The 100 best moderately difficult romance novels

No. 11 on this list. Their Eyes Were Watching God · Zora Neale Hurston · 1937

Taught in schools: Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US)

Appears on 3,011 university syllabi according to the Open Syllabus Project (86.97th percentile), placing it among the most-taught American novels. Featured on TIME's All-TIME 100 Novels list and published in prestigious Library of America and Everyman's Library editions — markers of sustained institutional recognition. Available in 9 Wikipedia languages, reflecting global reach in academic and literary circles.

No. 12 on this list. If Beale Street Could Talk · James Baldwin · 1974

Firmly embedded in the American literary canon, the novel appears on major school and university syllabi, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 2018 film, and is routinely included in retrospectives of 20th-century African American literature. Its status as one of Baldwin's essential works is uncontested.

No. 13 on this list. A Tale of Two Cities · Charles Dickens · 1859

Taught in schools: Turkish edebiyat curriculum (Turkey)

One of Dickens's most famous novels; its opening sentence is the most recognized in English literature.

No. 14 on this list. The Charterhouse of Parma · Stendhal · 1839

A cornerstone of the 19th-century European novel, regularly taught in French literature and comparative literature courses. The novel exemplifies early psychological realism and remains essential reading for understanding the development of the modern novel.

No. 15 on this list. Eugene Onegin · Alexander Pushkin · 1833

Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary), Russian FGOS literature standard

Foundation of Russian literary tradition, taught universally in Russian literature courses worldwide. Pushkin's masterpiece anchors the curriculum; canonical status unquestioned since publication, marking the emergence of Russian literature as a major European force.

No. 16 on this list. Love in the Time of Cholera · Gabriel García Márquez · 1985

Included in: Bokklubben World Library

Widely taught in world literature and Latin American literature courses, second only to One Hundred Years of Solitude among Garcia Marquez's works. Regularly appears on 'greatest novels' lists and has become a touchstone for discussions of love in literature.

No. 17 on this list. Orlando Furioso · Ludovico Ariosto · 1516

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

Orlando Furioso stands as one of the defining works of Italian Renaissance literature, a fixture in Italian university curricula and comparative literature courses worldwide. Its influence on Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Voltaire makes it indispensable to the study of early modern literature. While less taught in English-language universities than Greek and Roman epic, it appears on virtually every world literature and Renaissance literature syllabus.

No. 18 on this list. Tom Jones · Henry Fielding · 1749

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Tom Jones is a foundling, discovered as an infant in the bed of the wealthy Somerset squire Allworthy, who raises him alongside the scheming Blifil. Tom grows up handsome, generous, impulsive, and entirely unsuited to the careful management of reputation—which in 18th-century England is fatal. He loves Sophia Western, the spirited daughter of his neighbor, but his illegitimate birth and his talent for getting into trouble conspire against him. Expelled from Allworthy's estate, he sets out across England, stumbling through inns and battlefields and drawing rooms, pursued by Sophia, who is fleeing her own forced marriage. Fielding narrates all of this with a wit that never lets you forget he's in the room. Each book opens with a chapter of authorial commentary—on writing, morality, criticism, the reader's expectations—before he returns to the story. The effect is of a novelist who has invented the form and wants you to watch him think about it. Beneath the comedy, the novel asks a serious question: whether goodness of heart can survive a world that rewards calculation. Tom's answer, delivered across 900 pages of mishap and delight, is stubbornly, improbably yes.

No. 19 on this list. Doctor Zhivago · Boris Pasternak · 1957

Taught in schools: Russian FGOS literature standard

Doctor Zhivago holds a secure place in the canon of twentieth-century world literature, taught in Russian literature surveys, modernism courses, and Cold War cultural studies. Its controversial publication history and Nobel Prize make it historically indispensable.

No. 20 on this list. The Age of Innocence · Edith Wharton · 1921

The Age of Innocence is a cornerstone of American literature curricula, taught extensively in courses on American Realism, the Gilded Age, and women's writing. It appears on virtually every list of essential American novels and is a standard text in both high school AP courses and university seminars.

No. 21 on this list. The Peony Pavilion · Tang Xianzu · 1598

The most celebrated play in the Chinese repertory, taught alongside The Story of the Western Wing in every premodern survey and published in a complete Indiana University Press translation.

No. 22 on this list. A Room with a View · E.M. Forster · 1908

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), WJEC/Eduqas GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Firmly established in the Edwardian literary canon, widely taught in university courses on early twentieth-century British fiction, and recognized as a definitive work of pre-war social comedy. The 1985 Merchant Ivory film adaptation cemented its cultural presence. While not as towering as Forster's later 'A Passage to India,' it remains an enduring classic of the comedy of manners tradition, valued for its wit, social observation, and humane liberalism.

No. 23 on this list. The God of Small Things · Arundhati Roy · 1997

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

The God of Small Things achieved rapid canonical recognition following its 1997 publication and Booker Prize victory. It became a staple of contemporary literary curricula and global literature syllabi, particularly notable as the first novel by an Indian author to win the Booker in the award's history. Its canonical position reflects both literary merit and cultural significance.

No. 24 on this list. Lady Chatterley's Lover · D.H. Lawrence · 1928

Appears on 400 university syllabi (65th percentile of the Open Syllabus dataset) and is present in 41 Wikipedia language editions. Regularly taught in 20th century British literature, sexuality studies, and censorship history courses. The 1960 obscenity trial in England made it a foundational text in debates about literary freedom, cementing its academic presence beyond standard literary curricula.

No. 25 on this list. Prometheus Unbound · Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1820

Taught widely in Romanticism survey and graduate courses as Shelley's most ambitious work, though its length and difficulty keep it less anthologized in full than his shorter lyrics like 'Ozymandias' or 'Ode to the West Wind.'

No. 26 on this list. Le Morte d'Arthur · Thomas Malory · 1485

Arthur pulls a sword from a stone and becomes king of Britain, gathering the greatest knights of the realm around a Round Table built so no man sits above another. Merlin advises him, the Lady of the Lake gives him Excalibur, and for a time Camelot holds. Then Lancelot, Arthur's finest knight, falls in love with Guinevere, Arthur's queen, and the fellowship that seemed unbreakable begins to rot from the inside. Malory compiled this from French romances and English legend, chapter after chapter of jousts, quests, and single combats, building toward the search for the Holy Grail — which only the pure knight Galahad can complete — and the treachery of Mordred, Arthur's own son, who tears the Round Table apart. The final battle at Camlann leaves nearly everyone dead, Arthur among them, carried off to the isle of Avalon on the promise, never quite confirmed, that he will return. Malory wrote much of this in prison, and his prose moves in long, plain sentences stacked with 'and' after 'and,' chronicling battle and betrayal without much interior life. This is where nearly every King Arthur story you already know began, long before Tennyson, before White, before the movies.

No. 27 on this list. On the Eve · Ivan Turgenev · 1860

Taught in schools: Russian FGOS literature standard

On the Eve is a standard fixture in Russian literature survey courses at universities worldwide, taught alongside Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and Rudin as part of the sequence examining his 'superfluous man' cycle. While it has fewer syllabus appearances than the more canonical Fathers and Sons, it appears in virtually all comprehensive Russian literature curricula and is represented in Wikipedia across many language editions, reflecting its global recognition as a key work in the 19th-century Russian canon.

No. 28 on this list. The Story of the Western Wing · Wang Shifu · 1300

The best-known Yuan drama, standard in premodern Chinese literature courses and published in a scholarly University of California edition.

No. 29 on this list. Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka · Nikolai Gogol · 1832

Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka is a foundational text in Russian and Ukrainian literary history, appearing in Slavic literature and comparative folklore curricula worldwide. While it lacks the global syllabus penetration of Gogol's later Dead Souls or The Overcoat — works more central to realism courses — it is the required starting point for any study of Gogol's development. The book is likely in the 60th–70th percentile of canonical teaching across world literature programs.

No. 30 on this list. Le Grand Meaulnes · Alain-Fournier · 1913

Ranked ninth in Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century and a long-standing set text in French schools. It has Wikipedia articles in 22 languages and is widely read in English as The Lost Estate or The Wanderer.