Recommeded Reading for High School
Suggested Reading for High School Students
(Grades 9–12)
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart.
Alvarez, Julia. How The García Girls Lost Their Accents.
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg,Ohio.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Arnett, Peter. Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Bagdad.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice.
Baker, Russell. Growing Up.
Blais, Madeleine. In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle.
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights.
Brooks, Polly Schoyer. Queen Eleanor, Independent Spirit of The Medieval World: Biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth.
Cather, Willa. O Pioneers!
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales.
Cisneros, Sandra. The House On Mango Street.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim.
Cooper, James Fenimore. Last of the Mohicans.
Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War.
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Delany, Sarah and Elizabeth. Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment.
Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie.
Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies.
Grealy, Lucy. Autobiography of a Face.
Gunther, John. Death Be Not Proud.
Haley, Alex. Roots.
Hardy, Thomas. Return of the Native.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of Seven Gables.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter.
Heinlein, Robert A. Stranger in a Strange Land.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms.
Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises.
Homer. The Iliad.
Homer. The Odyssey.
Hugo, Victor. Les Misérables.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Joyce, James. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Knowles, John. A Separate Peace.
Kuralt, Charles. Charles Kuralt’s America.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
London, Jack. The Sea Wolf.
Malamud, Bernard. The Natural.
McCaffrey, Anne. Dragonsong.
McCullers, Carson. Member of the Wedding.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible.
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind.
Myers, Walter Dean. The Glory Field.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried.
Orwell, George. 1984.
Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Tales and Poems.
Potok, Chaim. My Name is Asher Lev.
Potok, Chaim. The Chosen.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Scott, Sir Walter. Ivanhoe.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth.
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein.
Shepard, Alan and Deke Slayton. Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon.
Shute, Nevil. On the Beach.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle.
Sophocles. Oedipus Rex.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck, John. The Pearl.
Steinbeck, John. The Red Pony.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Stoll, Clifford. Silicon Snake Oil.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden.
Thurber, James. My Life and Hard Times.
Thurber, James. The Thurber Carnival.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome.
Wilder, Thornton. Our Town.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy.
Wright, Richard. Native Son.
Recommended for College-Bound Readers
| Author | Title |
| – | Beowulf |
| Achebe, Chinua | Things Fall Apart |
| Agee, James | A Death in the Family |
| Austen, Jane | Pride and Prejudice |
| Baldwin, James | Go Tell It on the Mountain |
| Beckett, Samuel | Waiting for Godot |
| Bellow, Saul | The Adventures of Augie March |
| Brontë, Charlotte | Jane Eyre |
| Brontë, Emily | Wuthering Heights |
| Camus, Albert | The Stranger |
| Cather, Willa | Death Comes for the Archbishop |
| Chaucer, Geoffrey | The Canterbury Tales |
| Chekhov, Anton | The Cherry Orchard |
| Chopin, Kate | The Awakening |
| Conrad, Joseph | Heart of Darkness |
| Cooper, James Fenimore | The Last of the Mohicans |
| Crane, Stephen | The Red Badge of Courage |
| Dante | Inferno |
| de Cervantes, Miguel | Don Quixote |
| Defoe, Daniel | Robinson Crusoe |
| Dickens, Charles | A Tale of Two Cities |
| Dostoyevsky, Fyodor | Crime and Punishment |
| Douglass, Frederick | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass |
| Dreiser, Theodore | An American Tragedy |
| Dumas, Alexandre | The Three Musketeers |
| Eliot, George | The Mill on the Floss |
| Ellison, Ralph | Invisible Man |
| Emerson, Ralph Waldo | Selected Essays |
| Faulkner, William | As I Lay Dying |
| Faulkner, William | The Sound and the Fury |
| Fielding, Henry | Tom Jones |
| Fitzgerald, F. Scott | The Great Gatsby |
| Flaubert, Gustave | Madame Bovary |
| Ford, Ford Madox | The Good Soldier |
| Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von | Faust |
| Golding, William | Lord of the Flies |
| Hardy, Thomas | Tess of the d’Urbervilles |
| Hawthorne, Nathaniel | The Scarlet Letter |
| Heller, Joseph | Catch-22 |
| Hemingway, Ernest | A Farewell to Arms |
| Homer | The Iliad |
| Homer | The Odyssey |
| Hugo, Victor | The Hunchback of Notre Dame |
| Hurston, Zora Neale | Their Eyes Were Watching God |
| Huxley, Aldous | Brave New World |
| Ibsen, Henrik | A Doll’s House |
| James, Henry | The Portrait of a Lady |
| James, Henry | The Turn of the Screw |
| Joyce, James | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man |
| Kafka, Franz | The Metamorphosis |
| Kingston, Maxine Hong | The Woman Warrior |
| Lee, Harper | To Kill a Mockingbird |
| Lewis, Sinclair | Babbitt |
| London, Jack | The Call of the Wild |
| Mann, Thomas | The Magic Mountain |
| Marquez, Gabriel García | One Hundred Years of Solitude |
| Melville, Herman | Bartleby the Scrivener |
| Melville, Herman | Moby Dick |
| Miller, Arthur | The Crucible |
| Morrison, Toni | Beloved |
| O’Connor, Flannery | A Good Man Is Hard to Find |
| O’Neill, Eugene | Long Day’s Journey into Night |
| Orwell, George | Animal Farm |
| Pasternak, Boris | Doctor Zhivago |
| Plath, Sylvia | The Bell Jar |
| Poe, Edgar Allan | Selected Tales |
| Proust, Marcel | Swann’s Way |
| Pynchon, Thomas | The Crying of Lot 49 |
| Remarque, Erich Maria | All Quiet on the Western Front |
| Rostand, Edmond | Cyrano de Bergerac |
| Roth, Henry | Call It Sleep |
| Salinger, J.D. | The Catcher in the Rye |
| Shakespeare, William | Hamlet |
| Shakespeare, William | Macbeth |
| Shakespeare, William | A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
| Shakespeare, William | Romeo and Juliet |
| Shaw, George Bernard | Pygmalion |
| Shelley, Mary | Frankenstein |
| Silko, Leslie Marmon | Ceremony |
| Solzhenitsyn, Alexander | One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich |
| Sophocles | Antigone |
| Sophocles | Oedipus Rex |
| Steinbeck, John | The Grapes of Wrath |
| Stevenson, Robert Louis | Treasure Island |
| Stowe, Harriet Beecher | Uncle Tom’s Cabin |
| Swift, Jonathan | Gulliver’s Travels |
| Thackeray, William | Vanity Fair |
| Thoreau, Henry David | Walden |
| Tolstoy, Leo | War and Peace |
| Turgenev, Ivan | Fathers and Sons |
| Twain, Mark | The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
| Voltaire | Candide |
| Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. | Slaughterhouse-Five |
| Walker, Alice | The Color Purple |
| Wharton, Edith | The House of Mirth |
| Welty, Eudora | Collected Stories |
| Whitman, Walt | Leaves of Grass |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Picture of Dorian Gray |
| Williams, Tennessee | The Glass Menagerie |
| Woolf, Virginia | To the Lighthouse |
| Wright, Richard | Native Son |