Recommended High School Reading List Click here to return to the Library Home Page
TITLE	AUTHOR	ANNOTATION
All the Pretty Horses	Cormac McCarthy	A modern-day western full of horses, gunplay and romance. This is the story of John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas Rangers, who sets off on an incredible adventure through the “wild west.” Great, often comedic, writing.
Animal Dreams	Barbara Kingsolver	Codi Noline returns to her hometown of Grace, Arizona after many years of putting her past behind her. She finds her father aging and incapacitated, an environmental crisis in town and the love of an old friend. A suspenseful love story and a great plunge into retracing the steps of childhood. Also recommended by this author: The Bean Trees, The Poisonwood Bible.
Bless Me, Ultima	Rudolfo Anaya	Ultima, a wise old mystic, helps a young Hispanic boy resolve personal dilemmas caused by the differing backgrounds and aspirations of his parents and society.
The Bluest Eye	Toni Morrison	Pecola Breedlove, the young black protagonist, wants blonde hair and blue eyes. She thinks people will like her for that. Anything Toni Morrison writes is excellent. This was her first book. Read all of her works this summer if you can.
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley	A satirical novel set in the year 632 AF (After Ford). A grim picture of the world which Huxley thinks our scientific and social developments have begun to create.
Ceremony	Leslie Marmon Silko	Tayo, the main character, a half-white Laguna Indian, is emotionally stricken by white warfare and almost destroyed by his experiences as a WWII prisoner of the Japanese. In his quest for healing, he discovers his connection to the land and to ancient rituals with the help of a medicine man.
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith	Thomas Keneally	Mixed-race Australian Jimmie Blacksmith is brutally betrayed by white society and embarks on a murderous rampage.
Cold Sassy Tree	Olive Anne Burns	This book is full of genuine humor and pathos as Will Tweedy tells us the story of his grandfather’s re-marriage to a much younger woman. It’s also a good portrait of small-town Southern life.
The Color Purple	Alice Walker	Set in the American south, this is the story of Celie, a fourteen-year-old who is a victim of domestic violence. It is really about Celie’s ability to cope and overcome in spite of her environment.
The Confederacy of Dunces	John Kennedy Toole	Your sides will hurt from laughing at some of the scenes that this unique and hilarious story unfolds. Ignatius J. Reilly is an obese and somewhat tragic character who exploits his day to day life through brilliant humor and comic explanations.
Crossing to Safety	Wallace Stegner	Two couples live very different lives in the college town of Madison, Wisconsin. One husband is a non-tenured professor whose family struggles throughout the educational ups and downs of life at a growing university in the 1960’s. The other couple is more economically sound, yet their friendship spans three decades of humor, love and tragedy. A beautifully written novel. Also suggested by this author: Angle of Repose.
The Elizabeth Stories	Isabel Huggins	A series of short stories about one character, Elizabeth. In each story, Elizabeth is older and wiser. Good writing.
Ender’s Game	Orson Scott Card	Science fiction set in a future where the Earth is at war with an alien race looking to colonize our solar system. The main character, Ender, is a genius who is recruited into the military at age six and sent to training camp, purposely isolated from his family. Fast paced, emotionally charged, excellent story about a young man forced to grow up far before his time. One of my all time favorite authors. There are three equally good (but long) sequels: Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind; and two related books, Ender’s Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon. Also excellent: The Lost Boys, the Alvin Maker series, and his short stories.
The English Patient	Michael Ondaatje	A moving and haunting tale of an English pilot in WWII who finds himself terribly burned and nursed slowly back to health in a bombed-out Italian villa. Life and death come and go as easily as day into night in this eerie tale of survival.
Fade	Robert Cormier	The young protagonist in this novel discovers he has the “gift” of becoming invisible at will. By the end of the book, he is not certain it is such a gift.
Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	Books are for burning in this future society where thinking and reading are crimes.
The Fixer	Bernard Malamud	Yakov Bok fights for his life when he becomes the victim of a vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy and is unjustly sent to a Russian prison.
The General and His Labyrinth	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	This story recounts the turbulent life of Simon Bolivar, a 50-year-old political and military leader whose dream is to liberate South America from Spanish domination. This story is told in the framework of a fantastic seven months’ voyage down the Magdelena River from Bogota to the sea. Like any of Marquez’ works, you must keep track of his many characters! Also suggested by this author: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera.

Golf in the Kingdom	Michael Murphy	A great book for golf lovers or those who believe in elves and spirits! Set in Scotland, this magical tale takes you through 18 of the best holes in the history of golf!
The Great Santini	Pat Conroy	Told from the point of view of an 18-year-old male. He is in conflict with his domineering, Marine fighter-pilot father.
Goodbye, Columbus	Philip Roth	A young Jewish man meets a wealthy young woman. The central conflict deals with this man’s paradoxical attraction/repulsion towards the woman’s wealth and superficiality. Roth tells the story with humor and candor.
A House for Mr. Biswas	V.S, Naipaul	Set in the Caribbean, Mr. Biswas struggles for cultural and personal identity. In this book of epic proportion, Mr. Biswas just wants to own a house! Gives the reader a good understanding of colonialism.
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard	Kiran Desai	This wonderful book is set in India. It is the story of Sampath, a teenager who is fed up with his life, so he goes to the Guava Orchard and lives in a tree! It is funny and beautifully written. Great characters, including monkeys.
In Cold Blood	Truman Capote	This book was the first of its kind: journalistic fiction. It is based on the true story of the murder of a Kansas farm family. Good writing based on interviews with the townspeople and the killers.
The King Must Die	Mary Renault	The myth of Theseus and the minotaur of Crete comes to life in the form of a novel.
Kitchen	Banana Yoshimoto	This simply written book is told from the eyes of a young woman, Mikage, in contemporary Japan. Her grandmother has just died, and Mikage is dealing with loss and change in her life.
The Kitchen God’s Wife	Amy Tan	The author of The Joy Luck Club, Tan’s second novel is about the life of Winnie Louie which she tells or offers as a gift to her daughter, Pearl. Much happens in the telling: long-held secrets are revealed and a family’s myths are transferred ceremoniously to the next generation. This is the world of California’s immigrant Chinese with flashbacks and stories that dwell deep in the hearts of her characters. A story you can’t put down!

Leaving Cheyenne	Larry McMurtry	A western love story that spans forty years. Two men, one a rancher who has inherited a fortune and the other, a real-life cowboy, fight for the hand of Molly, who bears each of them a son. Writing is crisp and direct and full of images of the old west.
A Lesson Before Dying	Ernest Gaines	A young black man is wrongly convicted of a murder he did not commit. He dies in jail, but learns about dignity.
Lucy	Jamaica Kincaid	This book focuses on the life of a 19-year-old West Indian girl who goes to work as an au pair in New York.
The Mists of Avalon	Marion Zimmer Bradley	This is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne.
The Once and Future King	T.H. White	King Arthur learns his lessons from Merlin the Magician, creates Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table and loves and loses Guinevere.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Ken Kesey	A group of patients at a mental hospital are influenced by a newcomer who teaches them hope through laughter -- they gain dignity and self-respect through non-conformity.
Picturing Will	Ann Beattie	Chronicles the life of a group of people who are linked to a five-and-a-half year- old boy, Will. Their stories are told in a way that mirrors how we learn about those around us -- in glimpses and snapshots, truths shared and truths discovered. Refreshing and down-to-earth.
Possession	AS. Byatt	An exhilarating and somewhat difficult novel of wit, romance and mystery. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals and poems and track their lives from London to Yorkshire -- from spiritualist seances to fairy tales -- what emerges is extraordinary passion and ideas.
The Prince of Tides	Pat Conroy	A terrifically detailed story that depicts a family’s often troubled life. Set in the shrimping waters of South Carolina in the 1960’s, three children struggle from their parents’ rocky marriage into hectic adult lives of their own. This story is so beautifully written by Conroy that you have to almost pause at each of his descriptions to catch your breath.
The Queen’s Gambit	Walter Tevis	Beth Harmon is taught to play chess by the janitor in her orphanage. She jeopardizes her achievements by personal doubts and dependence on drugs and alcohol.

Ragtime	E.L. Doctorow	The troubled lives of real and fictional people from widely different economic and ethnic groups mesh in nineteenth-century America.
Ramona	Helen Hunt Jackson	Set in Mexican California, Mexico, and Native American villages, this is a love story between a Native American and an adopted Native American/Euro American. The central conflict is based on the prejudice of the young woman’s adoptive Mexican parents.
Roots	Alex Haley	Haley traces his ancestry back through American slavery to its origins in Africa. Because it is a combination of history and fiction, Haley has called this genre “faction.”
Saint Maybe	Anne Tyler	A very ordinary family is thrown into crisis by the death of their oldest son. The younger son feels he is somehow responsible and sets his life around making amends. This story is both tragic and humorous at times and is a great coming-of-age tale that deals with everything from religion to changing diapers. Also suggested by this author: The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
The Shipping News	Annie Proulx	At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, retreats to his ancestral home of Newfoundland, where a rich cast of characters all play a part in his struggle to reclaim his life. A darkly comic tone.
Siddhartha	Herman Hesse	This is a short book of epic quality. It is the story of a young Indian man’s quest for truth and understanding of the teachings of Buddha.
The Stranger	Albert Camus	A man who is virtually unknown both to himself and others commits a pointless murder for which he has no explanation.
Time and Again	Jack Finney	A sci-fi adventure, historical romance combination with a very interesting method of time travel. It’s a novel about a man who is enlisted in a secret government program and travels back in time to 1882 where he falls in love and must decide whether to stay in that time or go back to his own.
To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee	If you missed this one in middle school, you need to read it now! The young protagonist learns some important lessons about life in the adult world.

To the Lighthouse	Virginia Woolf	Virginia Woolf is one of the greatest! This novel is a challenge because of its stream-of-consciousness technique. Very poetic and symbolic. Emphasis is not on plot and action, but on the psychological realm of the characters.
Turtle Moon	Alice Hoffman	Keith Rosen hates everything in Florida -- the heat, the school, and sometimes his mother. He can’t wait to get away. And then he does -- when a woman is murdered and her baby is left behind! This is a murder mystery that is hard to put down.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin	Harriet Beecher Stowe	This book relates the trials, suffering, and human dignity of Uncle Tom, an old black slave.
Winter Wheat	Mildred Walker	Set in the 1940’s. The heroine, Ellen Webb, lives in the dryland wheat country of central Montana. She “grows up” in the story as she struggles to understand her immigrant parents and herself.
A Yellow Raft on Blue Water	Michael Dorris	Starting in the present and moving backward in time, this is a thrice-told tale of three women, 15-year-old Ramona, her mother, Christine, and her grandmother, Ida. Their story braids together the three strands of their lives.