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.
- 59 books
- 35 authors
- 1811–2013 span
- 1
Wuthering Heights
AP Lit set textEmily Brontë · 1847 · Novel · novel
- 2
Great Expectations
AP Lit set textCharles Dickens · 1861 · Novel · novel
- 3
Beloved
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1987 · Novel · novel
- 4
As I Lay Dying
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1930 · Novel · novel
- 5
A Lesson Before Dying
AP Lit set textErnest J. Gaines · 1993 · Novel · novel
- 6
Disgrace
AP Lit set textJ. M. Coetzee · 1999 · Novel · novel
- 7
Pride and Prejudice
AP Lit set textJane Austen · 1813 · Novel · novel
- 8
Bleak House
AP Lit set textCharles Dickens · 1853 · Novel · novel
- 9
Howards End
AP Lit set textE. M. Forster · 1910 · Novel · novel
- 10
Hard Times
AP Lit set textCharles Dickens · 1854 · Novel · novel
- 11
A Farewell to Arms
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1929 · Novel · novel
- 12
The Scarlet Letter
AP Lit set textNathaniel Hawthorne · 1850 · Novel · novel
- 13
The Awakening
AP Lit set textKate Chopin · 1899 · Novel · novel
- 14
Lord Jim
AP Lit set textJoseph Conrad · 1900 · Novel · novel
- 15
Light in August
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1932 · Novel · novel
- 16
Cry, the Beloved Country
AP Lit set textAlan Paton · 1948 · Novel · novel
- 17
Bless Me, Ultima
AP Lit set textRudolfo Anaya · 1972 · Novel · novel
- 18
The God of Small Things
AP Lit set textArundhati Roy · 1997 · Novel · novel
- 19
The Sun Also Rises
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1926 · Novel · novel
- 20
Invisible Man
AP Lit set textRalph Ellison · 1952 · Novel · novel
- 21
Half of a Yellow Sun
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006 · Novel · novel
- 22
Sense and Sensibility
AP Lit set textJane Austen · 1811 · Novel · novel
- 23
Their Eyes Were Watching God
AP Lit set textZora Neale Hurston · 1937 · Novel · novel
- 24
No Longer at Ease
AP Lit set textChinua Achebe · 1960 · Novel · novel
- 25
Song of Solomon
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 26
Blood Meridian
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 1985 · Novel · novel
- 27
Cold Mountain
AP Lit set textCharles Frazier · 1997 · Novel · novel
- 28
Moby-Dick
AP Lit set textHerman Melville · 1851 · Novel · novel
- 29
Mrs. Dalloway
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1925 · Novel · novel
- 30
The Mayor of Casterbridge
AP Lit set textThomas Hardy · 1886 · Novel · novel
- 31
The Bluest Eye
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1970 · Novel · novel
- 32
Persuasion
AP Lit set textJane Austen · 1817 · Novel · novel
- 33
For Whom the Bell Tolls
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1940 · Novel · novel
- 34
House Made of Dawn
AP Lit set textN. Scott Momaday · 1969 · Novel · novel
- 35
A Passage to India
AP Lit set textE. M. Forster · 1924 · Novel · novel
- 36
Wide Sargasso Sea
AP Lit set textJean Rhys · 1966 · Novel · novel
- 37
Ceremony
AP Lit set textLeslie Marmon Silko · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 38
Purple Hibiscus
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2003 · Novel · novel
- 39
Emma
AP Lit set textJane Austen · 1815 · Novel · novel
- 40
Jane Eyre
AP Lit set textCharlotte Brontë · 1847 · Novel · novel
- 41
The Color Purple
AP Lit set textAlice Walker · 1982 · Novel · novel
- 42
To the Lighthouse
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1927 · Novel · novel
- 43
Sula
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1973 · Novel · novel
- 44
Middlemarch
AP Lit set textGeorge Eliot · 1871 · Novel · novel
- 45
Americanah
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2013 · Novel · novel
- 46
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
AP Lit set textThomas Hardy · 1891 · Novel · novel
- 47
Absalom, Absalom!
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1936 · Novel · novel
- 48
The Great Gatsby
AP Lit set textF. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · Novel · novel
- 49
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
AP Lit set textJames Joyce · 1916 · Novel · novel
- 50
Go Tell It on the Mountain
AP Lit set textJames Baldwin · 1953 · Novel · novel
- 51
The Road
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 2006 · Novel · novel
- 52
Jude the Obscure
AP Lit set textThomas Hardy · 1895 · Novel · novel
- 53
Native Son
AP Lit set textRichard Wright · 1940 · Novel · novel
- 54
Heart of Darkness
AP Lit set textJoseph Conrad · 1899 · Novella · novella
- 55
Orlando
AP Lit set textVirginia Woolf · 1928 · Novel · novel
- 56
The Sound and the Fury
AP Lit set textWilliam Faulkner · 1929 · Novel · novel
- 57
The House on Mango Street
AP Lit set textSandra Cisneros · 1984 · Novella · novella
- 58
All the Pretty Horses
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 1992 · Novel · novel
- 59
Billy Budd, Sailor
AP Lit set textHerman Melville · 1924 · Novella · novella
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