Best literary novels
Where the sentences are the point, and the plot takes its time.
Ranked by how often each title comes up across 24 reading lists on NextBook — not by our opinion of them.
1 of 12recommended on 5 listsThe Book Thief
Markus Zusak
A child stealing books out of the fire under a regime that burns them, in a Europe of the same terrible decade. Daniel's fear of the faceless man, made literal.
2 of 12recommended on 4 listsA Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara
The definitive novel of four friends over thirty years. If the decades-long friendship was the part that got you, nothing goes deeper — but go in prepared.
3 of 12recommended on 4 listsThe Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
New York glitter examined from inside: Esther is handed the summer everyone claims to want and finds it hollow. Fitzgerald's emptiness beneath the glamour, without the consolation of a love story.
4 of 12recommended on 4 listsThe Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
Another young American narrator circling a world he has decided is phony, except Holden says out loud what Nick is too well-mannered to admit. Same disillusionment, far less champagne.
5 of 12recommended on 4 listsThe Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
If what stayed with you was the machinery of expectation around women, Atwood builds it into an entire state and lets a very dry narrator walk you through it.
6 of 12recommended on 4 listsThe Secret History
Donna Tartt
Tartt's students also let books rearrange their lives until someone dies of it. Same conviction that reading is not a safe hobby.
7 of 12recommended on 4 listsThe Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
A child convinced she caused a death, running toward the only people who might forgive her. Same engine as Amir's guilt, on a South Carolina honey farm in 1964.
8 of 12recommended on 4 listsTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
No apocalypse, but the same conviction that what a group of people builds together outlasts them, tracked across thirty years and a considerable amount of grief.
9 of 12recommended on 3 listsEleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
Another spiky, rule-bound loner whose armour turns out to be covering something specific and terrible. The book people hand you next, and they are right to.
10 of 12recommended on 3 listsThe Fault in Our Stars
John Green
A narrator who defends herself with vocabulary and irony, and a friendship that gets past it anyway. Green's voice does what Honeyman's does.
11 of 12recommended on 3 listsThe Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
A narrator who becomes obsessed reconstructing a man he barely met, in a city that will not give up its answers. The Carax pattern, at a quarter of the length.
12 of 12recommended on 3 listsThe Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
A boyhood betrayal in a city that no longer exists, revisited decades later as a debt. The same melodrama, played with the same complete sincerity.
Start from one you already loved
A genre is a blunt instrument. Pick the literary fiction book you actually liked and we’ll rank the next one by what you liked about it.
- Books like The Secret HistoryDonna Tartt
- Books like Station ElevenEmily St. John Mandel
- Books like The Shadow of the WindCarlos Ruiz Zafón
- Books like Never Let Me GoKazuo Ishiguro
- Books like The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald
- Books like Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely FineGail Honeyman
- Books like The Bell JarSylvia Plath
- Books like A Little LifeHanya Yanagihara
- Books like A Man Called OveFredrik Backman
- Books like The Kite RunnerKhaled Hosseini
- Books like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and TomorrowGabrielle Zevin
- Books like Lord of the FliesWilliam Golding
- Books like The Lovely BonesAlice Sebold
- Books like The Color PurpleAlice Walker
- Books like White OleanderJanet Fitch
- Books like Klara and the SunKazuo Ishiguro
- Books like Little Fires EverywhereCeleste Ng
- Books like Normal PeopleSally Rooney
- Books like Norwegian WoodHaruki Murakami
- Books like RoomEmma Donoghue
- Books like The GoldfinchDonna Tartt
- Books like Cloud AtlasDavid Mitchell
- Books like The Art of FieldingChad Harbach
- Books like The Midnight LibraryMatt Haig
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