Must Reads

Craft/Criticism Books

Mimesis by Erich Auerbach

The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter

The Dialogic Imagination by M.M. Bakhtin

Character and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card

Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster

Anatomy of Criticism by Northrop Frye

On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner

The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode

On Writing by Stephen King

The Magic Words by Cheryl Klein

The Severed Head by Julia Kristeva

Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Leguin

The Hidden Adult by Perry Nodelman

The Fiction Writer’s Workshop by Josip Novakovich

Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer

Writing with Pictures Uri Shulevitz

Middle Grade Fiction

Goblin Secrets by William Alexander

The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley

Doll Bones by Holly Black

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

Heap House by Edward Carey

Flora and Ulysses by Cate DiCamillo

The Search for Wondla by Toni Diterlizzi

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy by Anne Ursu

The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh

The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak

YA Fiction

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson

Feed by M.T. Anderson

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (YA/adult crossover)

Still Life with Tornado by A. S. King

Calvin by Martine Leavitt

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti (YA/adult crossover)

The Emperor of Any Place by Tim Wynne-Jones

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

YA Non-Fiction

Symphony for the City of the Dead by M.T. Anderson

The Unwanted by Don Brown

We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai

Hidden Girl by Shyima Hall

Adult Literary Fiction/Poetry/ Essays

The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor by John Barth

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

Burning Your Boats by Angela Carter

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Together and By Ourselves by Alex Dimitrov (poetry)

The Creationists by E. L. Doctorow (essays)

Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot

Ten Colloquies by Erasmus

The Hapless Child by Edward Gorey

Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Earthsea Series by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

Upstream by Mary Oliver (essays)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Ridiculous Light by Valencia Robin (poetry)

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

(More to come!)