The most popular books in English
from 17201 to 17400
What books are currently the most popular and which are the all time classics? Here we present you with a mixture of those two criteria. We update this list once a month.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_2253001295-L_100_200.jpg)
Jean Giraudoux
Electra is a two-act play written in 1937 by French dramatist Jean Giraudoux. It was the first Giraudoux play to employ the staging of Louis Jouvet. Based on the classic myth of antiquity, Jean Giraudoux wrote perhaps his best play. Electra has a surprisingly tragic force, …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0679750312-L_100_200.jpg)
Neil Postman
Postman suggests that the current crisis in our educational system derives from its failure to supply students with a translucent, unifying "narrative" like those that inspired earlier generations. Instead, today's schools promote the false "gods" of economic utility, …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0743474481-L_100_200.jpg)
Léo Malet
The Bloody Streets of Paris is a classic detective story set against the Nazi occupation of Paris. Newly discharged from a WWII prisoner of war camp, Nestor Burma finds himself unraveling a convoluted mystery surrounding the death of an associate. The fast-paced, tightly plotted …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_asin843393130X_100_200.jpg)
Albert Cohen
Solal of the Solals is a 1930 novel by the Swiss writer Albert Cohen. It was published in English in 1933. It was Cohen's first novel, and the first part in a loosely connected series of four; it was followed by Nailcruncher, Belle du Seigneur and Les Valeureux.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0423514202-L_100_200.jpg)
Jean Anouilh
Le voyageur sans bagage is a 1937 play in five acts by Jean Anouilh. Incidental music was written by Darius Milhaud.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0061434825-L_100_200.jpg)
Joyce Carol Oates
Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Clemens ("Mark Twain"), Henry James, Ernest Hemingway—Joyce Carol Oates evokes each of these American literary icons in her newest work of prose fiction, poignantly and audaciously reinventing the climactic events of their lives. In …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_isbn9789991603544_100_200.jpg)
Alistair MacLean
The tale of murder and revenge set on a remote oil rig, from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.SEAWITCH The massive oil-rig is the hub of a great empire, the pride of its billionaire owner, Lord Worth, predatory and ruthless, has clawed his way to great wealth. Now, he …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0380399334-L_100_200.jpg)
Clifford D. Simak
A mysterious invisible barrier suddenly encloses a small, out-of-the-way American town. It's been put there by a galactic intelligence intent on imposing harmony and cooperation on the different peoples of the universe. But to the inhabitants, the barrier evokes stark terror.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0375726330-L_100_200.jpg)
Edward Said
In this fascinating book, Edward Said looks at the creative contradictions that often mark the late works of literary and musical artists. Said shows how the approaching death of an artist can make its way into his work, examining essays, poems, novels, films, and operas by such …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0394574842-L_100_200.jpg)
Anthony Burgess
Any Old Iron, Anthony Burgess's epic updating of the Excalibur legend, was published in 1989. Among the historical figures fictionalized in the novel are Chaim Weizmann, A. J. Cronin, Winston Churchill, Éamon de Valera, Anthony Eden and Joseph Stalin. The novel is arguably one …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_1595690476-L_100_200.jpg)
Emile Zola
La joie de vivre is the twelfth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was serialized in the periodical Gil Blas in 1883 before being published in book form by Charpentier in February 1884. It was translated into English by Ernest A. Vizetelly as How Jolly Life …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_isbn9781906040345_100_200.jpg)
Guillaume Musso
Parisian cop Martin Beaumont has never really got over his first love, Gabrielle. Their brief, intense affair in San Francisco and the pain of her rejection still haunt him years later. Now, however, he's a successful detective - and tonight he's going to arrest the legendary …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_1595580298-L_100_200.jpg)
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Racism Explained to My Daughter is a book in which the author, during a demonstration against an immigration law in Paris, answers his daughter's questions about the reasons for racism. The author's intent was to explain, with this book, the modern "trauma" that racism is to …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0520209796-L_100_200.jpg)
Simone de Beauvoir
Here is the ultimate American road book, one with a perspective unlike that of any other. In January 1947 Simone de Beauvoir landed at La Guardia airport and began a four-month journey that took her from one coast of the United States to the other, and back again. Embraced by …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_9684115369-L_100_200.jpg)
César Aira
Ghosts by César Aira was first published under the title Los fantasmas in 1990. Chris Andrews’ English translation was published by New Directions in 2009. It was nominated for the 2010 Best Translated Book Award shortlist.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0140443649-L_100_200.jpg)
August Strindberg
Inferno is an autobiographical novel by August Strindberg. Written in French in 1896-97 at the height of Strindberg's troubles with both censors and women, the book is concerned with Strindberg's life both in and after he lived in Paris, and explores his various obsessions, …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0099279487-L_100_200.jpg)
Lisa See
“See paints a fascinating portrait of a complex and enigmatic society, in which nothing is ever quite as it appears, and of the people, peasant and aristocrat alike, who are bound by its subtle strictures.”–San Diego Union-TribuneWhile David Stark is asked to open a law office …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0552085219-L_100_200.jpg)
Leon Uris
The Angry Hills is a novel written by the American novelist Leon Uris. It was adapted into a motion picture by the same name in 1959. Michael "Mike" Morrison is an American author and recent widower who is in Greece during World War II to receive an inheritance. When everything …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0060912227-L_100_200.jpg)
Milan Kundera
Jacques and his Master is a play written in 1971 by Milan Kundera, which he subtitles "A Homage to Diderot in Three Acts". It was translated by Simon Callow in 1986 and directed by him in 1987.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0345430948-L_100_200.jpg)
Robert McLiam Wilson
Ripley Bogle is the debut novel of Northern Irish author Robert McLiam Wilson, published in 1989 in the UK although not until 1998 in the US. Written when he was 26 it is arguably his most acclaimed, winning the Rooney Prize and the Hughes Prize in 1989, and a Betty Trask Award …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0312156642-L_100_200.jpg)
Dodie Smith
The Starlight Barking is a 1967 children's novel by Dodie Smith. It is a sequel to the 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Although The Hundred and One Dalmatians has been adapted into two films, and each version has a sequel film, neither sequel film has any connection …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_1878972103-L_100_200.jpg)
Louis Aragon
Le Paysan de Paris is a surrealist book about places in Paris by Louis Aragon which was first published in 1926 by Editions Gallimard. It was dedicated to the surrealist painter André Masson and its preface was on the theme of a modern mythology. The two main sections of the …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0394170938-L_100_200.jpg)
André Malraux
Man's Hope (French: L'Espoir) is a 1937 novel by André Malraux about the Spanish Civil War. It was translated to English and published during 1938 as "Man's Hope". The story was later adapted into a movie, L'espoir (1945).
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0140262881-L_100_200.jpg)
Richard Rorty
Philosophy and Social Hope is a 1999 book written by philosopher Richard Rorty and published by Penguin. The book is a collection of cultural and political essays intended to reach a wider audience and, like his previous books, it presents Rorty's own version of pragmatism. …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0618083561-L_100_200.jpg)
J. R. R. Tolkien
The End of the Third Age is a book written by J. R. R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0425075141-L_100_200.jpg)
Michael Moorcock
Count Brass is a book published in 1973 that was written by Michael Moorcock.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_207077032X-L_100_200.jpg)
David Foenkinos
Having collected, among other things, cocktail sticks, electoral campaign badges, paintings of moored ships, rabbits' feet, noises at five in the morning, Croatian maxims, staircase ornaments, the first pages of novels, the labels on melons, birds' eggs, moments with you, …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_isbn9781401938178_100_200.jpg)
Laurent Gounelle
While on a relaxing vacation in Bali, Julian decides to consult a legendary and wise healer whose reputation precedes him. The old Master Samtyang’s diagnosis on meeting the schoolteacher is firm: you are healthy, but you are not . . . happy.During the series of daily encounters …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0006540325-L_100_200.jpg)
Simone de Beauvoir
When Things of the Spirit Come First is Simone de Beauvoir's 'first' work of fiction. After a number of false starts, in 1937 she submitted this collection of interlinked stories to a publisher. But it was turned down by both Gallimard and Grasset.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0816612870-L_100_200.jpg)
Jacques Attali
Noise: The Political Economy of Music is a non-fiction book by French economist and scholar, Jacques Attali. Attali's essential argument in Noise: The Political Economy of Music is that music, as a cultural form, is intimately tied up in the mode of production in any given …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0333628020-L_100_200.jpg)
Richmal Crompton
Just William is the first book of children's short stories about the young school boy William Brown, written by Richmal Crompton, and published in 1922. The book was the first in the series of William Brown books which was the basis for numerous television series, films and …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_isbn9780099525042_100_200.jpg)
Katie Fforde
Phillida Horsley might have bitten off more than she can chew when she agrees to help organize a literary festival and finds herself going to Ireland to persuade the infamous and reclusive author Dermot Flynn to come out of hiding.From the Hardcover edition.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0140309241-L_100_200.jpg)
Doris Gates
Blue Willow is a realistic children's fiction book by Doris Gates, published in 1940. Called the "juvenile Grapes of Wrath", it was named a Newbery Honor book in 1941. Written by a librarian who worked with migrant children in Fresno, California, this story of a migrant girl who …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0671877097-L_100_200.jpg)
Jerry Pournelle
Janissaries is a novel by science fiction author Jerry Pournelle. It was originally published in 1979, and was illustrated by comic artist Bermejo. It is the first book of Pournelle's Janissaries series. The following books are Janissaries: Clan and Crown and Janissaries III: …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0316734748-L_100_200.jpg)
Zoey Dean
Blonde Ambition is the third novel in the A-List series by Zoey Dean. It was published in September 2004.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0385498357-L_100_200.jpg)
Naguib Mahfouz
The Beggar is a 1965 novella by Naguib Mahfouz about the failure to find meaning in existence. It is set in post-revolutionary Cairo during the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0385128533-L_100_200.jpg)
Alistair MacLean
Goodbye California is a novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean, first published in 1977.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0691072361-L_100_200.jpg)
Richard Rorty
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is a book by American philosopher Richard Rorty. It attempts to dissolve modern philosophical problems instead of solving them by presenting them as pseudo-problems that only exist in the language-game of epistemological projects culminating …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_1860462944-L_100_200.jpg)
Julien Gracq
A Balcony in the Forest is a 1958 novel by the French writer Julien Gracq. It tells the story of a French lieutenant, Grange, who is assigned to an old fortified building in the forest of the Ardennes in the autumn of 1939, where he waits at the outbreak of World War II together …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0425211363-L_100_200.jpg)
Colby Buzzell
My War: Killing Time in Iraq is a 2005 book by Colby Buzzell recounting the author's November 2003 – January 2005 deployment of post-invasion Iraq in the U.S. Army. My War focuses on the down-to-earth experiences of a soldier, chronicling the daily life, absurdities and ennui in …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0441802087-L_100_200.jpg)
William Shatner
TekWar is a science fiction novel written by William Shatner and science fiction author Ron Goulart. It was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in October 1989. TekWar is the first of nine novels, which spawned a comic book and television series, a video game, and a TV movie.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0824014448-L_100_200.jpg)
Roger Zelazny
Four for Tomorrow is the first story collection by Roger Zelazny, published in paperback by Ace Books in 1967. British hardcover and paperback editions followed in 1969, under the title A Rose for Ecclesiastes. The first American hardcover was issued in the Garland Library of …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_038575082X-L_100_200.jpg)
Paul Stewart
Freeglader is a children's fantasy novel by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, first published in 2004. It is the seventh volume of The Edge Chronicles and the third of the Rook Saga trilogy; within the stories' own chronology it is the ninth novel, following the Quint Saga and …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0299200647-L_100_200.jpg)
Mordecai Roshwald
Level 7 is a 1959 science fiction novel by the American writer Mordecai Roshwald. It is told from the first person perspective of a modern soldier X-127 living in the underground military complex Level 7, where he is expected to reside permanently, fulfilling the role of …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_058603806X-L_100_200.jpg)
Isaac Asimov
The Early Asimov or, Eleven Years of Trying is a 1972 collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov. Each story is accompanied by commentary by the author, who gives details about his life and his literary achievements in the period in which he wrote the story, effectively …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_1567513743-L_100_200.jpg)
William Blum
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower is a book by William Blum first published in 2000. The 3rd revision updates events covered in the book to the year 2005. It examines and criticizes United States foreign policy during and following the Cold War. The book's …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0753813599-L_100_200.jpg)
A. C. Grayling
The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life, published in the U.S. as Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age, is a book by A. C. Grayling. First published in 2001, the work offers popular treatments of philosophical reasoning, weaving together ideas from …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0679781420-L_100_200.jpg)
Piri Thomas
Down These Mean Streets is a memoir by Piri Thomas, a Latino of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent who grew up in El Barrio, a section of Harlem that has a large Puerto Rican population. The book follows Piri as he goes through the first few decades of his life, lives in poverty, …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0312308639-L_100_200.jpg)
Andy Greenwald
Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo is a book by Andy Greenwald, a senior contributing writer at Spin magazine, published in November 2003 by St. Martin's Press. The title Nothing Feels Good is taken from an album by The Promise Ring, a representative band of the …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_034529369X-L_100_200.jpg)
Jack L. Chalker
Lilith: A Snake in the Grass is a 1981 science fiction novel by American writer Jack L. Chalker. It is the first book in his Four Lords of the Diamond series.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0689835248-L_100_200.jpg)
Lloyd Moss
Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin is a book written by Lloyd Moss and illustrated by Marjorie Priceman.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0671038583-L_100_200.jpg)
Diane Carey
Battlestations! is a Star Trek: The Original Series novel written by Diane Carey.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0753819651-L_100_200.jpg)
Elmore Leonard
Unknown Man #89 is a crime novel written by Elmore Leonard, published in 1977, just after his novel Swag, and preceding The Hunted. It is a sequel to The Big Bounce.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_1844164764-L_100_200.jpg)
Ralph Sander
Book five in the New York Times bestselling series Under the command of the newly appointed Warmaster Horus, the Great Crusade continues. Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor’s Children, leads his warriors into battle against a vile alien foe, unaware of the darker forces that have …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0345295161-L_100_200.jpg)
Katherine Kurtz
Lammas Night is a fantasy novel by the American-born author Katherine Kurtz, first published in paperback by Ballantine Books in December 1983. The first hardcover edition was issued by Severn House in 1986.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_isbn9780312429249_100_200.jpg)
Raj Patel
"A deeply though-provoking book about the dramatic changes we must make to save the planet from financial madness."--Naomi Klein, author of The Shock DoctrineOpening with Oscar Wilde's observation that "nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing," …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0743261704-L_100_200.jpg)
Megan Abbott
How does a respectable young woman fall into Los Angeles' hard-boiled underworld? Shadow-dodging through the glamorous world of 1950s Hollywood and its seedy flip side, Megan Abbott's debut, Die a Little, is a gem of the darkest hue. This ingenious twist on a classic noir tale …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0439114942-L_100_200.jpg)
Barbara Kerley
The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins: An Illuminating History of Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, Artist and Lecturer is a book written by Barbara Kerley and illustrated by Brian Selznick.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0870113623-L_100_200.jpg)
Naoya Shiga
A Dark Night's Passing is the only full-length novel by Japanese writer Shiga Naoya. It was written in serialized form and published in Kaizō in between 1921 and 1937. The story follows the life of a wealthy, young Japanese writer in the early 1900s, who seeks to escape his …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_1853260584-L_100_200.jpg)
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1903-1904, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories were published in the Strand Magazine in Great Britain, and Collier's in the United States.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0380708531-L_100_200.jpg)
Avi
Something Upstairs is a young adult historical thriller fiction novel written by Avi first published in 1988. It concerns a 12-year-old boy named Kenny Huldorf who has moved to a new area and discovers a ghost, Caleb, in his room. Caleb was the slave of a previous owner of the …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0822952734-L_100_200.jpg)
Thomas Bell
Out of This Furnace is a historical novel and the best-known work of the American writer Thomas Bell. It was first published in 1941 by Little, Brown and Company.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0689842325-L_100_200.jpg)
Sharon Draper
The Battle of Jericho by Sharon M. Draper is a young adult novel. It is the first book in the Jericho trilogy. The book is set in high school and deals with the issues of peer pressure, acceptance, discrimination, and social interaction.
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_0312982585-L_100_200.jpg)
Wilbur A. Smith
An action-packed adventure set in 1930s Africa from global bestseller Wilbur Smith “They recognised in each other that same restlessness that was always driving them on to new adventure, never staying long enough in one place or at one job to grow roots, unfettered by offspring …
![](/images/cover/.tmb/thumb_isbn9781848665798_100_200.jpg)
PIERRE LEMAÎTRE
Now a major French film Au revoir là-haut - Prix Goncourt-winning masterpiece by the writer who brought you Alex, Irène and Camille. October 1918: the war on the Western Front is all but over. Desperate for one last chance of promotion, the ambitious Lieutenant Henri d'Aulnay …