Here are the Biggest Fiction Bestsellers of the Last 100 Years
(And What Everyone Read Instead)
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Erich Segal, Love Story
2. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
3. Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream
4. Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave
5. Taylor Caldwell, Great Lion of God
6. Leon Uris, QB VII
7. Jimmy Breslin, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight
8. Victoria Holt, The Secret Woman
9. Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt
10. Irwin Shaw, Rich Man, Poor Man
Also published that year:
Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
James Dickey, Deliverance
Joan Didion, Play it As It Lays
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (English translation)
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (English translation)
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Arthur Hailey, Wheels
2. William P. Blatty, The Exorcist
3. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind
4. Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal
5. Harold Robbins, The Betsy
6. Helen MacInnes, Message from Malaga
7. Herman Wouk, The Winds of War
8. James A. Michener, The Drifters
9. Thomas Tryon, The Other
10. John Updike, Rabbit Redux
Also published that year:
The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
2. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, August, 1914
3. Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File
4. Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal
5. Irving Wallace, The Word
6. Herman Wouk, The Winds of War
7. Taylor Caldwell, Captains and the Kings
8. Marjorie Holmes, Two from Galilee
9. Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev
10. Dan Jenkins, Semi-Tough
Also published that year:
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull
2. Jacqueline Susann, Once Is Not Enough
3. Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
4. Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File
5. Gore Vidal, Burr
6. Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills
7. Irwin Shaw, Evening in Byzantium
8. Robert Ludlum, The Matlock Paper
9. Paul E. Erdman, The Billion Dollar Sure Thing
10. Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul
Also published that year:
J. G. Ballard, Crash
Toni Morrison, Sula
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. James A. Michener, Centennial
2. Richard Adams, Watership Down
3. Peter Benchley, Jaws
4. John Le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
5. Joseph Heller, Something Happened
6. Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War
7. Harold J. Robbins, The Pirate
8. Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name
9. John H. Watson, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
10. Irving Wallace, The Fan Club
Also published that year:
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (English translation)
Stephen King, Carrie
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Studs Terkel, Working
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime
2. Arthur Hailey, The Moneychangers
3. Agatha Christie, Curtain
4. Judith Rossner, Looking for Mister Goodbar
5. Joseph Wambaugh, The Choirboys
6. Jack Higgins, The Eagle Has Landed
7. Irving Stone, The Greek Treasure: A Biographical Novel of Henry and Sophia Schliemann
8. Michael Crichton, The Great Train Robbery
9. James Clavell, Shogun
10. Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift
Also published that year:
Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang
Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren
William Gaddis, J R
James Salter, Light Years
Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Leon Uris, Trinity
2. Agatha Christie, Sleeping Murder
3. Jacqueline Susann, Dolores
4. Jack Higgins, Storm Warning
5. Peter Benchley, The Deep
6. Gore Vidal, 1876
7. Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick: or, Lonesome No More!
8. Harold Robbins, The Lonely Lady
9. Mary Stewart, Touch Not the Cat
10. Sidney Sheldon, A Stranger in the Mirror
Also published that year:
Renata Adler, Speedboat
Raymond Carver, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien, The Silmarillion
2. Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds
3. Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
4. John Le Carre, The Honourable Schoolboy
5. Erich Segal, Oliver’s Story
6. Harold Robbins, Dreams Die First
7. Irwin Shaw, Beggarman, Thief
8. Erica Jong, How To Save Your Own Life
9. Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus
10. John Fowles, Daniel Martin
Also published that year:
Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer
Stephen King, The Shining
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. James A. Michener, Chesapeake
2. Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance
3. Mario Puzo, Fools Die
4. Sidney Sheldon, Bloodlines
5. Judith Krantz, Scruples
6. Belva Plain, Evergreen
7. Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
8. Robert Ludlum, The Holcroft Covenant
9. Howard Fast, Second Generation
10. Ken Follett, Eye of the Needle
Also published that year:
John Irving, The World According to Garp
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Robert Ludlum, The Matarese Circle
2. William Styron, Sophie’s Choice
3. Arthur Hailey, Overload
4. Harold Robbins, Memories of Another Day
5. Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird
6. Stephen King, The Dead Zone
7. Mary Stewart, The Last Enchantment
8. Howard Fast, The Establishment
9. Gen. Sir John Hackett et al., The Third World War: August 1985
10. John Le Carré, Smiley’s People
Also published that year:
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Octavia Butler, Kindred
Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber
Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights
Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song
Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
