My Favorite Forty Works of Prose Fiction Third Series
Explore the third series of My Favorite Forty Works of Prose Fiction—a curated list of must-read books for literary enthusiasts. Discover top prose fiction picks and timeless classics in this captivating collection.
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Crash
by J. G. Ballard
In this hallucinatory novel, an automobile provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic …
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Nightwood
by Djuna Barnes
The fiery and enigmatic masterpiece--one of the greatest novels of the Modernist era.
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Giles Goat-Boy
by John Barth
From the author of National Book Award-nominated Lost in the Funhouse, comes an outrageously farcical adventure that challenges our notions of technology, power, and human …
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The Adventures of Augie March
by Saul Bellow
“The Adventures of Augie March is the great American Novel. Search no further.” –Martin Amis A Penguin Classic As soon as it first appeared in …
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The Plague
by Albert Camus
“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even …
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The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad
Penguin inaugurates a series of revised editions of Conrad's finest works, with new introductions In a corrupt London underworld of criminals, terrorists, and fanatics, Mr. …
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What Is the What
by Dave Eggers
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic novel based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who, along with thousands of other children —the so-called …
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American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this modern classic, the acclaimed author of The Shards explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence …
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Tom Jones
by Henry Fielding
Tom Jones is rightly regarded as Fielding's greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. Attacked at the time as …
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American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, …
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Veronica
by Mary Gaitskill
A finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, here is an evocative novel about female friendship in the glittering 1980s. …
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The Power and the Glory
by Graham Greene
A tormented, alcoholic priest is pursued by an idealistic lieutenant during an anti-clerical persecution in Mexico.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a …
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Children of the Alley
by Naguib Mahfouz
The tumultuous alley of this rich and intricate novel (first published in Arabic in 1959) is inhabited by a delightful Egyptian family, but is also …
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The Age of Wire and String
by Ben Marcus
"A rare, genius-struck achievement . . . filled with great beauties, high themes, enormous sorrows." Kirkus Reviews
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Wittgenstein's Mistress
by David Markson
Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is …
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Women and Men
by Joseph McElroy
Beginning in childbirth and entered like a multiple dwelling in motion, Women and Men embraces and anatomizes the 1970s in New York--from experiments in the …
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The Sea, the Sea
by Iris Murdoch
Winner of the Booker Prize—a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a playwright as he composes his memoirs Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's …
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The Enigma of Arrival
by V. S. Naipaul
The Nobel Prize-winning author distills his wide experience of countries and peoples into a moving account of the rites of passage endured by all people …
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At Swim-Two-Birds
by Flann O'Brien
A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, "At Swim-Two-Birds" is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish college student who …
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Nineteen Eighty-four
by George Orwell
Eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity in this satire of totalitarian barbarism.
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The Museum of Innocence
by Orhan Pamuk
Ending his engagement to pursue a married cousin, Kemal unsuccessfully woos the woman over the course of nine years, during which he amasses personal effects …
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Gargantua and Pantagruel
by Francois Rabelais
A masterly new translation of Rabelais’s robust scatalogical comedy Parodying everyone from classic authors to his own contemporaries, the dazzling and exuberant stories of Rabelais …
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Operation Shylock
by Philip Roth
WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral—a fiendishly imaginative book that features Israeli intelligence agents, Palestinian exiles, an …
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White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The blockbuster debut novel from "a preternaturally gifted" writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time—set against …
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The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s …
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The Red and the Black
by Stendhal
Charts the rise and fall of an ambitious young social climber in a cruel, monarchical society Handsome, ambitious Julien Sorel is determined to rise above …
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Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson
This Norton Critical Edition of Stevenson's enduringly popular and chilling tale is based on the 1886 First British Edition, the only edition set directly from …
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Zeno's Conscience
by Italo Svevo
Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka, and now available in a supple new English translation, Italo …
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Gulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift
A wickedly clever satire uses comic inversions to offer telling insights into the nature of man and society. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels …
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The Lord of the Rings
by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Presents the epic depicting the Great War of the Ring, a struggle between good and evil in Middle-earth, following the odyssey of Frodo the hobbit …
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Rabbit Angstrom
by John Updike
The four novels in the acclaimed Rabbit series—including the Pulitzer Prize winners Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest—brought together in a single volume, from …
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Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time). Selected by the Modern Library …
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Miss Lonelyhearts
by Nathanael West
These two dark stories, and the most notable works of the short career of Nathanael West, remain stunningly powerful pieces of fiction more than 75 …
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John Henry Days
by Colson Whitehead
From the bestselling, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a novel that is "funny and wise and sumptuously written" …
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
Presents an annotated edition of the novel about Dorian Gray, a handsome youth who is corrupted into a life of terrible evil by Lord Henry …
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You Can't Go Home Again
by Thomas Wolfe
Novelist George Webber is driven from his hometown when his successful autobiographical novel infuriates the family and friends he has depicted in it.
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Germinal
by Emile Zola
The thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity’s …