
The following booklist was created by the TRS team with input from our young followers as well as professional advisors in education and publishing.
While we believe that book lists are inherently subjective and incomplete, we made every effort possible to consider books that feature high-quality writing, are relatable to teens and young people, and present diversity of thought, point of view, gender, genre, the racial identity of both authors and characters, geography and time.
- Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
- Ligeia – Edgar Allan Poe
- The Girl with All the Gifts – M. R. Carey
- Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
- Circe – Madeline Miller
- Alice in Wonderland- Lewis Carroll
- 1984 – George Orwell
- The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
- The Red Notebook – Antoine Laurain
- The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
- The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
- Strange the Dreamer – Laini Tayor
- Black Enough – Ibi Zoboi
- Let Me Hear a Rhyme – Tiffany Jackson
- Les Fiances de l’hiver (A Winter’s Promise) – Christelle Dabos
- 11/22/63 – Stephen King
- Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Saenz
- Saga – Brian K Vaughan, Fiona Staples
- The Thing About Jellyfish – Ali Benjamin
- Riyria – Michael J Sullivan
- Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan
- Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
- Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Flight of Swans – Sarah McGuire
- To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- Hungry Hearts – Elsie Chapman
- The Weight of Our Sky – Hanna Alkaf
- The Wicked Deep – Shea Ernshaw
- Serpent and Dove – Shelby Mahurin
- The Cruel Prince – Holly Black
- Six of Crows – Leigh Bardugo
- The Mysterious Benedict Society – Trenton Lee Stewart
- Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins
- Heart Bones – Colleen Hoover
- The Bane Chronicles – Cassandra Clare
- Gone-Away Lake – Elizabeth Enright
- The Three-Body Problem – Liu Cixin
- The Garden of Eden – Ernest Hemingway
- The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue – Mackenzi Lee
- The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller
- The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
- Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys – Gerard Way
- The Invisible Bridge – Julie Orringer
- Vango – Timothee de Fombelle
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
- The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern
- Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
- The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender – Leslye Walton
- Almost Home – Joan Bauer
- The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
- Emma – Jane Austen
- The Witches – Roald Dahl
- Crime and Punishment – Fydor Doestoyevsky
- The Lord of the Rings – J R R Tolkien
- A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
- The Stand – Stephen King
- A Song of Ice and Fire – George R. R. Martin
- Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
- The Hobit – J R R Tolkien
- Serenade for Nadia – Zülfü Livaneli
- Red at the Bone – Jacqueline Woodson
- The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
- The Secret History – Donna Tartt
- The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman
- Dracula – Bram Stoker
- The Maze Runner – James Dashner
- Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
- The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
- Clap When You Land – Elizabeth Acevedo
- Red, White, and Royal Blue – Casey McQuinston
- Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
- The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
- The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
- The Vanishing Half – Britt Bennett
- The Veldt – Ray Bradbury
- 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
- The Lottery – Shirley Jackson
- The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
- The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
- The Midnight Library – Matt Haig
- One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
- Every Last Word – Tamara Ireland Stone
- Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
- The Glass Castle – Jeanette Walls
- Language of Flowers – Vanessa Diffenbaugh
- East of Eden – John Steinbeck
- The Sun is Also a Star – Nicola Yoon
- The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
- Holes – Louis Sachar
- Fear the Dark – Chris Mooney
- Lolita – Vladimir Nobakov
- The Shining – Stephen King
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
- A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
- Life of Pi – Yann Martel
- Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
- Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
- City of Bones – Cassandra Clare
- Keeper of the Lost Cities – Shannon Messenger
- Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda – Becky Albertalli and Mathilde Tamae-Bouhon
- To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before – Jenny Han
- From Blood and Ash – Jennifer L. Armentrout
- Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
- Sign, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
- American Street – Ibi Zoboi
- The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead
- Someone Knows My Name – Lawrence Hill
- Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
- Kindred – Octavia Butler
- In the Time of the Butterflies – Julia Alverez
- Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
- A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
- Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
- The Night Watchman – Louise Erdrich
- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan – Lisa See