For students
Best Novels for AP Literature
The AP Literature open-response question rewards a novel you know deeply — one with enough thematic weight to answer almost any prompt and enough structural clarity to write about under time pressure. Not every great book makes a great exam text; these do.
We've ranked the strongest choices from the works commonly taught for AP and annotated each with what it gives you on exam day: the arguable themes, the symbols that pay off, the ending worth memorizing. Each links to a full chapter-by-chapter study guide.
- 66 books
- 41 authors
- 1000–2013 span
- 1
David Copperfield
AP Lit set textCharles Dickens · 1850 · Novel · novel
- 2
Dracula
AP Lit set textBram Stoker · 1897 · Novel · novel
- 3
Wuthering Heights
AP Lit set textEmily Brontë · 1847 · Novel · novel
- 4
Great Expectations
AP Lit set textCharles Dickens · 1861 · Novel · novel
- 5
Catch-22
AP Lit set textJoseph Heller · 1961 · Novel · novel
- 6
Beloved
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1987 · Novel · novel
- 7
As I Lay Dying
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1930 · Novel · novel
- 8
A Lesson Before Dying
AP Lit set textErnest J. Gaines · 1993 · Novel · novel
- 9
Disgrace
AP Lit set textJ. M. Coetzee · 1999 · Novel · novel
- 10
Pride and Prejudice
AP Lit set textJane Austen · 1813 · Novel · novel
- 11
Bleak House
AP Lit set textCharles Dickens · 1853 · Novel · novel
- 12
Howards End
AP Lit set textE. M. Forster · 1910 · Novel · novel
- 13
The Scarlet Letter
AP Lit set textNathaniel Hawthorne · 1850 · Novel · novel
- 14
Hard Times
AP Lit set textCharles Dickens · 1854 · Novel · novel
- 15
The Awakening
AP Lit set textKate Chopin · 1899 · Novel · novel
- 16
A Farewell to Arms
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1929 · Novel · novel
- 17
Bless Me, Ultima
AP Lit set textRudolfo Anaya · 1972 · Novel · novel
- 18
Lord Jim
AP Lit set textJoseph Conrad · 1900 · Novel · novel
- 19
Light in August
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1932 · Novel · novel
- 20
Cry, the Beloved Country
AP Lit set textAlan Paton · 1948 · Novel · novel
- 21
The God of Small Things
AP Lit set textArundhati Roy · 1997 · Novel · novel
- 22
The Sun Also Rises
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1926 · Novel · novel
- 23
Brave New World
AP Lit set textAldous Huxley · 1932 · Novel · novel
- 24
Invisible Man
AP Lit set textRalph Ellison · 1952 · Novel · novel
- 25
Half of a Yellow Sun
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006 · Novel · novel
- 26
Sense and Sensibility
AP Lit set textJane Austen · 1811 · Novel · novel
- 27
Song of Solomon
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 28
Moby-Dick
AP Lit set textHerman Melville · 1851 · Novel · novel
- 29
Their Eyes Were Watching God
AP Lit set textZora Neale Hurston · 1937 · Novel · novel
- 30
No Longer at Ease
AP Lit set textChinua Achebe · 1960 · Novel · novel
- 31
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
AP Lit set textKen Kesey · 1962 · Novel · novel
- 32
Blood Meridian
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 1985 · Novel · novel
- 33
Cold Mountain
AP Lit set textCharles Frazier · 1997 · Novel · novel
- 34
Mrs. Dalloway
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1925 · Novel · novel
- 35
The Bluest Eye
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1970 · Novel · novel
- 36
The Mayor of Casterbridge
AP Lit set textThomas Hardy · 1886 · Novel · novel
- 37
Persuasion
AP Lit set textJane Austen · 1817 · Novel · novel
- 38
For Whom the Bell Tolls
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1940 · Novel · novel
- 39
House Made of Dawn
AP Lit set textN. Scott Momaday · 1969 · Novel · novel
- 40
A Passage to India
AP Lit set textE. M. Forster · 1924 · Novel · novel
- 41
Wide Sargasso Sea
AP Lit set textJean Rhys · 1966 · Novel · novel
- 42
Slaughterhouse-Five
AP Lit set textKurt Vonnegut · 1969 · Novel · novel
- 43
Ceremony
AP Lit set textLeslie Marmon Silko · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 44
Purple Hibiscus
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2003 · Novel · novel
- 45
Beowulf
AP Lit set textAnonymous · 1000 · Novel · epic
- 46
Emma
AP Lit set textJane Austen · 1815 · Novel · novel
- 47
Jane Eyre
AP Lit set textCharlotte Brontë · 1847 · Novel · novel
- 48
The Color Purple
AP Lit set textAlice Walker · 1982 · Novel · novel
- 49
To the Lighthouse
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1927 · Novel · novel
- 50
Sula
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1973 · Novel · novel
- 51
Middlemarch
AP Lit set textGeorge Eliot · 1871 · Novel · novel
- 52
Americanah
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2013 · Novel · novel
- 53
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
AP Lit set textThomas Hardy · 1891 · Novel · novel
- 54
The Great Gatsby
AP Lit set textF. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · Novel · novel
- 55
Absalom, Absalom!
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1936 · Novel · novel
- 56
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
AP Lit set textJames Joyce · 1916 · Novel · novel
- 57
Go Tell It on the Mountain
AP Lit set textJames Baldwin · 1953 · Novel · novel
- 58
The Road
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 2006 · Novel · novel
- 59
Jude the Obscure
AP Lit set textThomas Hardy · 1895 · Novel · novel
- 60
Native Son
AP Lit set textRichard Wright · 1940 · Novel · novel
- 61
Heart of Darkness
AP Lit set textJoseph Conrad · 1899 · Novella · novella
- 62
Orlando
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1928 · Novel · novel
- 63
The Sound and the Fury
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1929 · Novel · novel
- 64
The House on Mango Street
AP Lit set textSandra Cisneros · 1984 · Novella · novella
- 65
All the Pretty Horses
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 1992 · Novel · novel
- 66
Billy Budd, Sailor
AP Lit set textHerman Melville · 1924 · Novella · novella
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