The Great American Read

PBS television ran a miniseries called The Great American Read during 2018, in which viewers like you were invited to vote for their favorite works of literature. On October 23, 2018, they announced that these were the works that were voted the 100 best-loved books or book series in the USA.

Note that these are best-loved works, not seminal or most influential. They're also works beloved by readers in the USA, not necessarily works written in the USA.


 * 1) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
 * 2) Outlander (series) by Diana Gabalon
 * 3) Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
 * 4) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
 * 5) The Lord of the Rings (series) by J.R.R. Tolkien
 * 6) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
 * 7) Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
 * 8) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
 * 9) The Chronicles of Narnia (series) by C. S. Lewis
 * 10) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
 * 11) Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 * 12) The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
 * 13) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
 * 14) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
 * 15) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
 * 16) The Help by Kathryn Stockett
 * 17) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
 * 18) 1984 by George Orwell
 * 19) And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
 * 20) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
 * 21) Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
 * 22) Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
 * 23) The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
 * 24) The Stand by Stephen King
 * 25) Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
 * 26) A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
 * 27) The Color Purple by Alice Walker
 * 28) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
 * 29) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
 * 30) The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
 * 31) Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
 * 32) The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
 * 33) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
 * 34) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
 * 35) Dune by Frank Herbert
 * 36) The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
 * 37) The Call of the Wild by Jack London
 * 38) The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
 * 39) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
 * 40) The Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins
 * 41) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
 * 42) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
 * 43) Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
 * 44) The Giver by Lois Lowry
 * 45) Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
 * 46) Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
 * 47) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
 * 48) A Song of Ice and Fire (series) by George R. R. Martin
 * 49) Foundation (series) by Isaac Asimov
 * 50) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
 * 51) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
 * 52) Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
 * 53) The Godfather by Mario Puzo
 * 54) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
 * 55) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
 * 56) The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
 * 57) The Shack by William P. Young
 * 58) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
 * 59) The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
 * 60) Beloved by Toni Morrison
 * 61) The Martian by Andy Weir
 * 62) The Wheel of Time (series) by James Oliver Rigney
 * 63) Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
 * 64) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
 * 65) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
 * 66) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
 * 67) A Separate Peace by John Knowles
 * 68) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
 * 69) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
 * 70) The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
 * 71) Hatchet (series) by Gary Paulsen
 * 72) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
 * 73) Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
 * 74) Tales of the City (series) by Armistead Maupin
 * 75) Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
 * 76) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
 * 77) Left Behind (series) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
 * 78) Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
 * 79) Watchers by Dean R. Koontz
 * 80) The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
 * 81) Alex Cross (series) by James Patterson
 * 82) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
 * 83) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
 * 84) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
 * 85) Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews
 * 86) Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
 * 87) The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
 * 88) This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti
 * 89) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
 * 90) Another Country by James Baldwin
 * 91) Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
 * 92) Looking for Alaska by John Green
 * 93) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
 * 94) Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
 * 95) Mind Invaders by Dave Hunt
 * 96) White Teeth by Zadie Smith
 * 97) Ghost by Jason Reynolds
 * 98) The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
 * 99) The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
 * 100) Doña Bárbára by Rómulo Gallegos