 | Revolutionary Road (Modern American Fiction) by Richard Yates
Buy used from: £4.43 I cannot find words to tell you how good this is, though Yates probably could have. Genius, masterpiece, classic, whatever. Please, please, please, buy this book. You will not regret it.
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 | Sportswriter by Richard Ford
Buy used from: £0.07 Beautiful and poignant. Ford is truly great. Read this and then treat yourself to Independence Day.
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 | The Clearing by Tim Gautreaux
Buy used from: £0.01 Something of the new kid on the block in terms of this list, but a classically written, often dark, story.
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 | Catch-22 (Vintage Classics) by Joseph Heller
Buy new: £4.79 / Used from: £2.50 By turns hilarious and absurd. Not many book titles seep into the language as deeply as this one.
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 | Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.26 A wry and gentle look at the eccentricities of small town America.
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 | Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.01 The words great and classic are often bandied around a little too liberally to my mind (especially by publishers!) but this is truly a Great American Novel.
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 | The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Buy new: £6.74 / Used from: £4.35 Need I say more ? If you haven't read it yet, then do. It IS a must-read.
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 | Another Country (Penguin Modern Classics) by James Baldwin
Buy new: £6.49 / Used from: £4.10 Beautiful, important and very much of its time.
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 | Roots by Alex Haley
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £3.75 Perhaps not strictly a novel, but a staggering achievement. Unputdownable and unforgettable.
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 | R.L.'s Dream by Walter Mosley
Buy new: £6.59 / Used from: £0.01 Put some Robert Johnson on the stereo and settle down with this. Moving, sad and quite a departure from Mosley's usual crime beat (as good as his Easy Rawlins novels are, they can't compare to this).
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 | The World According to Garp (Black Swan) by John Irving
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.01 You can read almost any Irving, but this is my favourite. Frankly, if you can't enjoy this, we may as well all pack up and go home.
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 | All the Pretty Horses (Border Trilogy) by Cormac McCarthy
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £0.39 Fabulous. Well-crafted and heart-wrenching. Read this, and follow on with the other two in the trilogy.
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 | Underworld by Don DeLillo
Buy new: £9.99 / Used from: £0.01 You the daddy, Don. Everything about Underworld is BIG, and in this case, it is better.
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 | The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Buy new: £4.10 / Used from: £0.28 Remarkably, this really is as good as it's supposed to be.
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 | Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £2.99 Without doubt the finest novel ever written about masturbation, but more than just that, honest. Very, very funny.
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 | For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £2.65 Yes, he was a violent, misogynistic old drunk, but he could write most of his contemporaries off the page. Raw, powerful, angry. Simply superb.
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 | The New York Trilogy: "City of Glass", "Ghosts" and "Locked Room" by Paul Auster
Buy new: £2.91 / Used from: £0.33 If you're only going to read one Auster, make it this. Clever, and in some places baffling, but exquisitely put-together.
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 | The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell
Buy used from: £2.20 Not so well-known in the UK, but stands comparison with the very best. Check the reviews.
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 | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Buy new: £4.94 / Used from: £1.02 Live the American dream through the two main characters. A wonderful, all-encompassing story. A short history of post-war America as a novel.
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 | The Bonfire of the Vanities (Picador Books) by Tom Wolfe
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £0.01 Forget they ever made the film, the book is just outstanding. Great characters and a truly gripping storyline.
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 | The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Buy used from: £0.01 I didn't think any book could live up to the pre-publication hype this got, but guess what ? It really, genuinely does.
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 | The New City by Stephen Amidon
Buy used from: £0.01 Definitely up there with Wolfe in my opinion. Not exactly heart-warming and full of positives, but a quite damning indictment of the ghettoisation of the USA.
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 | The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill
Buy new: £3.49 / Used from: £0.01 The Minotaur (yes, that one) is alive and well and working as a grill chef . OK, the premise is a little off the wall, but Sherrill absolutely pulls it off. Both funny and heart-breakingly sad.
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 | Mailman by J.Robert Lennon
Buy new: £1.23 / Used from: £0.01 Just about the most convincing portrait of a Loser (with a capital L) you're ever likely to read. Just brilliant.
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 | The Tortilla Curtain (Bloomsbury Classic Reads) by T.Coraghessan Boyle
Buy new: £4.25 / Used from: £3.87 Definitely TCB's best novel, though his short stories are fantastic too. And don't let any synopsis put you off, it's NOT earnest or preachy, just a damn fine read.
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Listmania!
