SEVERAL DIFFERENT LISTS OF "BEST NOVELS" to learn the art of writing.
(Then, go to ABE BOOKS and find for a dollar. Ship media rate for a second buck.

1. "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome '! (Prion Humor Classics)'

2. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Bronte ' (Oxford World's Classics)'

3. "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte ' (Penguin Classics)'

4. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway '

5. "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest  Hemingway

6. "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

7. "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

8. "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens '

9. "Last Leaf" by O. Henry ' (Jamestown Classics)'

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
MY personal LIST OF FAVORITES: Anything by Stieg Larsson, Frederic Forsyth, Stephen Hunter, Lee Child and Robert Crais for thrillers. Michael Connelly and Sue Grafton for mysteries. BETTY SMITH's A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, Margaret Mitchell's GONE WITH THE WIND & ANYTHING by PEARL BUCK. And Edna Ferber. anything by Isaac Bashevis Singer.  Josephine TEY's Daughter of Time. Robert Harris for Horror Crime genre. Created Hannibal Lechter.

Political Thrillers- Frederic Forsyth, Robert Littell, Ken Follette. 
Novels: , Memoirs of a Geisha, KING OF PARIS Guy Endore,
Biography Henri Troyat's many, MIA FARROW's.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~ LIBRARIANS LIST~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

1. Pride and Prejudice by Austen
2. To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
3. Jane Eyre Bronte
4. Gone with the Wind Mitchell
5. Lord of the Rings Tolkien
6. The Catcher in the Rye Salinger
7. Little Women Alcott
8. A Prayer of Owen Meany Irving
9. The Stand by King
10. The Great Gatsby  byFitzgerald
11. Mists of Avalon Bradley
12. David Copperfield Dickens
13. Kristen Lavransdotter Undset
14. Beloved Morrison
15. Age of Innocence Wharton
16. The Shell Seekers Pilcher
17. Tess of the D'Urbervilles Hardy
18. The World According to Garp Irving
19. Catch 22 Heller
20. The Clan of the Cave Bear Auel
21. The Horse Whisperer Evans
22. Pillars of the Earth Follett
23. Prince of Tides Conroy
24. Possession Byatt
25. Rebecca DuMaurier
26. Follow the River Thom
27. My Antonia Cather
28. The Old Man and the Sea Hemingway
29. The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne
30. Sophie's Choice Styron
31. Snow Falling on Cedars Guterson
32. One Hundred Years of Solitude Marquez
33. Name of the Rose Eco
34. The Giver Lowry
35. Cold Mountain Frazier
36. Cold Sassy Tree Burns
37. Atlas Shrugged Rand
38. Bridge to Terebithia Paterson
39. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Tyler
40. The Hobbit Tolkien
41. Les Miserables Victor Hugo
42. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Lewis
43. Wuthering Heights Bronte
44. A Tale of Two Cities Dickens
45. Huckelberry Finn Twain
46. Alice in Wonderland Carroll
47. The Wind in the Willows Grahame
48. The Bean Trees Kingsolving
49. Ben Hur Wallace
50. And Then There Were None Christie
51. The Secret Garden Burnett
52. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Taylor
53. Busman's Honeymoon Sayers
54. Schindler's List Keneally
55. Emma Austen
56. The Color Purple Walker
57. The Count of Monte Cristo Dumas
58. Charlotte's Web White
59. Anne of Green Gables Montgomery
60. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood Wells
61. Lady Chatterly's Lover Lawrence
62. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Smith
63. East of Eden Steinbeck
64. The Once and Future King White
65. Enders Game Card
66. The Fountainhead Rand
67. A Patchwork Planet Tyler
68. Gaudy Night Sayers
69. Shogun Clavell
70. Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck
71. Handmaid's Tale Atwood
72. Lonesome Dove McMurtry
73. Outlander Gabaldon
74. Pigs in Heaven Kingsolver
75. Slaughterhouse Five Vonnegut
76. Jude the Obscure Hardy
77. Time and Again Finney
78. Misery King
79. A Christmas Carol Dickens
80. The Accidental Tourist Tyler
81. Giants of the Earth Rolvaag
82. Persuasion Austen
83. Fried Green Tomatoes Flagg
84. Tisha Specht
85. The Thornbirds McCullough
86. Christy Marshall
87. Lost Horizon Hilton
88. The Little Prince St. Exupery
89. Fahrenheight 451 Bradbury
90. For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway
91. Frankenstein Shelley
92. Bleak House Dickens
93. Boy's Life McCammon
94. Chesapeake Michener
95. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Adams
96. How Green Was My Valley Llewellyn
97. Howard's End Forster
98. I, Robot Asimov
99. Of Mice and Men Steinbeck
100. A Passage to India Forster

~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~

HARVARD BOOK STORE LIST OF THE BEST!

1. A People’s History of the United States
Howard Zinn 3$ at abe books!
2. The Wind Up Bird Chronicles
Haruki Murakami
3. The New York Trilogy
Paul Auster
4. The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon
5. Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
7. Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
10. The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
11. Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky
12. On the Road Kerouac
13. Alice in Wonderland Carrol
14. Brothers Karamozov Dostoevsky
15. The Age of Innocence Wharton
16. Don Quixote Cervantes
17. Perfume Suskind
18. Ulysses Joyce
19. Anna Karenina Tolstoy
20. Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
21. Cry the Beloved Country Paton
22. Dracula Stoker
23. The Eagles Die Marek
24. Emotionally Weird Atkinson
25. The Handmaid’s Tale Atwood
26. Infinite Jest Wallace
27. Kitchen Yoshimoto
28. London Fields Amis
29. Moise and the World of Reason Williams
30. Movie Wars Rosenbaum
31. Paradise Lost Milton
32. Persuasion Austen
33. Tortilla Curtain Boyle
34. Visions of Excess Bataille
35. Where the Wild Things Are Sendak
36. Wild Sheep Chase Murakami
37. Beloved Morrison
38. Counterfeiters Gide
39. The Bell Jar Plath
40. Blind Owl Hedayat
41. Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
42. The Count of Monte Cristo Dumas
43. Dealing With Dragons Wrede
44. The Earthsea Trilogy Le Guin
45. The Ecology of Fear Davis
46. Franny and Zooey Salinger
47. History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides
48. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Alvarez
49. Kabuki: Circle of Blood Mack & Jiang
50. Of Human Bondage Maugham
51. The Satanic Verses Rushdie
52. The Sheltering Sky Bowles
53. Tristam Shandy Sterne
54. Well of Loneliness Hall
55. Wicked Pavilion Powell
56. Collected Stories of V.S. Pritchett
57. War and Peace Tolstoy
58. Babel 17 Delany
59. Dora Freud
60. Empire Falls Russo
61. For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway
62. Girl in Landscape Letham
63. Goodbye to All That Graves
64. Ham on Rye Bukowski
65. Life Like
66. Mao II Delillo
67. Random Family Leblanc
68. Revolutionary Road Yates
69. The Stranger Camus
70. Humboldt’s Gift Bellow
71. White Noise Delillo
72. Atlas Shrugged Rand
73. Bastard Out of Carolina Allison
74. Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills Bukowski
75. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
76. Fast Food Nation Schlosser
77. Ficciones Borges
78. Go Ask Alice Anonymous
79. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Adams
80. Iliad Homer
81. On Photography Sontag
82. Republic by Plato
83. Shockproof Sydney Skate Meaker
84. Society of the Spectacle Debord
85. Strangers in Paradise Moore
86. The Sun Also Rises Hemingway
87. A Wrinkle In Time L’Engle
88. Dubliners Joyce
89. The Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut
90. No Logo Klein
91. Aeneid Virgil
92. Ariel Plath
93. Charlotte’s Web White
94. Curious George Learns the Alphabet Rey
95. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute Paley
96. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter McCullers
97. Henry VIII Shakespeare
98. I, Claudius Graves
99. The Lost Continent Bryson
100. Master and Margarita Bulgakov
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

Choice of Books by Sir John Lubbock (1896)
List of 100 CLASSIC Books
Works by Living Authors are omitted.

* The Bible & the SECRET BIBLE
* The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
* Epictetus
* [Seneca (added in 1930 edition)]
* Aristotle's Ethics
* Analects of Confucius
* St. Hilaire's "Le Bouddha et sa religion"
* Wake's Apostolic Fathers
* Thos. à Kempis' Imitation of Christ
* Confessions of St. Augustine (Dr. Pusey)
* The Koran (portions of)
* Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
* Comte's Catechism of Positive Philosophy [omitted in 1930 edition]
* Pascal's Pensées
* Butler's Analogy of Religion
* Taylor's Holy Living and Dying
* Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
* Keble's Christian Year
* Plato's Dialogues; at any rate, the Apology, Crito, and Phædo
* Xenophon's Memorabilia
* Aristotle's Politics
* Demosthenes' De Corona
* Cicero's De Officiis, De Amicitia, and De Senectute
* Plutarch's Lives
* Berkeley's Human Knowledge
* Descartes' Discours sur la Méthode
* Locke's On the Conduct of the Understanding
* Homer
* Hesiod
* Virgil
* Maha Bharata { Epitomized in Talboys Wheeler's
* Ramayana { History of India, vols. i and ii.
* The Shahnameh
* The Nibelungenlied
* Malory's Morte d'Arthur
* The Sheking [i.e., Shih Ching]
* Kalidasa's Sakuntala or The Lost Ring
* Æschylus' Prometheus
o Trilogy of Orestes
* Sophocles' Œdipus
* Euripides' Medea
* Aristophanes' The Knights and Clouds
* Horace
* Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (perhaps in Morris' edition; or if expurgated, in C. Clarke's, or Mrs. Haweis')
* Shakespeare
* Milton's Paradise Lost, Lycidas, Comus, and the shorter poems
* Dante's Divina Commedia
* Spenser's Fairie Queen
* Dryden's Poems [omitted in 1930 edition]
* Scott's Poems
* Wordsworth (Mr. Arnold's selection)
* Pope's Essay in Criticism
o Essay on Man
o Rape of the Lock
* Burns
* Byron's Childe Harold
* Gray
* [Tennyson's Idylls and smaller poems (added in 1930 edition)]
* Herodotus
* Xenophon's Anabasis and Memorabilia
* Thucydides
* Tacitus' Germania
* Livy
* Gibbon's Decline and Fall
* Hume's History of England
* Grote's History of Greece
* Carlyle's French Revolution
* Green's Short History of England
* Lewes' History of Philosophy
* Arabian Nights
* Swift's Gulliver's Travels
* Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
* Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield
* Cervantes' Don Quixote
* Boswell's Life of Johnson
* Molière
* Schiller's William Tell
* Sheridan's The Critic, School for Scandal, and The Rivals
* Carlyle's Past and Present
* Bacon's Novum Organum
* Smith's Wealth of Nations (part of)
* Mill's Political Economy
* Cook's Voyages
* Humboldt's Travels
* White's Natural History of Selborne
* Darwin's Origin of Species
o Naturalist's Voyage
* Mill's Logic
* [Ruskin, Selection from the writings of (added in 1930 edition)]
* Bacon's Essays
* Montaigne's Essays
* Hume's Essays [omitted in 1930 edition]
* Macaulay's Essays
* Addison's Essays
* Emerson's Essays
* Burke's Select Works
* Smiles' Self-Help
* [Ruskin's Modern Painters (added in 1930 edition)]
* Voltaire's Zadig and Micromegas
* Goethe's Faust and Autobiography
* Thackeray's Vanity Fair
o Pendennis
* Dickens' Pickwick
o David Copperfield
* Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii
* George Eliot's Adam Bede
* Kingsley's Westward Ho!
* Scott's Novels (I presume that's Sir Walter?)

ANTHONY BURGESS, novelist, his list of best novels `39 to 83
1939 * Party Going, Henry Green
* After Many a Summer, Aldous Huxley
* Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
* At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
1940
* The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
* For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
* Strangers and Brothers (to 1970), C. P. Snow
1941
* The Aerodrome, Rex Warner
1944
* The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary
* The Razor's Edge, Somerset Maugham
1945
* Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
1946
* Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake
1947
* The Victim, Saul Bellow
* Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
1948
* The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
* Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley
* The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
* No Highway, Nevil Shute
1949
* The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen
* Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
* The Body, William Sansom
1950
* Scenes from Provincial Life, William Cooper
* The Disenchanted, Budd Schulberg
1951
* A Dance to the Music of Time (to 1975), Anthony Powell
* The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
* The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (to 1969), Henry Williamson
* The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
1952
* Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
* The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
* The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy
* Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor
* Sword of Honour (to 1961), Evelyn Waugh
1953
* The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
1954
* Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
1957
* Room at the Top, John Braine
* The Alexandria Quartet (to 1960), Lawrence Durrell
* The London Novels (to 1960), Colin MacInnes
* The Assistant, Bernard Malamud
1958
* The Bell, Iris Murdoch
* Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe
* The Once and Future King, T. H. White
1959
* The Mansion, William Faulkner
* Goldfinger, Ian Fleming
1960
* Facial Justice, L. P. Hartley
* The Balkans Trilogy (to 1965), Olivia Manning
1961
* The Mighty and Their Fall, Ivy Compton-Burnett
* Catch-22, Joseph Heller
* The Fox in the Attic, Richard Hughes
* Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White
* The Old Men at the Zoo, Angus Wilson
1962
* Another Country, James Baldwin
* An Error of Judgment, Pamela Hansford Johnson
* Island, Aldous Huxley
* The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
* Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
1963
* The Girls of Slender Means, Muriel Spark
1964
* The Spire, William Golding
* Heartland, Wilson Harris
* A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood
* The Defence, Vladimir Nabokov
* Late Call, Angus Wilson
1965
* The Lockwood Concern, John O'Hara
* The Mandelbaum Gate, Muriel Spark
1966
* A Man of the People, Chinua Achebe
* The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis
* Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth
* The Late Bourgeois World, Nadine Gordimer
* The Last Gentleman, Walker Percy
1967
* The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan
1968
* The Image Men, J. B. Priestley
* Cocksure, Mordecai Richler
* Pavane, Keith Roberts
1969
* The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
* Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
1970
* Bomber, Len Deighton
1973
* Sweet Dreams, Michael Frayn
* Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
1975
* Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow
* The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury
1976
* The Doctor's Wife, Brian Moore
* Falstaff, Robert Nye
1977
* How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong
* Farewell Companions, James Plunkett
* Staying On, Paul Scott
1978
* The Coup, John Updike
1979
* The Unlimited Dream Company, J. G. Ballard
* Dubin's Lives, Bernard Malamud
* A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul
* Sophie's Choice, William Stryon 1980
* Life in the West, Brian Aldiss
* Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
* How Far Can You Go?, David Lodge
* A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole  ( I DO NOT AGREE)
* Lanark, Alasdair Gray
* Darconville's Cat, Alexander Theroux
* The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux
* Creation, Gore Vidal 1982
* The Rebel Angels, Robertson Davies
1983
* Ancient Evenings, Norman Mailer

Source: Burgess, Anthony. 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939. New York: Summit Books, 1984. © 1984 by Anthony Burgess.

WANT TO read or WRITE SCI FI? Cyberpunk's LIST OF THE BEST HERE.

MY FAVORITES: (Anita Sands Hernandez assembled this list, the 'poster'..)
Mysteries/Thrillers : Lee Child, Sue Grafton, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, Ken Follette