By era
Best Modern Classic Novels
The postwar decades produced a run of novels that feel, already, like classics — books taught alongside the nineteenth-century giants because they answer them. They inherit the realist and modernist traditions and press them toward new subjects and new voices.
We've ranked the strongest of them and annotated each with what it contributed: a widened canon, a reinvented form, a history finally told from the inside. Each title links to a full study guide.
- 115 books
- 99 authors
- 1948–2025 span
- 1
To Kill a Mockingbird
OCR set textHarper Lee · 1960 · Novel · novel
- 2
Suzanne Collins · 2008 · Novel · novel
- 3
- 4
The Master and Margarita
IB set textMikhail Bulgakov · 1967 · Novel · novel
- 5
- 6
- 7
The Catcher in the Rye
Common CoreJ. D. Salinger · 1951 · Novel · novel
- 8
- 9
Kate DiCamillo · 2000 · Novel · novel
- 10
Khaled Hosseini · 2003 · Novel · novel
- 11
- 12
John Green · 2012 · Novel · novel
- 13
- 14
Catch-22
AP Lit set textJoseph Heller · 1961 · Novel · novel
- 15
Beloved
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1987 · Novel · novel
- 16
Sherman Alexie · 2007 · Novel · novel
- 17
Nineteen Eighty-Four
OCR set textGeorge Orwell · 1949 · Novel · novel
- 18
Scott O'Dell · 1960 · Novel · novel
- 19
A Lesson Before Dying
AP Lit set textErnest J. Gaines · 1993 · Novel · novel
- 20
Disgrace
AP Lit set textJ. M. Coetzee · 1999 · Novel · novel
- 21
Sarah J. Maas · 2015 · Novel · novel
- 22
Rodman Philbrick · 1993 · Novel · novel
- 23
- 24
- 25
J. R. R. Tolkien · 1954 · Novel · novel
- 26
Bless Me, Ultima
AP Lit set textRudolfo Anaya · 1972 · Novel · novel
- 27
Bud, Not Buddy
Common CoreChristopher Paul Curtis · 1999 · Novel · novel
- 28
Never Let Me Go
OCR set textKazuo Ishiguro · 2005 · Novel · novel
- 29
Colleen Hoover · 2016 · Novel · novel
- 30
Karen M. McManus · 2017 · Novel · novel
- 31
Cry, the Beloved Country
AP Lit set textAlan Paton · 1948 · Novel · novel
- 32
The Tin Drum
IB set textGünter Grass · 1959 · Novel · novel
- 33
The Joy Luck Club
AP Lit set textAmy Tan · 1989 · Novel · novel
- 34
The God of Small Things
AP Lit set textArundhati Roy · 1997 · Novel · novel
- 35
Barbara Kingsolver · 2022 · Novel · novel
- 36
- 37
Invisible Man
AP Lit set textRalph Ellison · 1952 · Novel · novel
- 38
- 39
Half of a Yellow Sun
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006 · Novel · novel
- 40
- 41
Alex Michaelides · 2019 · Novel · novel
- 42
Where the Red Fern Grows
Common CoreWilson Rawls · 1961 · Novel · novel
- 43
Song of Solomon
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 44
Donna Tartt · 1992 · Novel · novel
- 45
Emily St. John Mandel · 2014 · Novel · novel
- 46
C. S. Lewis · 1950 · Novel · novel
- 47
No Longer at Ease
AP Lit set textChinua Achebe · 1960 · Novel · novel
- 48
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
AP Lit set textKen Kesey · 1962 · Novel · novel
- 49
- 50
Blood Meridian
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 1985 · Novel · novel
- 51
David Foster Wallace · 1996 · Novel · novel
- 52
Cold Mountain
AP Lit set textCharles Frazier · 1997 · Novel · novel
- 53
Sharon M. Draper · 2010 · Novel · novel
- 54
Anthony Doerr · 2014 · Novel · novel
- 55
Philip K. Dick · 1962 · Novel · novel
- 56
Flowers for Algernon
Common CoreDaniel Keyes · 1966 · Novel · novel
- 57
The Bluest Eye
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1970 · Novel · novel
- 58
Number the Stars
Common CoreLois Lowry · 1989 · Novel · novel
- 59
- 60
Hanya Yanagihara · 2015 · Novel · novel
- 61
- 62
Parable of the Sower
AP Lit set textOctavia E. Butler · 1993 · Novel · novel
- 63
In the Time of the Butterflies
IB set textJulia Alvarez · 1994 · Novel · novel
- 64
The Book Thief
Common CoreMarkus Zusak · 2005 · Novel · novel
- 65
- 66
Things Fall Apart
IB set textChinua Achebe · 1958 · Novel · novel
- 67
House Made of Dawn
AP Lit set textN. Scott Momaday · 1969 · Novel · novel
- 68
Mildred D. Taylor · 1976 · Novel · novel
- 69
The House of the Spirits
IB set textIsabel Allende · 1982 · Novel · novel
- 70
- 71
Wide Sargasso Sea
AP Lit set textJean Rhys · 1966 · Novel · novel
- 72
Slaughterhouse-Five
AP Lit set textKurt Vonnegut · 1969 · Novel · novel
- 73
Ceremony
AP Lit set textLeslie Marmon Silko · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 74
The Woman in Black
OCR set textSusan Hill · 1983 · Novella · novel
- 75
Hatchet
Common CoreGary Paulsen · 1987 · Novel · novel
- 76
Atonement
AP Lit set textIan McEwan · 2001 · Novel · novel
- 77
Purple Hibiscus
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2003 · Novel · novel
- 78
A Wrinkle in Time
Common CoreMadeleine L'Engle · 1962 · Novel · novel
- 79
The Handmaid's Tale
AP Lit set textMargaret Atwood · 1985 · Novel · novel
- 80
- 81
Katherine Applegate · 2012 · Novel · novel
- 82
- 83
East of Eden
Common CoreJohn Steinbeck · 1952 · Novel · novel
- 84
Lord of the Flies
Eduqas set textWilliam Golding · 1954 · Novel · novel
- 85
One Hundred Years of Solitude
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1967 · Novel · novel
- 86
The Outsiders
Common CoreS. E. Hinton · 1967 · Novel · novel
- 87
Bridge to Terabithia
Common CoreKatherine Paterson · 1977 · Novel · novel
- 88
The Color Purple
AP Lit set textAlice Walker · 1982 · Novel · novel
- 89
Norwegian Wood
IB set textHaruki Murakami · 1987 · Novel · novel
- 90
Stephen Chbosky · 1999 · Novel · novel
- 91
Esperanza Rising
Common CorePam Muñoz Ryan · 2000 · Novel · novel
- 92
- 93
Celeste Ng · 2014 · Novel · novel
- 94
- 95
A Separate Peace
AP Lit set textJohn Knowles · 1959 · Novel · novel
- 96
Sula
AP Lit set textToni Morrison · 1973 · Novel · novel
- 97
Like Water for Chocolate
IB set textLaura Esquivel · 1989 · Novel · novel
- 98
Anita and Me
Eduqas set textMeera Syal · 1996 · Novel · novel
- 99
Kindred
AP Lit set textOctavia E. Butler · 1979 · Novel · novel
- 100
Americanah
AP Lit set textChimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2013 · Novel · novel
- 101
- 102
Speak
Common CoreLaurie Halse Anderson · 1999 · Novel · novel
- 103
Go Tell It on the Mountain
AP Lit set textJames Baldwin · 1953 · Novel · novel
- 104
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1981 · Novella · novella
- 105
Love in the Time of Cholera
IB set textGabriel García Márquez · 1985 · Novel · novel
- 106
The Road
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 2006 · Novel · novel
- 107
- 108
Fahrenheit 451
Common CoreRay Bradbury · 1953 · Novel · novel
- 109
How Many Miles to Babylon?
Leaving CertJennifer Johnston · 1974 · Novella · novel
- 110
Kazuo Ishiguro · 2021 · Novel · novel
- 111
The House on Mango Street
AP Lit set textSandra Cisneros · 1984 · Novella · novella
- 112
All the Pretty Horses
AP Lit set textCormac McCarthy · 1992 · Novel · novel
- 113
Kitchen
IB set textBanana Yoshimoto · 1988 · Novella · novel
- 114
The Old Man and the Sea
AP Lit set textErnest Hemingway · 1952 · Novella · novella
- 115
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