The 100 best easy books about faith and spirituality

No. 11 on this list. Arrowsmith · Sinclair Lewis · 1925

Martin Arrowsmith, an idealistic young doctor, struggles to maintain his scientific integrity as he moves from small-town practice to research laboratories to public health work. At every turn, commercialism, politics, and human weakness threaten to corrupt his quest for truth. Lewis's novel about the conflict between pure science and institutional pressure won the Pulitzer Prize (which he famously declined).

No. 12 on this list. Tracks · Louise Erdrich · 1988

A central work in Erdrich's interconnected cycle and widely taught in American literature courses. Considered one of her strongest early novels.

No. 13 on this list. Adam Bede · George Eliot · 1859

Adam Bede appears regularly on Victorian literature and 19th-century British fiction syllabi at universities worldwide, and is the standard entry point to George Eliot's work in courses that cannot assign the longer Middlemarch. It is included in most survey courses of the Victorian novel. Its canonical status within the Eliot corpus is secondary only to Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, but within the broader Victorian canon it holds a secure if not dominant position — consistently anthologized, consistently in print, and consistently cited as a foundational work of Victorian realism.

No. 14 on this list. Thérèse Raquin · Émile Zola · 1867

Widely read and taught as a foundational naturalist text, though less prominent than Germinal or L'Assommoir in the Zola canon.

No. 15 on this list. The Screwtape Letters · C.S. Lewis · 1942

One of the most widely read works of Christian literature in the twentieth century. A staple of church reading groups and university courses on Lewis.

No. 16 on this list. Monster · Walter Dean Myers · 1999

Steve Harmon is sixteen years old and on trial for felony murder. He may have acted as a lookout for a Harlem drugstore robbery that left the owner dead — or he may not have. The question hangs over Walter Dean Myers's 1999 novel, which Steve narrates in the only form that makes sense to him: a screenplay. He writes himself as the protagonist, titles the film Monster — the word the prosecutor used to describe him — and cuts between courtroom scenes and flashback journal entries while his mother cries in the gallery and his lawyer calculates the odds. The form is not a gimmick. A screenplay externalizes action and dialogue while burying interiority in stage directions, and that gap is exactly where Myers puts the book's central problem: we watch Steve perform innocence without ever being certain whether we are watching performance or truth. The trial exposes Harlem's carceral machinery — the way young Black men get classified, processed, and destroyed — but Monster refuses to let that machinery fully explain Steve. He asks, on the last page, who he is. Myers doesn't answer. Readers will spend time after the last page deciding whether that's evasion or honesty, and what it says about how they read a defendant's face.

No. 17 on this list. The House of the Seven Gables · Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851

A major work of the American Renaissance, widely taught alongside The Scarlet Letter though less frequently read outside academic settings.

No. 18 on this list. An American Tragedy · Theodore Dreiser · 1925

An American Tragedy appears on both TIME's All-TIME 100 Novels and Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, two of the most authoritative canons in American literature. With 75 syllabus appearances (46.87th percentile in the Open Syllabus database), it is a fixture in American literature survey courses though not as universally assigned as Fitzgerald or Hemingway. Wikipedia covers it in 23 languages with a dedicated Reception section, reflecting steady international recognition.

No. 19 on this list. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader · C.S. Lewis · 1952

The Chronicles of Narnia as a series holds a stable position on children's literature reading lists and required-reading recommendations across the English-speaking world. No syllabus data appears in the database for this specific entry, but Lewis's series figures on virtually every 'essential fantasy' and 'essential children's literature' canon list published since the 1970s.

No. 20 on this list. Elmer Gantry · Sinclair Lewis · 1927

One of Sinclair Lewis's major satires of the 1920s, alongside Main Street and Babbitt. It appears on only 5 university syllabi in Open Syllabus data, but its title character's name became a byword for the hypocritical preacher.

No. 21 on this list. Brown Girl Dreaming · Jacqueline Woodson · 2014

Brown Girl Dreaming is standard reading in American middle school and high school curricula, particularly in units on memoir, poetry, and Civil Rights-era literature. It appears on numerous recommended reading lists for young adults and is included in many school districts' required reading programs. Its canonical status is strong within YA and middle-grade education but has not yet reached the broader university literary canon.

No. 22 on this list. The Postman Always Rings Twice · James M. Cain · 1934

On the Modern Library 100 Best Novels (1998) and 137 university syllabi (53rd percentile in Open Syllabus). It is a core text in courses on American crime fiction, noir and film adaptation.

No. 23 on this list. Father Sergius · Leo Tolstoy · 1898

Father Sergius appears on university syllabi in Tolstoy studies and 19th-century Russian literature courses, but it occupies a secondary position relative to War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. No syllabus or Wikipedia data was returned by the data signals tool, consistent with the novella's status as a respected but not widely-taught shorter work. It appears in major collected editions of Tolstoy but is rarely the primary text in survey courses.

No. 24 on this list. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant · Anne Tyler · 1982

Widely considered Tyler's best novel. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and frequently included in lists of the best American novels of the twentieth century.

No. 25 on this list. The Dharma Bums · Jack Kerouac · 1958

One of the defining texts of the Beat Generation, widely read and taught alongside On the Road. A central document of American counterculture.

No. 26 on this list. The Flies · Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943

Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

A major work of existentialist theater and an important document of intellectual resistance during the occupation. Regularly taught and performed.

No. 27 on this list. The Eye of the World · Robert Jordan · 1990

The Eye of the World launched one of fantasy's most influential series. While not considered literary fiction, it holds canonical status within the epic fantasy genre, frequently cited alongside Tolkien's work as foundational to modern fantasy.

No. 28 on this list. The Old Curiosity Shop · Charles Dickens · 1841

The Old Curiosity Shop appears in every major Dickens collected edition (Penguin Classics, Oxford World's Classics, Chapman and Hall) and is taught in Victorian literature courses at universities worldwide. Nell's death was one of the most discussed literary events of the 19th century, with contemporary accounts of readers in tears on both sides of the Atlantic. It sits below Oliver Twist and Great Expectations in the teaching hierarchy but is a firm fixture of the Dickens canon.

No. 29 on this list. Murder on the Orient Express · Agatha Christie · 1934

A fixture in mystery and detective fiction courses worldwide, and one of the most translated English-language novels of the twentieth century with Wikipedia articles in over 60 languages. Widely included on 'essential reading' and 'best mysteries' lists, though its presence in general literary syllabi is lower than canonical modernist works.

No. 30 on this list. Home of the Gentry · Ivan Turgenev · 1859

Taught in schools: Russian FGOS literature standard

Home of the Gentry is a standard text in Russian literature curricula, regularly anthologized alongside Turgenev's major works. It is less central to Western syllabi than Fathers and Sons but figures prominently in courses on 19th-century European realism. No data from Open Syllabus is available in the database, but its presence in scholarly editions and collected works reflects sustained institutional regard.