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Ultimate Best Books

All :: Novels

    Cold Sassy Tree

    Cold Sassy Tree

    Olive Ann Burns

    4.5 (2)

    Three weeks after Granny Blakeslee died, Grandpa came to our house for his early morning snort of whiskey, as usual, and said to me, "Will Tweedy? Go find your mama, then run up to yore Aunt Loma's and tell her I said git on down here. I got something to say. And I ain't a -go'n say it but once't."

    #365
    RANK
    1,439
    POINTS
    Look Homeward, Angel

    Look Homeward, Angel

    Thomas Wolfe

    5.0 (1)

    A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.

    #420
    RANK
    1,035
    POINTS
    The Martian Chronicles

    The Martian Chronicles

    Ray Bradbury

    4.0 (7)

    One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

    #205
    RANK
    3,509
    POINTS
    Skinny Legs and All

    Skinny Legs and All

    Tom Robbins

    4.0 (2)

    This is the room of the wolfmother wallpaper. The toadstool motel you once thought a mere folk tale, a corny, obsolete, rural invention.

    #406
    RANK
    1,144
    POINTS
    Oliver Twist

    Oliver Twist

    Charles Dickens

    3.67 (9)

    Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

    #120
    RANK
    6,811
    POINTS
    It

    It

    Stephen King

    4.56 (9)

    The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made out of a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

    #153
    RANK
    4,862
    POINTS
    A High Wind in Jamaica

    A High Wind in Jamaica

    Richard Hughes

    4.5 (2)

    One of the fruits of Emancipation in the West Indian islands is the number of ruins, either attached to the houses that remain or within a stone's throw of them: ruined slaves' quarters, ruined sugar-grinding houses, ruined boiling houses; often ruined mansions that were too expensive to maintain.

    #492
    RANK
    647
    POINTS
    Cities of Salt

    Cities of Salt

    Abdelrahman Munif

    3.0 (1)

    #601
    RANK
    295
    POINTS
    You Shall Know Our Velocity

    You Shall Know Our Velocity

    Dave Eggers

    3.0 (1)

    I was talking to Hand, one of my two best friends, the one still alive, and we were planning to leave.

    #496
    RANK
    627
    POINTS
    Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein

    Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein

    Marguerite Duras

    4.0 (2)

    Lol Stein was born here in South Tahla, and she spent a good part of her youth in this town.

    #593
    RANK
    315
    POINTS