Book Depository, Best Books Ever [2012]
102 entries: 96 monographical, six otherwise
Ranked
This list offered by the Book Depository, the British online book seller owned by an American online book seller, has been dated based upon the most-recent book in the list; the article itself is undated and no longer available except via the Internet Archive. Whoever made this list also created an alternate list based on votes from users, entitled Your Best Books Ever. We could include that list only as an extension of the original, since by itself it does not meet our criteria. For now, it is put aside. In neither case does the article provide any indication of the persons involved or when and how they made their choices.
- Gabriel García Márquez
Cien Anõs de Soledad
One Hundred Years of Solitude
1967Spanish
- F Scott Fitzgerald
Tender Is the Night
originally published serially Jan.-Apr. 1934 in Scribner's MagazineEnglish
- Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
originally published 1847 under the pseudonym, Ellis Bell; revised 1850English
- Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
originally anonymously published 1813English
- Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend
originally published serially May 1864-Nov. 1865English
- Truman Capote
Breakfast at Tiffany's
originally published 1958 in EsquireEnglish
- Roald Dahl
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
1977English
- Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary
originally published serially Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856 in La Revue de ParisFrench
- Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Grey
originally published Jul. 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine; revised and expanded 1891; alternate earlier version published 2011English
- Homer
Iliad
ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C#151;Greek
- Leo Tolstoy
Voskresenie
Resurrection
1899Russian
- Joseph Heller
Catch-22
1961English
- Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises
1926English
- Erich Maria Remarque
Im Westen Nichts Neues
All Quiet on the Western Front
originally published Dec. 1928 in Vossische ZeitungGerman
- Miguel de Cervantes
El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
Don Quixote
originally published in two volumes, 1605 and 1615Spanish
- George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia
1938English
Ursula K Le Guin
- A Wizard of Earthsea
1968English
- The Tombs of Atuan
1971English
- The Farthest Shore
1972English
- Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea
1990English
- Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
1969English
Grimm Tales: For Young and Old
2012; U S version entitled, Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm; new versions of the German-language original storiesEnglish
Charles Perrault
- The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
1977; translations by Angela Carter; includes nearly all of Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé, 1867French
- Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé
Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye
1867French
- Martin Amis
Money
1984English
- P G Wodehouse
Carry On, Jeeves
1925English
- Mary Shelley
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
originally anonymously published 1818English
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
published in part, Feb. 1951, as 'The Fireman' in Galaxy Science Fiction; in its entirety, 1953English
- John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath
1939English
- Ann Patchett
Bel Canto
2001English
- Stephen King
It
1986English
- George Eliot
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
originally published serially Dec. 1871-Dec. 1872English
- Murakami Haruki
Nejimaki-Dori Kuronikuru
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
originally published in three volumes, 1994-5Japanese
- Michael Ondaatje
The English Patient
1992English
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
2005English
- Émile Zola
Thérèse Raquin
originally published serially 1867 in L'ArtisteFrench
- Norman Mailer
The Naked and the Dead
1948English
- Angela Carter
The Magic Toyshop
1967English
Northern Lights
1995; U S title, The Golden Compass; first of three volumes of His Dark MaterialsEnglish
- Thomas Hardy
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented
published in part serially Jul.-Dec. 1891 in the GraphicEnglish
- Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca
1938English
- J D Salinger
Franny and Zooey
1961; 'Franny' originally published Jan. 1955 in the New Yorker; 'Zooey' originally published May 1957 in the New YorkerEnglish
- Georges Bataille
L'Histoire d'Oeil
Story of the Eye
originally published 1928 under the pseudonym, Lord Auch; revised 1940French
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Voyage au Bout de la Nuit
Journey to the End of Night
1932French
Lewis Carroll
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
1865English
- Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
1871English
- Vikram Seth
A Suitable Boy
1993English
- Salman Rushdie
Midnight's Children
1981English
- Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
1955English
- Donna Tartt
The Secret History
1992English
- Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day
1989English
- Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
originally published serially Feb.-Apr. 1899 in Blackwood'sEnglish
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Le Petit Prince
1943French
- John Kennedy Toole
A Confederacy of Dunces
written early 1960's; published 1980English
- Victor Hugo
Les Misérables
1862French
- Honoré de Balzac
Illusions Perdues
Lost Illusions
1837-43French
- Stendhal
Le Rouge et le Noir, Chronique du XIXe Siècle
The Red and the Black
1830French
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Idiot
originally published serially 1868-9 in Rússkij VéstnikRussian
Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov
2000Russian
- Plato
Politeia
The Republic
early Fourth Century B C#151;Greek
- Henry David Thoreau
Walden; or, Life in the Woods
1854English
- Albert Camus
L'Étranger
The Stranger
1942French
- James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
originally published serially Feb. 1914-Sep. 1915, in the EgoistEnglish
- Sigmund Freud
Das Unbewusste
The Unconscious
1915German
- Karl Marx
Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie
written ca. 1858; published 1939German
- Niccolò Machiavelli
Il Principe
The Prince
1532Italian
- Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
1851English
- Sūnzǐ (Sun-tzu)
Sūnzǐ Bīngfǎ
The Art of War
written ca. Fifth-Third centuries B CChinese
- John Green
The Fault in Our Stars
2012English
- Carl Jung; Joseph L Henderson; Marie-Louise von Franz; Aniela Jaffé; Jolande Jacobi
Man and His Symbols
1964English
- Voltaire
Candide, ou L'Optimisme
1759French
- Charles Darwin
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
1859English
- Robert Caro
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power
1982English
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust. Der Tragödie Erster Teil
first of two volumes of Faust; published in part, 1790; in its entirey, 1808; revised 1829; second volume, Faust. Der Tragödie Zweiter Teil, 1832
- Ken Kesey
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
1962English
- Toni Morrison
Beloved
1987English
- John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meaney
1989English
- James Baldwin
Another Country
1962English
- Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
1969English
- Jaroslav Hasek
Osudy Dobrého Vojáka Švejka za Svetové Války
The Good Soldier Švejk
1923Czech
- Franz Kafka
Die Verwandlung
The Metamorphosis
originally published 1915 in Die Weißen BlätterGerman
- Samuel Beckett
Watt
published in part, 1950, in Envoy; in its entirety, 1953English
- Jack London
The Call of the Wild
originally published serially 1903 in the Saturday Evening PostEnglish
- Baruch Spinoza
Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata
Ethics
1677Latin
- Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan or, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
1651English
- Daniel Defoe
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner
originally anonymously published 1719English
- Robert Graves
I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born 10 B C, Murdered and Deified A D 54
1934English
- Philip Roth
Portnoy's Complaint
1969English
- Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye
1953English
- William Styron
Sophie's Choice
1979English
- Christopher Isherwood
Goodbye to Berlin
1939English
- Art Spiegelman
Maus
originally published serially 1980-91 in Raw; published in book form in two volumes: Maus: A Survivor's Tale, 1986; and And Here My Troubles Began, 1991;English
- Rachel Carson
Silent Spring
originally published Jun. 1962 in the New YorkerEnglish
- Robert Hughes
The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change
1980; book accompanying television series of the same nameEnglish
- James Agee
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
1941; photography by Walker EvansEnglish
- Edward Said
Orientalism
1978English
- Hannah Arendt
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
originally published 1963 in the New Yorker; expanded 1965English
- John Kenneth Galbraith
The Affluent Society
1958English
- Barbara W Tuchman
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
1978English
- Rebecca West
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia
1941English
- Virginia Woolf
A Room of One's Own
1929English
- Anne Frank
Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 - 1 Augustus 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl
1947Dutch