Koen's Top 100
Intended as a companion to the infamous Modern Library ranking of the top 100 books of the past century, this list represents a different viewpoint--that of the booksellers themselves. Compiled from the responses of over 150 Koen Book Distributors customers, the following titles represent the very best in modern literature. Koen Book Distributors went bankrupt in 2005. The company that acquired them in 2007.
- 1
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960 · 33 lists
- 2
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger · 1951 · 32 lists
- 3
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 0 lists
- 4
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 1939 · 32 lists
- 5
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1961 · 29 lists
- 6
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1948 · 0 lists
- 7
Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell · 1936 · 22 lists
- 8
The Color Purple
Alice Walker · 1982 · 20 lists
- 9
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987 · 31 lists
- 10
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien · 1954 · 23 lists
- 11
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · 22 lists
- 12
Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 1954 · 14 lists
- 13
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1945 · 15 lists
- 14
Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein · 1961 · 7 lists
- 15
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole · 1980 · 13 lists
- 16
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison · 1952 · 29 lists
- 17
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood · 1985 · 23 lists
- 18
Ulysses
James Joyce · 1920 · 39 lists
- 19
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway · 1926 · 22 lists
- 20
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969 · 19 lists
- 21
The Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck · 1548 · 5 lists
- 22
The Hobbit
Chuck Dixon · 0 lists
- 23
On the Road
Jack Kerouac · 1957 · 24 lists
- 24
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 1932 · 17 lists
- 25
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton · 1910 · 5 lists
- 26
Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt · 1996 · 0 lists
- 27
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury · 1953 · 9 lists
- 28
Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier · 1938 · 15 lists
- 29
The Golden Notebook
Doris May Lessing · 1962 · 0 lists
- 30
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner · 1929 · 26 lists
- 31
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1955 · 38 lists
- 32
Charlotte’s Web
E. B. White · 1952 · 0 lists
- 33
Bastard Out of Carolina
Dorothy Allison · 1992 · 0 lists
- 34
My Ántonia
Willa Cather · 1918 · 11 lists
- 35
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 1920 · 17 lists
- 36
The Killer Angels
Michael Shaara · 1974 · 5 lists
- 37
The Shipping News
Annie Proulx · 1993 · 7 lists
- 38
The World According to Garp
John Irving · 1979 · 12 lists
- 39
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 40
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand · 1936 · 0 lists
- 41
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · 1916 · 15 lists
- 42
The Call of the Wild
Jack London · 1903 · 13 lists
- 43
Snow Falling on Cedars
David Guterson · 1994 · 0 lists
- 44
Watership Down
Richard Adams · 1972 · 9 lists
- 45
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane · 1855 · 0 lists
- 46
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck · 1937 · 5 lists
- 47
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende · 1982 · 6 lists
- 48
Dune
Frank Herbert · 1965 · 14 lists
- 49
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess · 1962 · 17 lists
- 50
A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving · 1989 · 7 lists
- 51
The Color of Water
James McBride · 1995 · 0 lists
- 52
The Bean Trees
Barbara Kingsolver · 1988 · 0 lists
- 53
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys · 1966 · 11 lists
- 54
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë · 1847 · 26 lists
- 55
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway · 1952 · 15 lists
- 56
Native Son
Richard Wright · 1940 · 18 lists
- 57
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway · 1929 · 9 lists
- 58
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton · 1905 · 8 lists
- 59
Kane and Abel
Jeffrey Archer · 1987 · 3 lists
- 60
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith · 1943 · 0 lists
- 61
A Room With a View
E. M. Forster · 1908 · 7 lists
- 62
2001
Arthur C. Clarke · 1968 · 0 lists
- 63
White Noise
Don DeLillo · 1984 · 13 lists
- 64
A Thousand Acres
Jane Smiley · 1991 · 4 lists
- 65
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan · 1989 · 0 lists
- 66
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1933 · 7 lists
- 67
Little Women
Louisa May Alcott · 1848 · 13 lists
- 68
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway · 1940 · 13 lists
- 69
Ellen Foster
Kaye Gibbons · 1987 · 0 lists
- 70
Cold Sassy Tree
Olive Ann Burns · 1984 · 0 lists
- 71
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989 · 14 lists
- 72
War and Remembrance
Herman Wouk · 1978 · 0 lists
- 73
Where the Wild Things Are
Maurice Sendak · 1963 · 6 lists
- 74
Centennial
James A. Michener · 1974 · 0 lists
- 75
Call it Sleep
Henry Roth · 1934 · 6 lists
- 76
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson · 1971 · 5 lists
- 77
The Road from Coorain
Jill Ker Conway · 1989 · 0 lists
- 78
Sula
Toni Morrison · 1973 · 5 lists
- 79
The Stand
Stephen King · 1978 · 10 lists
- 80
Time and Again
Jack Finney · 1970 · 0 lists
- 81
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 1963 · 12 lists
- 82
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand · 1943 · 0 lists
- 83
The Godfather
Mario Puzo · 1969 · 7 lists
- 84
Howards End
E. M. Forster · 1910 · 11 lists
- 85
Naked Lunch
William Burroughs · 1959 · 8 lists
- 86
The Thorn Birds
Colleen McCullough · 1977 · 6 lists
- 87
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson · 1962 · 0 lists
- 88
The Alienist
Caleb Carr · 1994 · 0 lists
- 89
Talk Before Sleep
Elizabeth Berg · 1997 · 0 lists
- 90
The Shell Seekers
Rosamunde Pilcher · 1920 · 2 lists
- 91
Rubyfruit Jungle
Rita Mae Brown · 1973 · 0 lists
- 92
Rabbit, Run
John Updike · 1960 · 0 lists
- 93
The Prince of Tides
Pat Conroy · 1986 · 0 lists
- 94
Possession
A. S. Byatt · 1990 · 6 lists
- 95
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey · 1962 · 13 lists
- 96
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis · 1920 · 7 lists
- 97
I, Claudius
Robert Graves · 1934 · 8 lists
- 98
Corelli's Mandolin
Louis De Bernières · 1994 · 0 lists
- 99
Hawaii
James A. Michener · 1991 · 0 lists
- 100
The Education of Little Tree
Forrest Carter · 1976 · 0 lists