James Agee- A Death in the Family
Sherman Alexie – Flight, Indian Killer
James Baldwin-Go Tell it on the Mountain; Another Country, Giovanni’s Room
John Barth- The Floating Opera, End of the Road,
Giles Goat Boy, Sabbatical
Saul Bellow- The Dangling, Humbolt’s Gift, Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Herzog
Octavia Butler – Kindred, Fledgling
Willa Cather- O Pioneers!, Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Antonia
Kate Chopin- At Fault, The Awakening
John Cheever- The Wapshot Chronicle, The Wapshot Scandal
Sandra Cisneros – Caramelo
Stephen Crane- The Red Badge of Courage
Don Delillo – Underworld, White Noise
Ralph Ellison- Invisible Man
Dave Eggers- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Louise Erdrich – The Painted Drum, Love Medicine, The Beet Queen
William Faulkner- The Unvanquished, Intruder in the Dust, Light in August, As I Lay Dying
F. Scott Fitzgerald- Tender is the Night, The Last Tycoon, This Side of Paradise
John Gardner- Grendel, October Light
Nathaniel Hawthorne- Blithedale Romance, Marble Faun, House of Seven Gables
Joseph Heller- Catch-22, Closing Time
Hemingway- A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom The Bell Tolls, To Have and Have Not
William Dean Howells- The Rise of Silas Lapham, A Hazard of New Fortunes
Zora Neale Hurston- Their Eyes Were Watching God
John Irving- The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Omen Meany
Henry James- Portrait of a Lady, The Americans, The Bostonians
Ken Kesey- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Sue Monk Kidd- The Secret Life of Bees
Barbara Kingsolver- The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer
Jerzy Kosinski- The Painted Bird, Being There, Cockpit
Nella Larsen – Passing, Quicksand
Sinclair Lewis- Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Main Street
London- Martin Eden, The Call of the Wild, The Iron Heel
Norman Mailer- The Naked and the Dead, The Deer Park, Harlot’s Ghost
Bernard Malamud- The Assistant, The Natural, The Fixer
Cormac McCarthy – The Road, Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men
Carson McCullers- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, Ballad of The Sad Café
Herman Melville- Moby Dick
Margaret Mitchell- Gone with the Wind
M. Scott Momaday- House Made of Dawn, The Way to Rainy Mountain
Toni Morrison- Song of Solomon, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Sula
Vladimir Nabokov- Pale Fire
Gloria Naylor- The Women of Brewster Place
Frank Norris- McTeague, The Octopus
Flannery O’Connor – The Violent Bear It Away, Wise Blood
Carolyn Parkhurst- The Dogs of Babel
Robert Pirsig- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Lila
Sylvia Plath- The Bell Jar
Katharine Anne Porter- Ship of Fools
Thomas Pynchon – V., Gravity’s Rainbow
Ayn Rand- Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, We the Living
Frederick Reiken- The Odd Sea, The Lost Legends of New Jersey
Marilynne Robinson – Housekeeping
Philip Roth- The Plot Against America, Exit Ghost, American Pastoral
J. D. Salinger- Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beams, The Catcher in the Rye
Alice Sebold – The Lovely Bones
Upton Sinclair- The Jungle
Jane Smiley- A Thousand Acres, Moo
John Steinbeck- East of Eden, Winter of Our Discontent, The Moon Is Down, Cannery Row
Amy Tan- The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Bonesetter’s Daughter
Mark Twain- Innocents Abroad, Mysterious Stranger, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
John Updike- Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest, The Centaur, The Coup
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. – Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night
Alice Walker- The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy
Robert Penn Warren- All the Kings Men, A Place to Come to
Dorothy West – The Living is Easy
Nathaniel West- Miss Lonely Hearts, Day of the Locusts
Edith Wharton- Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence, Custom of the Country
Thomas Wolfe- Look Homeward, Angel, You Can’t Go Home Again
Richard Wright- Native Son, Black Boy
I need to choose one to read for american lit. let me know if you’ve read any that were good