Lists: 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read, Guardian version

Published in 2009, original here.

Start: no idea.
Updated: 19.01.2014
End:

Comedy

• Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
• Money by Martin Amis
• The Information by Martin Amis
• The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge
• According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
• A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
• Augustus Carp, Esq. by Himself: Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Henry Howarth Bashford
• Molloy by Samuel Beckett
• Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
• The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• Queen Lucia by EF Benson
• The Ascent of Rum Doodle by WE Bowman
• A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd
• The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
• No Bed for Bacon by Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon
• Illywhacker by Peter Carey
• A Season in Sinji by JL Carr
• The Harpole Report by JL Carr
• The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
• Mister Johnson by Joyce Cary
• The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
• Just William by Richmal Crompton
• The Provincial Lady by EM Delafield
• Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter De Vries
• The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
• Jacques the Fatalist and his Master by Denis Diderot
• A Fairy Tale of New York by JP Donleavy
• The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
• Ennui by Maria Edgeworth
• Cheese by Willem Elsschot
• Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
• Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• Caprice by Ronald Firbank
• Bouvard et Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert
• Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn
• The Polygots by William Gerhardie
• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
• Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
• Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• Brewster's Millions by Richard Greaves (George Barr McCutcheon)
• Squire Haggard's Journal by Michael Green
• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
• Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene
• Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith
• The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgkins
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
• The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes
• Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
• The Mighty Walzer Howard by Jacobson
• Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell
• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
• The Castle by Franz Kafka
• Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
• Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
• The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
• L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (Gil Blas) Alain-René Lesage
• Changing Places by David Lodge
• Nice Work by David Lodge
• The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay
• England, Their England by AG Macdonell
• Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie
• Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf by David Madsen
• Cakes and Ale - Or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard by W Somerset Maugham
• Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
• Puckoon by Spike Milligan
• The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills
• Charade by John Mortimer
• Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer
• Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
• Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
• Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul
• The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin
• La Disparition by Georges Perec
• Les Revenentes by Georges Perec
• La Vie Mode d'Emploi by Georges Perec
• My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunkett
• A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
• A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
• Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym
• Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau
• Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
• Alms for Oblivion by Simon Raven
• Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
• The Westminster Alice by Saki
• The Unbearable Bassington by Saki 
• Hurrah for St Trinian's by Ronald Searle
• Great Apes by Will Self
• Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe
• Blott on the Landscape by Tom Sharpe
• Office Politics by Wilfrid Sheed
• Belles Lettres Papers: A Novel by Charles Simmons
• Moo by Jane Smiley
• Topper Takes a Trip by Thorne Smith
• The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett
• The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett
• The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett
• The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
• The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
• Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
• A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
• White Man Falling by Mike Stocks
• Handley Cross by RS Surtees
• A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
• Penrod by Booth Tarkington
• The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
• Tropic of Ruislip by Leslie Thomas
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
• Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout
• The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
• The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
• Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
• Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
• The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
• A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh 
• The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon
• Tono Bungay by HG Wells
• Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
• The Wimbledon Poisoner by Nigel Williams
• Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson
• Something Fresh by PG Wodehouse
• Piccadilly Jim by PG Wodehouse
• Thank You Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
• Heavy Weather by PG Wodehouse
• The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
• Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse

Crime

• The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren
• Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
• The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
• Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler
• Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler
• The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
• Trent's Last Case by EC Bentley
• The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley
• The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake
• Lady Audley's Secret by Mary E Braddon
• The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
• The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
• The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
• Greenmantle by John Buchan
• The Asphalt Jungle by WR Burnett
• The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain
• Double Indemnity by James M Cain
• True History of the Ned Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
• The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
• The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
• No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase
• The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
• The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
• The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
• Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
• Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell
• The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
• Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross
• The Ipcress File by Len Deighton
• Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter
• The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter
• Ratking by Michael Dibdin
• Dead Lagoon by Michael Dibdin
• Dirty Tricks by Michael Dibdin
• A Rich Full Death by Michael Dibdin
• Vendetta by Michael Dibdin
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• The Pledge by Friedrich Durrenmatt
• The Crime of Father Amado by José Maria de Eça de Queiroz
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
• LA Confidential by James Ellroy
• The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
• A Quiet Belief in Angels by RJ Ellory
• Sanctuary by William Faulkner
• Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
• Goldfinger by Ian Fleming
• You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
• The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
• Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
• A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
• The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
• The Third Man by Graham Greene
• A Time to Kill by John Grisham
• The King of Torts by John Grisham
• Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
• The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
• The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
• Fatherland by Robert Harris
• Black Sunday by Thomas Harris
• Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
• Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins
• Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
• The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
• Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill
• A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
• Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
• Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
• Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles
• Silence of the Grave by Arnadur Indridason
• Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes
• Cover Her Face by PD James
• A Taste for Death by PD James
• Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman
• Misery by Stephen King
• Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
• Kim by Rudyard Kipling
• The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• 52 Pick-up by Elmore Leonard
• Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
• Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
• The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
• Cop Hater by Ed McBain
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
• Sidetracked by Henning Mankell
• Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
• The Great Impersonation by E Phillips Oppenheim
• The Strange Borders of Palace Crescent by E Phillips Oppenheim
• My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
• Toxic Shock by Sara Paretsky
• Blacklist by Sara Paretsky
• Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace
• Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace
• The Big Blowdown by George Pelecanos
• Hard Revolution by George Pelecanos
• Lush Life by Richard Price
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• V by Thomas Pynchon
• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
• Black and Blue by Ian Rankin
• The Hanging Gardens by Ian Rankin
• Exit Music by Ian Rankin
• Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell
• Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell
• Dissolution by CJ Sansom
• Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers
• Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Le Sayers
• The Madman of Bergerac by Georges Simenon
• The Blue Room by Georges Simenon
• The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
• Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout
• Perfume by Patrick Suskind
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
• The Getaway by Jim Thompson
• Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
• A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine
• A Fatal inversion by Barbara Vine
• King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine
• The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters 
• Native Son by Richard Wright
• Therese Raquin by Emile Zola

Family and self

• The Face of Another by Kobo Abe
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
• Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
• Epileptic by David B
• Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker
• Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac
• Le Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac
• The Crow Road by Iain Banks
• The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
• Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
• A Legacy by Sybille Bedford
• Herzog by Saul Bellow
• Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
• The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
• G by John Berger
• Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
• Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
• Any Human Heart by William Boyd
• The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch
• Evelina by Fanny Burney
• The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
• The Sound of my Voice by Ron Butlin
• The Outsider by Albert Camus
• Wise Children by Angela Carter
• The Professor's House by Willa Cather
• The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Les Enfants Terrible by Jean Cocteau
• The Vagabond by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
• Manservant and Maidservant by Ivy Compton-Burnett
• Being Dead by Jim Crace
• Quarantine by Jim Crace
• The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
• Roxana by Daniel Defoe
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• My New York Diary by Julie Doucet
• The Millstone by Margaret Drabble
• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
• Silence by Shusaku Endo
• The Gathering by Anne Enright
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
• Howards End by EM Forster
• Spies by Michael Frayn
• Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud
• The Man of Property by John Galsworthy
• Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Immoralist by Andre Gide
• The Vatican Cellars by Andre Gide
• The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
• Hunger by Knut Hamsun
• The Shrimp and the Anemone by LP Hartley
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
• Narziss and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
• The Three Paradoxes by Paul Hornschemeier
• Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes
• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• Washington Square by Henry James
• The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins
• The Unfortunates by BS Johnson
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
• Memet my Hawk by Yasar Kemal
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
• The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
• Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
• Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
• Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
• How Green was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
• Martin Eden by Jack London
• Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
• The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
• Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
• The Chateau by William Maxwell
• The Rector's Daughter by FM Mayor 
• The Ordeal of Richard Feverek by George Meredith
• Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
• Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo
• The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Who Do You Think You Are? by Alice Munro
• The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
• The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil 
• A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul
• At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
• Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness by Kezaburo Oe
• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
• The Good Companions by JB Priestley
• The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
• Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
• A Married Man by Piers Paul Read
• Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson
• The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney by Henry Handel Richardson
• Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
• Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
• Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel 
• A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
• Unless by Carol Shields
• We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
• The Three Sisters by May Sinclair
• The Family Moskat or The Manor or The Estate by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
• On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
• Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo
• The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
• Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
• Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson
• The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
• Death in Summer by William Trevor
• Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
• Peace in War by Miguel de Unamuno 
• The Rabbit Omnibus by John Updike
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Jimmy Corrigan, The Smarest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
• Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
• The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells
• The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
• Frost in May by Antonia White
• The Tree of Man by Patrick White
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
• I'll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

Love

• Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier
• Dom Casmurro Joaquim by Maria Machado de Assis
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
• Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
• The Garden of the Finzi-Cortinis by Giorgio Bassani
• Love for Lydia by HE Bates
• More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow
• Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore
• The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
• The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Look At Me by Anita Brookner
• Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• Possession by AS Byatt
• Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
• Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
• A Month in the Country by JL Carr
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
• Claudine a l'ecole by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
• Cheri by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette
• Victory: An Island Tale by Joseph Conrad
• The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette
• The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• The Lover by Marguerite Duras
• Adam Bede by George Eliot
• Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
• The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
• Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
• A Room with a View by EM Forster
• The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
• The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
• Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide
• Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
• The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• Living by Henry Green
• The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
• The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
• Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
• The Go-Between by LP Hartley
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• The Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer
• Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
• The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
• Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by WH Hudson
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
• The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
• Beauty and Saddness by Yasunari Kawabata
• The Far Pavillions by Mary Margaret Kaye
• Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
• Moon over Africa by Pamela Kent
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos 
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
• The Rainbow by DH Lawrence
• Women in Love by DH Lawrence
• The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann
• The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
• Zami by Audre Lorde
• Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
• Samarkand by Amin Maalouf
• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
• The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
• A Heart So White by Javier Marias
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
• So Long, See you Tomorrow by William Maxwell
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
• The Egoist by George Meredith
• Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
• Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller
• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
• Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
• Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Painter of Signs by RK Narayan
• Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
• All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom
• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
• Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson
• Pamela by Samuel Richardson
• Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
• Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
• Light Years by James Salter
• A Sport and a Passtime by James Salter
• The Reader by Benhardq Schlink
• The Reluctant Orphan by Aara Seale
• Love Story by Eric Segal
• Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
• Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
• Waterland by Graham Swift
• Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
• First Love by Ivan Turgenev
• Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
• The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
• The Graduate by Charles Webb
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
• East Lynne by Ellen Wood
• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Science fiction and fantasy

• The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• Non-Stop by Brian W Aldiss
• Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
• The Drowned World by JG Ballard
• Crash by JG Ballard
• Millennium People by JG Ballard
• The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
• Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks
• Weaveworld by Clive Barker
• Darkmans by Nicola Barker 
• The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
• Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
• Vathek by William Beckford
• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite
• Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown
• Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Coming Race by EGEL Bulwer-Lytton
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• Erewhon by Samuel Butler
• The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
• The Influence by Ramsey Campbell
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
• Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter 
• The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon 
• The Man who was Thursday by GK Chesterton
• Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke
• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• Hello Summer, Goodbye by Michael G Coney
• Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland
• House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
• Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq
• The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R Delaney
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
• The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
• Camp Concentration by Thomas M Disch
• Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
• Under the Skin by Michel Faber
• The Magus by John Fowles
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• Red Shift by Alan Garner
• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• Light by M John Harrison
• The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein
• Dune by Frank L Herbert
• The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
• Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban 
• The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
• Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• The Children of Men by PD James
• After London; or, Wild England by Richard Jefferies
• Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
• The Trial by Franz Kafka
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• The Shining by Stephen King
• The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski
• Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Earthsea Series by Ursula Le Guin
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
• Solaris by Stanislaw Lem 
• Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
• The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
• The Monk by Matthew Lewis
• A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
• The Night Sessions by Ken Macleod
• Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
• Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
• Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
• The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Ascent by Jed Mercurio
• The Scar by China Mieville
• Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• Mother London by Michael Moorcock
• News from Nowhere by William Morris
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
• Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Ringworld by Larry Niven
• Vurt by Jeff Noon
• The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
• The Famished Road by Ben Okri
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
• Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
• Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
• The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth
• A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
• The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
• The Prestige by Christopher Priest
• His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
• Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
• Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
• The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
• Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• The Female Man by Joanna Russ
• Air by Geoff Ryman
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Blindness by Jose Saramago
• How the Dead Live by Will Self
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Hyperion by Dan Simmons
• Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Insult by Rupert Thomson
• The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
• The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
• Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
• Institute Benjamenta by Robert Walser
• Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner 
• Affinity by Sarah Waters 
• The Time Machine by HG Wells
• The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
• The Sword in the Stone by TH White
• The Old Men at the Zoo by Angus Wilson
• The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
• The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

State of the nation

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
• London Fields by Martin Amis
• Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand
• Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
• La Comedie Humaine by Honore de Balzac
• They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy
• A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn
• Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett
• The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
• Room at the Top by John Braine
• A Dry White Season by Andre Brink
• Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
• Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
• The Virgin in the Garden by AS Byatt
• Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
• The Plague by Albert Camus
• The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier
• What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe
• Disgrace by JM Coetzee
• Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coeztee
• Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
• Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
• Underworld by Don DeLillo
• White Noise by Don DeLillo
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
• Hard Times by Charles Dickens
• Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
• Sybil or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli
• Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
• The Book of Daniel by EL Doctorow
• Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• USA by John Dos Passos
• Sister Carrie by Theodor Dreiser
• Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Silas Marner by George Eliot
• The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
• Effi Briest by Theodore Fontane
• Independence Day by Richard Ford
• A Passage to India by EM Forster
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• The Recognitions by William Gaddis
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
• The Odd Women by George Gissing
• New Grub Street by George Gissing
• July's People by Nadine Gordimer
• Mother by Maxim Gorky
• Lanark by Alastair Gray
• Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood
• The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
• A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
• South Riding by Winifred Holtby
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
• Chronicle in Stone by Ismael Kadare
• How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
• The Leopard by Giuseppi di Lampedusa
• A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
• Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
• Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
• Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
• Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes
• The Group by Mary McCarthy
• Amongst Women by John McGahern
• The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
• Of Love & Hunger by Julian Maclaren-Ross
• Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
• The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
• Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
• The Time of Indifference by Alberto Moravia
• A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul
• McTeague by Frank Norris
• Personality by Andrew O'Hagan
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• The Ragazzi Pier by Paolo Pasolini
• Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
• The Moon and the Bonfire by Cesare Pavese
• GB84 by David Peace
• Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock
• Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell
• Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
• The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• The Human Stain by Philip Roth
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
• Shame by Salman Rushdie
• To Each his Own by Leonardo Sciascia
• Staying On by Paul Scott
• Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
• The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon
• God's Bit of Wood by Ousmane Sembene
• The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
• Richshaw Boy by Lao She
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovtich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Red and the Black by Stendhal
• This Sporting Life by David Storey
• The Red Room by August Stringberg
• The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
• The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
• The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Couples by John Updike
• Z by Vassilis Vassilikos
• Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
• Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
• The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
• The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
• Germinal by Emile Zola
• La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola

War and travel

• Silver Stallion by Junghyo Ahn
• Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington
• Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge
• Darkness Falls from the Air by Nigel Balchin
• Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard
• Regeneration by Pat Barker
• A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
• Fair Stood the Wind for France by HE Bates
• Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
• An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd
• When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti
• One of Ours by Willa Cather
• Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
• Monkey by Wu Ch'eng-en
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
• Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
• Sharpe's Eagle by Bernard Cornwell
• The History of Pompey the Little by Francis Coventry
• The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Bomber by Len Deighton
• Deliverance by James Dickey
• Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
• South Wind by Norman Douglas
• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
• Justine by Lawrence Durrell
• The Bamboo Bed by William Eastlake
• The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell
• Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
• Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
• The African Queen by CS Forester
• The Ship by CS Forester
• Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• The Beach by Alex Garland
• To The Ends of the Earth trilogy by William Golding
• Asterix the Gaul by Rene Goscinny
• The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
• Count Belisarius by Robert Graves
• Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman
• De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage
• King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard
• She: A History of Adventure by H Rider Haggard
• The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton
• Covenant with Death by John Harris
• Enigma by Robert Harris
• The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
• Rasselas by Samuel Johnson
• From Here to Eternity by James Jones
• Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
• Confederates by Thomas Keneally
• Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
• Day by AL Kennedy
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
• The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
• If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
• The Call of the Wild by Jack London
• The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean
• All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty
• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• La Condition Humaine by Andre Malraux
• Fortunes of War by Olivia Manning
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Children of the New Forest by Frederick Marryat
• Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville
• Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
• The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
• History by Elsa Morante
• Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
• The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh
• Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
• The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
• Burmese Days by George Orwell
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
• The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell
• The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell
• The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolp Erich Raspe
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• The Crab with the Golden Claws by Georges Remi Herge
• Tintin in Tibet by Georges Remi Herge
• The Castafiore Emerald by Georges Remi Herge
• The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimaraes Rosa
• Sacaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
• Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathon Safran Foer
• The Hunters by James Salter
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
• Austerlitz by WG Sebald
• Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
• The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
• A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
• Maus by Art Spiegelman
• The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
• Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson
• A Sentimental Journey by Lawrence Sterne
• Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone
• Sophie's Choice by William Styron
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
• A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
• Williwaw by Gore Vidal
• Candide by Voltaire
• Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh
• Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
• The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells
• The Machine-Gunners by Robert Westall
• Voss by Patrick White
• The Virginian by Owen Wister 
• The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
• The Debacle by Emile Zola