1. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
  2. The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm
  3. The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron
  4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
  5. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
  6. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
  7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
  8. Black Boy, by Richard Wright
  9. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
  10. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
  11. Conscious Loving, by Gay and Marcia Harding
  12. Darkness Visible, by William Styron
  13. Desiree, by Annemarie Selinko
  14. The Dialectics of Sex, by Shulamith Firestone
  15. The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, by James Trefil, Joseph F. Kett, and E. D. Hirsch
  16. Down These Mean Streets, by Piri Thomas
  17. Family, by J. California Cooper (an all-time fave)
  18. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
  19. The Giver, by Lois Lawry
  20. The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck
  21. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  22. Honey from the Rock: an Introductin to Jewish Mysticism, by Lawrence Kushner
  23. Hunger of Memory, by Richard Rodriguez
  24. Immortality, by Milan Kundera
  25. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
  26. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
  27. Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy
  28. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
  29. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
  30. Lucky, by Alice Sebold
  31. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
  32. The Mill and the Floss, by George Eliot
  33. Native Son, by Richard Wright
  34. Notes from Underground, by Fydor Dostoevsky
  35. Othello, by William Shakespeare
  36. The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory
  37. Our Kind, by Marvin Harris
  38. Paula, by Isabel Allende
  39. The Pearl, by John Steinbeck
  40. Pedro Paramo, by Juan Rolfo
  41. Peony, by Pearl S. Buck
  42. Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
  43. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  44. Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser
  45. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
  46. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
  47. Three Filipino Women, by J. Sionil Jose (an all-time fave)
  48. Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, by Melvin Konner
  49. The Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler
  50. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte