AP English Reading List

The works listed below are divided into drama, fiction (novels & short stories), expository prose, and poetry. In general, these works have a greater degree of difficulty than those listed in the Classic & Contemporary Literature section, although there is some overlap.

Go to alphabetical listing by author.

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Drama

A, C, D
Antigone by Sophocles
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Dutchman by Amiri Baraka

F, G, H
Fences by August Wilson
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Harvest Festival by Sean O'Casey
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
Homecoming by Harold Pinter

I, K, L
The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
King Lear by William Shakespeare
The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman
Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill

M, O, P
M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang
The Misanthrope by Moliere
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Othello by William Shakespeare
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

R, S, T
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Tartuffe by Moliere

W, Z
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Way of the World by William Congreve
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen
Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez

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Fiction (Novel & Short Story)

A
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The American by Henry James
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Antelope Wife by Louise Erdich
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Aspern Papers by Henry James
The Awakening by Kate Chopin

B
Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Billy Budd by Herman Melville
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman

C
Cane by Jean Toomer
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
Clara by Luisa Valenzuela
Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai
Corelli's Mandolin by Louis DeBernieres
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

D, F
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee
Dubliners by James Joyce
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

G
The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield
Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

H
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I, J
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jazz by Toni Morrison

L, M
Libra by Don DeLillo
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Magus by John Fowles
A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Moby Dick by Herman Melville

N, O, P
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Natural by Bernard Malamud
1984 by George Orwell
No Exit by JeanPaul Sartre
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Plague by Albert Camus
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

R, S
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Serafina's Stories by Rudolfo Anaya
Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

T, U, V
Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Tree Bride by Bharati Mukherjee
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys

W
Waiting by Ha Jin
The Wapshot Scandal by John Cheever
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Note: Most of the above selections are novelshowever, many of these authors have also written short stories.

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Expository Prose

A, B, C
Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology compiled by Adam Gopnik
The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present compiled by Phillip Lopate
Best American Essays of the Century compiled by Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan
Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua
Boswell's London Journal by James Boswell
Charles Lamb: Selected Writings by Charles Lamb
A Collection of Essays by George Orwell
Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator by Joseph Addison & Richard Steele
Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold

F, G, H
French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle
A General Theory of Love by Lewis Thomas
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

L, M, N, O
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy
Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings by Virginia Woolf
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
On Liberty and other Essays by John Stuart Mill

S, T, W
Samuel Johnson: The Major Works by Samuel Johnson
Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing by Norman Mailer
Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners by William Hazlitt
Treatise on the Gods by H.L. Mencken
Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
The Way it Was and Other Writings by Jesus Colon

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Poetry

B
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Ben Johnson by Ben Johnson
The Best Poems of the English Language compiled by Harold Bloom
A Book of Luminous Things: An international Anthology of Poetry compiled by Czeslaw Milosz

C
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Collected Poems by Philip Larkin
Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats
Collected Poems, 1943-2004 by Richard Wilbur
Collected Poems, 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes
The Complete English Poems by George Herbert
The Complete Poems of John Keats by John Keats
The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop
 
E, H, I, J
Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poems and Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Helen in Egypt by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
How We Became Human by Joy Harjo
Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
John Donne's Poetry by John Donne
 
L, M, N
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Life Studies/For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell
Lord Byron: Poems by George Gordon, Lord Byron
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake
Mortal Beauty, God's Grace by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Norton Anthology of Poetry (5th edition) compiled by Margaret Ferguson
 
O, P
On the Bus with Rosa Parks by Rita Dove
Opened Ground: Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Paterson by William Carlos Williams
Picture Bride by Cathy Song
The Poems of Marianne Moore by Marianne Moore
Poems of W.H. Auden by W.H. Auden
Poetry: A Pocket Anthology (4th edition) compiled by R.S. Gwynn
Poetry for the Spirit compiled by Alan Jacobs

R, S, T
The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems by Alexander Pope
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Robert Browning's Poetry by Robert Browning
Roots by Edward Kamau Brathwaite
The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004 by Adrienne Rich
Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
Shelley's Poetry and Prose by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko
"To His Coy Mistriss" & Other Poems by Andrew Marvell

W, Y
The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
William Wordsworth — the Major Works: Including the Prelude by William Wordsworth
Works of Anne Bradstreet by Anne Bradstreet
Yellow Light: Poems by Garrett Hongo

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