The authors on the following list have appeared on AP Literature and Composition or AP Language and Composition exams, have been suggested by the College Board, or have been recommended by AP English teachers. Please preview your selections and choose only readings compatible with your levels of skill and maturity. Unless otherwise specified, you may consider any titles by listed authors. Authors followed by an asterisk (*) are especially difficult.
Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart
Albee, Edward (drama)
Alcala, Kathleen, Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist
Anaya, Rudy, Bless Me, Ultima, Tortuga
Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid's Tale.
Austen. Jane, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, etc.
Angelou, Maya, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Bach, Richard, Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Illusions, The Bridge Across Forever.
Beckett, Samuel, (drama)
Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451
Bradley, M.Z., Mists of Avalon
Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights
Burns, Olive A. , Cold Sassy Tree
Butler, Samuel, The Way of All Flesh
Caldwell. Erskine, Tobacco Road
Cather, Willa, My Antonia, Death Comes to the Archbishop
Chekhov, Anton (drama)
Chopin, Kate, The Awakening
Collins, Wilkie, The Moonstone
Crane, Stephen, Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage
Craven, Margaret, I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations, Bleak House, etc.
Eliot, George, Middlemarch, Silas Marner, etc.
Ellison, Ralph, The Invisible Man
Faulkner, William, esp. Light in August
Feist, Raymond, The Riftwar Saga
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, esp.The Great Gatsby
Flagg, Fanny, Fried Green Tomatoes
Flaubert, Gustav
Forster, Edward M. Howard's End, A Passage to India, etc.
Fowles, John, The French Lieutenant's Woman
Galsworthy, John, The Man of Property
Gardner, John
Golding, William, Lord of the Flies
Greene, Graham, The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock
Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, etc.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Heller, Joseph, Catch-22
Hellman, Lillian (drama)
Hemingway, Ernest
Herbert, Frank, Dune
Hesse, Herman, Steppenwolf
Hillerman, Tony, The Blessing Way, etc.
Hinojosa-Smith, Claros varones de Belken/Fair Gentlemen of Belken
Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik )drama), esp. A Doll House
James, Henry, Daisy Miller
Joyce, James
Kesey, Ken, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
Kingsolver, Barbara, The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven
Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Warrior Women
Knowles, John, A Separate Peace
Kogawa, Joy, Obasan
Lawrence, D.H., *Sons and Lovers, etc.
L'Engle, Madeleine
Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, C.S.
Malcolm X., The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia, *One Hundred Years of Solitude
Maugham, Somerset, Of Human Bondage
McCullers, Carson, Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Melville, Herman, esp. Billy Budd
Meredith, George, The Egoist
Miller, Arthur (drama)
Millman, Dan, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Mitchell, Margaret, Gone with the Wind
Momaday, Scott, House Made of Dawn, The Way to Rainy Mountain
Morrison, Toni, ONLY The Bluest Eye, Tar Baby, Sula
Naipaul, V.S.
Nichols, John, The Milagro Beanfield War
O'Brien, Flann, *At Swim-Two-Birds
O'Casey, Sean (drama)
O'Neill, Eugene (drama)
Orwell, George, Animal Farm
Pirsig, Robert, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Porter, Katherine Anne, Ship of Fools
Rand, Ayn, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, etc.
Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea
Rivera, Tomas, y no se lo trago la tierra/and the earth did not devour him
Salinger, J.C., The Catcher in the Rye
Shaw, G.B. (drama)
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein
Sheppard, Sam (drama)
Silko, Leslie Marmon, Ceremony
Smith, Betty, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Steinbeck, John, esp. The Grapes of Wrath
Stoppard, Tom (drama)
Tan, Amy, The Joy Luck Club
Thackery, W.M., Vanity Fair
Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina
Trollope, Anthony, Barchester Towers
Twain, Mark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, etc.
Updike, John
Vonnegut, Kurt
Walker, Alice, The Color Purple, etc.
Waters, Alice, The Man Who Killed the Deer
Wharton, Edith, Ethan Frome
Williams, Tennessee (drama)
Woolf, Virginia, *The Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, etc.
Wright, Richard, Native Son