250+ Reader’s Digest Best Books of All Time

Books have the power to inspire, educate, comfort, and transform lives.

Over the decades, Reader’s Digest has celebrated books that stand the test of time—stories that shaped cultures, challenged ideas, and connected generations.

This ultimate list brings together 250 of the greatest books of all time across genres, eras, and continents, followed by one bonus pick to make it a complete 251.

Check more here 250+ Funny Desert Jokes

Table of Contents

250+ Reader’s Digest Best Books of All Time

Classic Literature Essentials

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Timeless American Novels
11. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
12. The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
13. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
14. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
15. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
16. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
17. Beloved by Toni Morrison
18. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
19. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
20. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

British Literary Masterpieces
21. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
22. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
23. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
24. Middlemarch by George Eliot
25. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
26. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
27. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
28. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
29. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
30. Dracula by Bram Stoker

World Literature Classics
31. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
32. The Odyssey by Homer
33. The Iliad by Homer
34. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
35. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
36. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
37. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
38. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
39. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
40. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Modern Literary Classics
41. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
42. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
43. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
44. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
45. Atonement by Ian McEwan
46. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
47. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
48. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
49. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
50. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Influential Nonfiction Books
51. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
52. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
53. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
54. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
55. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
56. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
57. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
58. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
59. Educated by Tara Westover
60. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Philosophical and Thought Provoking Works
61. The Republic by Plato
62. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
63. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
64. Being and Nothingness by Jean Paul Sartre
65. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
66. The Art of War by Sun Tzu
67. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
68. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
69. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
70. Essays by Michel de Montaigne

Beloved Children’s Classics
71. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
72. Charlotte’s Web by E B White
73. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Winnie the Pooh by A A Milne
75. Matilda by Roald Dahl
76. The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis
77. Peter Pan by J M Barrie
78. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
79. Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery
80. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Young Adult Favorites
81. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J K Rowling
82. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
83. Divergent by Veronica Roth
84. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
85. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
86. The Giver by Lois Lowry
87. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
88. The Outsiders by S E Hinton
89. Maze Runner by James Dashner
90. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L Engle

Mystery and Crime Classics
91. Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
92. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
93. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
94. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
95. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
96. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
97. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
98. In the Woods by Tana French
99. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
100. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Fantasy and Epic Tales
101. The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien
102. The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
103. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin
104. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
105. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
106. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
107. Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin
108. The Dark Tower by Stephen King
109. The Once and Future King by T H White
110. The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle

Science Fiction Legends
111. Dune by Frank Herbert
112. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
113. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
114. Neuromancer by William Gibson
115. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
116. The Time Machine by H G Wells
117. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
118. The Martian by Andy Weir
119. I Robot by Isaac Asimov
120. Childhood’s End by Arthur C Clarke

Historical Fiction Masterpieces
121. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
122. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
123. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
124. The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
125. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
126. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
127. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
128. Shogun by James Clavell
129. Roots by Alex Haley
130. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Romantic Classics
131. Love Story by Erich Segal
132. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
133. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
134. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
135. Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman
136. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
137. Persuasion by Jane Austen
138. Emma by Jane Austen
139. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
140. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Modern Popular Fiction
141. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
142. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
143. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
144. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
145. The Road Less Traveled by M Scott Peck
146. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
147. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
148. Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
149. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
150. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Inspirational and Self Growth Books
151. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
152. Atomic Habits by James Clear
153. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
154. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
155. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
156. You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero
157. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
158. Grit by Angela Duckworth
159. Deep Work by Cal Newport
160. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F by Mark Manson

Poetry and Literary Collections
161. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
162. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
163. The Waste Land by T S Eliot
164. Paradise Lost by John Milton
165. Selected Poems by Robert Frost
166. The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
167. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
168. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
169. The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson
170. Divine Songs by John Donne

Cultural and Social Commentary
171. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
172. Orientalism by Edward Said
173. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
174. Between the World and Me by Ta Nehisi Coates
175. The Souls of Black Folk by W E B Du Bois
176. Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam
177. The Road to Serfdom by F A Hayek
178. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
179. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
180. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt

Memoirs and Life Stories
181. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
182. Becoming by Michelle Obama
183. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
184. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
185. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
186. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
187. Night by Elie Wiesel
188. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
189. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
190. Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Adventure and Survival Stories
191. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
192. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
193. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
194. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
195. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
196. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
197. Call of the Wild by Jack London
198. Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss
199. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
200. The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger

Horror and Gothic Classics
201. The Shining by Stephen King
202. It by Stephen King
203. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
204. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
205. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
206. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
207. World War Z by Max Brooks
208. The Stand by Stephen King
209. Dracula by Bram Stoker
210. Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Global Contemporary Voices
211. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
212. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
213. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
214. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
215. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
216. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
217. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
218. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
219. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
220. The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh

Books That Changed the World
221. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
222. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
223. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
224. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton
225. The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
226. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
227. The Bible
228. The Quran
229. The Bhagavad Gita
230. The Upanishads

Literary Experiments and Unique Styles
231. Ulysses by James Joyce
232. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
233. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
234. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
235. House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
236. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
237. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
238. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
239. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
240. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

Beloved Short Story Collections
241. Dubliners by James Joyce
242. Nine Stories by J D Salinger
243. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
244. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
245. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
246. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
247. Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl
248. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O Connor
249. The Things They Carried by Tim O Brien
250. Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl

Bonus Pick (251)
251. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

Why These Books Matter

These books shaped thought, culture, imagination, and history. They represent voices that challenged norms, preserved stories, and inspired generations of readers worldwide.

How to Use This List

You can read chronologically, by genre, or by mood. This list works as a lifetime reading roadmap, perfect for casual readers and literary explorers alike.

Reader’s Digest Influence on Reading Culture

Reader’s Digest popularized meaningful reading by highlighting accessible yet profound books that resonate with everyday readers.

Why Timeless Books Endure

Great books explore universal themes like love, justice, freedom, and identity, making them relevant across generations.

Reading Across Cultures

This collection highlights global voices, reminding readers that powerful stories exist beyond borders and languages.

Building a Personal Library

Owning or reading even a fraction of these titles builds cultural literacy and deeper understanding of the human experience.

Books as Lifelong Companions

Many readers return to these works at different life stages, discovering new meanings each time.

Conclusion

These 250+ Reader’s Digest–style best books of all time form a literary treasure chest for every reader. For more expertly curated book lists and reading inspiration, explore Reader’s Digest Best Books of All Time.