death of Addie Bundren and the ordeals her family undergoes in carrying the body home for burial in Mississippi. Each section narrated by one of the characters who reveals his or her memories.
"The Bear" in Portable Faulkner
A boy goes on his first hunting trip and comes to understand his own growing sense of self.
The Sound and the Fury
The tragic life of the Compsons, a degenerate Southern family, is described by Benjy, a 33 year old idiot
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Tender is the Night
Expatriate Americans wander from one fashionable European resort to another in the kind of aimless frivolous 20's life portrayed in The Great Gatsby.
This Side of Paradise
-His first novel - about the college days in the 1920s Ivy League setting
The Beautiful and the Damned
A novel about the flaming youth of the 1920's . Story of a rich playboy and of the downward spiral of his marriage during the wild excesses of the jazz age.
Gilbreth, Frank B.
Cheaper By the Dozen
Dad and Mom are efficiency experts who use all their skills to organize the care, feeding, and education of their twelve children.
Guthrie, A.B.
The Big Sky
A mountain man exploring frontier Montana form the framework of this novel of violence and liberty.
The Way West
Conquering the land and paying the price and themes of Guthrie's superb western.
Hammett, Dashiell
Maltese Falcon
Hammett invented the trench-coated tough detective in his classic mysteries. Imagine Bogart's voice and demeanor as you read Hammett.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
House of Seven Gables
Matthew Maul's curse, the greed of old Judge Pyncheon, and a redeeming love that finally breaks the curse shows classic Hawthorne themes and style.
The Scarlet Letter
This story explores on a literal and symbolic level the effect on a Puritan community of Hester Prynne's adultery.
Heller, Joseph
Catch-22
Heller's picture of war's absurdity as Yossarian frantically tries to just stay alive thru endless bombings. Who is crazy in a bureaucracy?
Hemingway, Ernest
Farewell to Arms
Love story of Catherine Barkley, an English nurse, and Lt. Henry, a wounded American ambulance driver in WWI.
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Robert Jordan, a young American professor fighting for the Loyalist cause in Spain, discovers love, destroys a bridge as assigned.
The Old Man and the Sea
An old, Cuban fisherman tests his courage and remaining strength as he battles the sea and a fish for survival with dignity.
The Sun Also Rises.
The disillusioned and wounded Lost Gneration gathers in Paris and Spanish towns to watch bullfights and discover why they can't care about life after world War I. A courageous young bullfighter is a contrast.
Herbert, Frank
Dune
A desert planet is the exotic scene of a detailed space fantasy in which the freemen of Dune battle the emperor of the known universe. The sci fi class was a cult book of the 60s.
Hersey, John
A Single Pebble
A young American engineer comes to understand the difference between Orient and Occident as he journeys up the Yangtze on a junk.
Hiroshima
No one has portrayed the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima more movingly than Hershey and he shows what happened to victims and survivors.
Hurston, Zora Neale
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Realistic look at the struggles of families and culture in the rural south, an African American novel that influence Walker, Morrison and others
Irving, John
Prayers for Owen Meany
Is Owen Meany's sense of destiny the result of his ridiculous ego, his multiple abilities, or his sense of being somehow chosen by God? Irving is irreverent, funny, and profound. The block-buster story of two friends growing up in the 60's.
James, Henry
Turn of the Screw
A governess tries to break the spell she believes evil spirits have cast over the two innocent children in her care. Also Daisy Miller
Jones, James
From Here to Eternity
Men and women in a classic picture of World War II, one of the great action war novels.
Kesey, Ken
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
An irrepressible rebel leads fellow inmates of a mental hospital in a struggle with the tyrannical nurse Ratchet.
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
After an experiment on a mouse named Algernon triples its intelligence, the same operations is performed on Charlie, a 32 year-old.
Knowles, John
A Separate Peace
Against the backdrop of World War II, the rivalry of two roommates at a boys' school turns into a private war.
Kosinski, Jerry
Painted Bird
An abandoned child wandering alone through the villages of Eastern Europe is exposed to grotesque superstitions and monstrosities that characterize WWII.
Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird
A A young girl tells of life in a small Alabama town and her father's defense in court of a Negro accused of raping a white woman.
LeGuin, Ursula
Left Hand of Darkness
Science fiction often asks tough philosophical and moral questions as LeGuin does here about the sexual roles of men and women. Also LeGuin's famous Wizard of Earthsea trilogy is a favorite of fantasy fans.
Lewis, Sinclair
Arrowsmith
A young doctor must decide between worldly success and money and his own desire to devote his life to scientific research.
Babbitt
Picture of American middle-class life, through the story of a conservative Republican real estate agent. ()
Elmer Gantry
An attack on the hypocrisy of the times centering around the story of the sensational rise of an evangelist.
It Can't Happen Here
Doremus Jessup, editor of a small New England newspaper, follows the rise to the presidency of the U.S. of a Fascist demagogue, Berzelius
Main Street
A young doctor's wife tries to change the ugliness, dullness and ignorance which prevail in the small town of Gopher Prairie.
Mailer, Norman
The Naked and the Dead
Assault and capture of a Pacific island in WWII forms the setting or Mailer's harsh and satirical portrayal of war's brutality.
Malmud, Bernard
The Fixer
Victim of a vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy and sent to prison, Yakov Bok dramatizes the difference between generations in Russia.
The Natural
Good and evil played out in this allegory of baseball.
Manfred, Frederick
Lord Grizzly
Hugh Glass, mauled by a bear and abandoned for dead by his fellow trappers, crawls down the Missouri valley swearing revenge. You can see the Glass's monument at Mobridge, SD today! Conquering Horse and Scarlet Plume are two other Manfred novels set in South Dakota.
Marquand, John P.
Late George Apley
Critical novel of the manners of the business community.
McCullers, Carson
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
A deaf-mute befriends a teenage girl and wordlessly supports her search for identity.
Member of the Wedding
A girl has made up her mind to go on her brother's honeymoon whether she's invited or not.
Melville, Herman
Billy Budd
Handsome Billy, forced to serve on a British battleship, does well until the cruel master-at-arms starts a vicious plot against him.
Moby Dick
In a classic of the sea, Captain Ahab goes in revengeful, relentless pursuit of the white whale.
Michener, James A.
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Brubaker, a pilot during the Korean War, faces the fact that he is afraid to attempt an assigned mission. His collection, Tales of the South Pacific, makes great reading for WWII fans. Rogers and Hammerstein based their musical on some of the stories.
Michener, James
Hawaii
This and any of Missioners massive historical novels represent good
writing and superb research of one of America's most popular writers.
Miller, Arthur
The Crucible
Fictional treatment of the Salem witchcraft trials was Miller's mirror for the hysteria of the 1950s communist "witch hunts" under Senator McCarthy.
Death of a Salesman
Willie Loman's boasting talk and phony optimism hides the failure in his personal and family life.
Mitchell, Margaret
Gone With The Wind
Scheming beautiful Scarlett O'Hara and unscrupulous Rhett Butler make this story of the Civil War adventurous and absorbing.
Momaday, N. Scott
House Made of Dawn
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
A savage look a slavery and its aftermath in the life of an American black family and of Sethe--"iron eyes and backbone to match." Morrison just won the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature.
The Bluest Eye
Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. She thought if she only had blue eyes her brother would stop running away and her father would stop drinking. Blue-eyed children were loved, weren't they?
Song of Solomon
Milkman's (Macon) "oreo" father forbids him to visit his disreputable aunt Pilate. But in Pilate's house Milkman finds the key which help him trace his family's roots to their beginnings in the plantations of the American south.
Tar Baby
Jadine, a gorgeous young black model, is the protege of a wealthy white man and his neurotic wife. When she meets and falls in love with Son, an earthy laborer, she questions all her dreams of wealth and the while world she has known.
Nichols, John
Milagro Bean Field War
Joe illegally taps into an irrigation ditch and begins a Bean Field which soon becomes the symbol of lost rights and lost lands. A joyous story of a Latino village in New Mexico.
O'Connor, Edwin
Last Hurrah
Manipulation, dirty politics, and power in the American political scene in this portrait of a demagogue.
O'Hara, John
Butterfield 8
The romantic, the tragic, the exploitative all meet and mingle in this melodramatic novel of the moral vacuum of the big city.
O'Brien, Tim
The Things They Carried
May be the most involving look at the Vietnam War's tragedy and guts
OConner, Flannery
Wise Blood
Bizarre religious fanatics try to prove the existence of good in acts of violence in this startling southern gothic.
Parks, Gordon
Learning Tree
Small town in Kansas in the 1920's is the setting for a year in the life a young black boy.
Paulsen, Gary
Sentries
An Indian girl, an illegal migrant worker, the daughter of a Montana sheep rancher, a soldier in a firefight--these young people are caught in the symbolic crossfire of a sentry--they face critical life choices. Or are they themselves sentries of changing values?
Plath, Sylvia
The Bell Jar
An autobiographical look at Plath's adolescent struggle for sanity.
Portis, Charles
True Grit
A 14 year old girl is determined to hunt down the person who is responsible for her father's murder.
Potok, Chaim
My Name is Asher Lev
An artist whose finest work in a figure of Christ and Mary finds his values in question because of his family's roots in the conservative community of Brooklyn's Hadassim Jews.
Rand, Ayn
Anthem
In a future world, the collectivists have taken over and no man is allowed to be himself.
Rawlings, Marjorie
The Yearling
A story of the Florida country and the conflicts in a boy's mind as he
has to face up to many unpleasant aspects of adult life. 1938
Richter, Conrad
A Country of Strangers
A companion volume to A Light in the Forest, this is the story of a
white girl captured by the Indians who must return to her original. parents
Rolvaag, Ole
Giants in the Earth
Early Norwegians settlers in South Dakota battle the forces of of nature of but old beliefs and practices.
No better picture of our Midwest heritage anywhere! Peder Victorious and Our Father's God are great sequels.
Salinger, J.D.
Catcher in the Rye
Holden Caulfield is the quintessential American adolescent and Salinger was the first to write an honest novel of how teenagers felt, though few are as "mouthy" as Holden.
Franny and Zooey : Two Novellas
The story of two unusual siblings trying to make it into the world of adults.
Saroyan, William
The Human Comedy
Incidents in the life of a family during World War II
Silko, Leslie
Ceremony
Mystery, tradition mingle as a a man tries to find answers beyond the darker sides of modern American Indian life. Healing ceremonies and family ties offer hope beyond the alcohol and violence which occur in many communites today.
Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle
A harsh look at unregulated American manufacturing bosses and the meat-packing industry
Steinbeck, John
Of Mice and Men
George and Lennie, migrant workers during the depression, travel from ranch to ranch in an attempt to find some place where Lennie will not be degraded because of his mental retardation. 1937
Grapes of Wrath
Follows the Joad family from Oklahoma to California in search of jobs during the Great Depression
Stone, Irving
Love is Eternal
Misunderstandings, sorrows, and devotion of Lincoln and his wife
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Lincoln called this the novel that started the Civil War because of its melodramatic portrayal of the evils of slavery.
Styron, William
Lie Down in Darkness
Psychological novel on the moral breakdown of the rural South by one of Faulkner's proteges.
Swarthout, Glendon
Bless the Beasts and the Children
A group of misfit boys at a summer camp vow that they will save a herd of buffalo destined to be slaughtered.
Tan, Amy
Joy Luck Club
Traces the lives and 40-year friendships of four American Chinese women. American's hottest Asian American author. Also The Kitchen God's Wife
Thomas, Joyce Carol
Marked by Fire
Abby was a joyful child until she was raped by a neighbor at the age of ten. The nurturing of the towns women and her own inner strength help Abby recover and find love again.
Thurber, James
The Thirteen Clocks
An adult fairy tale about monsters and prisoners, heroes, and fair ladies.
Toole, John
A Confederacy of Dunces
Ignatius Reilly's goal of reforming the 20th century doesn't leave him much time for a 9-5 job until Mrs. Reilly finally pushes her 30 year-old son into the working world.
Twain, Mark
The Mysterious Stranger
A pessimistic story of how one of God's angels comes to earth and helps a boy learn that life does not usually turn out for the best.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A classic boyhood adventure plus Twain's satirical look at the stuffiness of the post-war culture
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Maybe America's most American novel and its best! Easy-going but clear-minded Huck's hilarious journey down the Mississippi with the Jim, a black man, surveys both what's good and what's sentimental and corrupt in mid-19th century America.
Tyler, Anne
Dinner at Homesick Restaurant
Two brothers and a sister try to escape their mother's habit of denial by developing their own odd coping mechanisms toward life.
If Morning Ever Comes
Ben has been surrounded by women his whole life and he feels like an outsider--a worrier. Home at last from Law school, Ben finds himself thrown into a unexpected battle with his own heart.
Accidental Tourist
Why be a travel writer when you hate strangeness of new places. Grounded by loneliness, Macon Leary meets a dog obedience trainer who promises to turn him into a happy traveler.
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Finding themselves on the imaginary island of St. Lorenzo, Vonnegut's bizarre characters learn about ice-nine and espouse a new religion.
Slaughterhouse Five
Billy Pilgrim survives the allied bombing of Dresden only to find himself captured by the creatures from Tralfamdore. 1969
Walker, Alice
The Color Purple
Celie's search for self-esteem is one of modern literature's most powerful portrayals of the birth of person-hood.
Temple of My Familiar
Walker returns to several minor characters from Color Purple in this funny and complex novel full of characters who work hard to keep love alive and rich in what Walker sees as the stressed and somewhat sterile white culture.
Warren, Robert Penn
All the King's Men
Young journalist Jack Burden becomes involved in the drive for political power of soon-to-be-governor Willie Stark--modeled after Louisiana's Huey Long
Welch, James
Winter in the Blood, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven
West, Nathaniel
Days of the Locust
Nondescript actors on the fringe of Hollywood in its early days
Wharton, Edith
Age of Innocence
Wharton's satirical picture of New York social life describing the marriage of May Welland and Newton Archer is a currently popular film.
Ethan Frome
A desolate New England farmhouse holds three tortured people, bound together in tragic destiny.
Wiesel, Elie
Night
How a young boy, a prisoner of the Germans, loses his family and his faith in God. A companion volume, Dawn, describes the moral struggles of an young Israeli who must execute a British soldier.
Wilder, Thornton
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
When a collapsing bridge tosses five travelers to their death in the chasm below, Brother Juniper is impelled to find the answer to the question, "Why those five?"
Skin of Our Teeth or The Matchmaker
Our Town
Emily learns the precious nature of ordinary life and the fragility of time when she views it from the cemetery after her death.
Williams, Tennessee
Glass Menagerie
Amanda's unrealistic dreams and tragic denials prevent her grown children from finding love and goals of their own in William's vision of a dying southern romanticism. This may be American Literature's most read play.
Wister, Owen
The Virginian
A classic western
Wolfe, Thomas
Look Homeward, Angel.
Complex portraits of southern family life and an individual's search for love were among Wolfe's common themes.
Wright, Richard
Native Son
Tragic story of a young black man caught in the racism of mid-century