Best-Selling Books of All Time
(And What I’d Read Instead)

Don Quixote

An aging man inspired by chivalric tales sets out on misguided adventures, believing himself a noble knight-errant, accompanied by his loyal squire Sancho Panza. First published 1605, it is widely considered the first modern novel in Western literature and the most translated secular book in history.

I have not read it in full — very few people have, though many claim to. What I find genuinely interesting is that it invented a template every novelist since has used: the gap between how someone sees themselves and how the world sees them. That gap is the engine of almost every novel I love.

A Tale of Two Cities

The story of Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, whose lives become entangled during the French Revolution, leading to Carton’s selfless sacrifice. Published 1859, it has been required reading in classrooms across the UK and US for over a century.

It opens with one of the most famous sentences in English literature and has one of the most satisfying endings. The middle is very long. If you are curious about Dickens but have not started, I would suggest Great Expectations first — it has the same moral seriousness but is harder to put down.

The Little Prince

A young prince’s journey through different worlds teaches an aviator that the most important things are invisible, understood only with the heart. Published 1943, translated into over 300 languages. It continues to sell an estimated two million copies per year.

This one I genuinely recommend. It reads completely differently at different ages — I found it charming as a child and quietly devastating at thirty. If you have not returned to it as an adult, do.

The Lord of the Rings

Frodo Baggins inherits the One Ring forged by Sauron and embarks on a quest to destroy it before Sauron can enslave Middle-earth. Published 1954–55, it essentially created the modern fantasy genre. Peter Jackson’s film trilogy drove an enormous spike in sales.

I am not a fantasy reader and I know it. But I understand why this matters. What Tolkien built was not just a story — it was a world with its own history, languages, and moral logic. The ambition is staggering. If you love it, everything you love was invented here.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

On his eleventh birthday, orphaned Harry discovers he is a wizard and enters Hogwarts. Published 1997, widely credited with reigniting a love of reading among children. The series as a whole has sold over 600 million copies.

I grew up with these books and I will defend them. They are not literary fiction, but they are something rarer: a story that makes children feel that reading is urgent. The first three are genuinely wonderful. After that it depends on your tolerance for very long books about teenage feelings.

And Then There Were None

Ten strangers invited to a remote island begin dying one by one. Published 1939, the world’s best-selling mystery novel. Its plot has influenced virtually every crime writer since.

This is the one I would actually recommend from the top ten. It is short, ingenious, and the solution is genuinely surprising even when you are trying to guess it. Read it in one sitting — that is how it was designed. If you want more Christie after this, Witness for the Prosecution is her best short work.

Dream of the Red Chamber

The multigenerational story of the Jia family’s rise and fall, centring on heir Jia Baoyu navigating love, duty, and decline. The greatest novel in classical Chinese literature, written mid-18th century. Its academic study has its own field in China, called Redology.

This is one I know by reputation rather than by reading — its full translation runs to over a thousand pages. What I find fascinating is that China has an entirely separate literary canon of this stature that most Western readers know nothing about. That gap is worth sitting with.

The Hobbit

Bilbo Baggins is swept into an adventure to reclaim stolen treasure from the dragon Smaug, discovering courage he never knew he had. Published 1937, in print for nearly ninety years.

If you have to choose between this and The Lord of the Rings, start here. It is shorter, funnier, and trusts its reader more. Tolkien wrote it for his children and you can feel that — it has a lightness the later books lose.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

A curious girl tumbles down a rabbit hole into a world where nothing follows logic. Published 1865, phrases from this book have entered everyday speech around the world. The text is in the public domain, making it perpetually accessible.

Carroll wrote a book about a child who keeps asking why things are the way they are and keeps being told that is simply how things are. That is either a children’s story or a description of adulthood, depending on when you read it. I find the logic puzzles more interesting now than I did as a child.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Four siblings step through a wardrobe into Narnia, a world frozen in eternal winter, and join forces with Aslan the lion to defeat the White Witch. Published 1950. The Disney film in 2005 grossed over 745 million dollars worldwide.

The Christian allegory is obvious and Lewis does not try to hide it. What I respect is that it does not make the story worse — Aslan’s death and return work independent of what they represent. The best of the series is probably The Horse and His Boy, which Lewis cared most about and most readers skip.

She: A History of Adventure

British scholars travel to a lost African kingdom ruled by an immortal white queen known as She-who-must-be-obeyed. Published 1887, it sold 25,000 copies in its first week and invented the lost world genre that inspired Conan Doyle and Burroughs.

Most people have never heard of this book, which is exactly why its sales figures are so startling. Haggard invented the lost world genre that Indiana Jones ultimately came from. The character of Ayesha is one of the most genuinely strange and powerful figures in Victorian fiction. Worth reading to understand where half of twentieth-century adventure storytelling came from.

The Da Vinci Code

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is called to the Louvre after a murder and unravels a secret the Catholic Church has protected for centuries. Published 2003, it spent 136 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

I read it in two days and found it completely impossible to put down. I also finished it and thought: that was impressive and I will never read it again. Brown writes plot the way a magician performs tricks. If you want a thriller that does something similar but with better prose, read The Secret History by Donna Tartt instead.

Think and Grow Rich

Drawing on interviews with Carnegie, Ford, and Edison, Hill distils their philosophies into thirteen principles for wealth and personal achievement. Published 1937, the best-selling self-help book of all time.

I have a complicated relationship with this book. The ideas are real — belief shapes behaviour, persistence matters. But it was written for an era when the people Hill interviewed had access to opportunities most of his readers did not. Read it as a historical document about 1937 American ambition, not a practical guide. For something that does a more honest version, read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

The Catcher in the Rye

Teenager Holden Caulfield wanders New York City after being expelled, struggling with alienation and his disdain for adult phoniness. Published 1951, it sells approximately 250,000 copies every year and has never been out of print.

I read this at sixteen and felt entirely seen by it. I read it again at thirty-two and found Holden exhausting. Both responses are correct. The book is a perfect portrait of a specific kind of adolescent pain. Whether you find it sympathetic or tiresome probably depends on where you are in life. Worth reading once, for the voice alone.

The Alchemist

A young shepherd named Santiago journeys across the desert to discover his personal legend. Originally published in Portuguese 1988. Holds the Guinness World Record for the most translated book by a living author, with editions in over 80 languages.

I find the philosophy in this book too easy. It tells you the universe conspires to help those who follow their dreams, which is comforting and not obviously true. If you are looking for a book that asks the same questions more honestly, read Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl earned his conclusions in ways Coelho did not have to.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

The multigenerational saga of the Buendía family in fictional Macondo, blending the everyday with the magical over a century. Published 1967, central to García Márquez’s Nobel Prize in 1982. A Netflix adaptation in 2024 generated a new wave of interest.

One of the few books I would recommend to almost anyone — with one warning. The first fifty pages are dense and require patience. Get through them and the book opens into something extraordinary: a world where the extraordinary and the ordinary occupy exactly the same space, and neither comments on the other. It genuinely changed how I think about what fiction can do.

Heidi

Young Heidi sent to live with her reclusive grandfather in the Swiss Alps gradually opens his heart. Published 1881, Switzerland’s most famous literary export, adapted for film and television over fifty times.

The appeal of this book is the appeal of simplicity itself: a child who is entirely herself in a landscape that asks nothing of her. There is something almost radical about it — a story with no villain and no moral lesson, just the argument that being in the right place with the right person is enough. I find that argument more convincing now than I did as a child.

Anne of Green Gables

Fiercely imaginative orphan Anne Shirley is sent to an elderly brother and sister who wanted a boy, and wins over everyone with her irrepressible spirit. Published 1908, near-cult following in Japan since 1952. Netflix’s Anne with an E continues to bring new readers.

Anne is one of fiction’s great originals — a girl who refuses to be less than she is in a world that keeps asking her to be. The book is warm without being saccharine and funny without trying too hard. I would recommend it to adults without apology. If you liked it as a child, the second and third books are worth reading too.

Black Beauty

Told from the perspective of a horse named Black Beauty, from carefree colt through years of hardship to peaceful retirement. Published 1877, credited with changing public attitudes towards the treatment of horses in Victorian England.

What is remarkable about this book is that it changed things. Animal welfare organisations distributed copies specifically to promote better care for working animals, and conditions genuinely improved. That is an unusual thing for a novel to claim. Worth reading as an example of what fiction can actually do in the world.

Charlotte’s Web

Spider Charlotte saves pig Wilbur from slaughter by weaving words of praise into her web. Published 1952, one of the most-gifted books in the United States. Its themes of friendship and the acceptance of mortality resonate with adults as much as children.

There is a scene near the end that made me cry as a child and makes me cry now. White handles death with more honesty and less sentimentality than almost any adult book I can name. It is not a sad book — it is a book that tells the truth about loss, which is different. One of the rare children’s classics I would recommend to adults entirely on its own merits.

To Kill a Mockingbird

In 1930s Alabama, Scout Finch watches her father Atticus defend a Black man falsely accused of rape. Published 1960, won the Pulitzer Prize, cited as the book most influential on readers’ moral worldviews. Sells around a million copies a year.

This one I genuinely recommend. Its portrait of race in America has been argued over — some find it too centred on white moral comfort, which is a fair criticism. But Scout’s voice is still one of the finest in American fiction and the courtroom sequence remains devastating. Worth reading with both eyes open.

Gone with the Wind

Scarlett O’Hara fights to preserve her plantation through the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Published 1936, won the Pulitzer Prize, sold a million copies in its first six months. The 1939 film remains one of the highest-grossing ever when adjusted for inflation.

I found Scarlett O’Hara genuinely compelling — she is one of the most purely determined characters in American fiction. I also found the book’s treatment of slavery impossible to separate from the story, and I think that difficulty is worth sitting with rather than ignoring. Read it knowing what it is: a novel that romanticises a world that should not be romanticised, by someone who lived close enough to it to have complicated feelings.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

In a totalitarian future state ruled by Big Brother, Party member Winston Smith secretly rebels against absolute control over thought, history, and language. Published 1949. Terms like doublethink and thoughtcrime are used daily in political commentary over seventy years later.

Essential. I do not say that lightly. This is one of the books I would put in anyone’s hands without qualification — not because it predicts the future accurately, but because it names something about how power works that is still true. The last hundred pages are among the most harrowing I have read. Do not let anyone spoil them for you.

Harry Potter

The most successful book series in publishing history. All seven instalments reached the top of bestseller lists in multiple countries and the franchise continues to sell millions of copies every year.

Goosebumps

The best-selling children’s series ever written by a single author. Each instalment designed to be read in one sitting drove extraordinary cumulative sales across three decades.

Perry Mason

Gardner published multiple novels per year for decades. His astonishing output produced a catalogue so vast its cumulative sales rival nearly any series in history.

Berenstain Bears

Passed from parents to children across three generations, with a catalogue that has grown to over 300 titles.

Choose Your Own Adventure

The original interactive fiction franchise. At its peak in the 1980s it dominated children’s bestseller lists and directly inspired the choose-your-path genre in games and interactive television.

Sweet Valley High

The defining series for teenage girls across the 1980s and 1990s, with 181 volumes and multiple spin-off series.

Robert Langdon

The Da Vinci Code drove readers to Brown’s earlier and later Langdon novels, turning it into one of the most commercially successful thriller franchises ever published.

Nancy Drew

In print continuously since 1930, one of the longest-running fictional characters in publishing history. Updated and relaunched multiple times across the decades.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Kinney’s illustrated diary format appealed to reluctant readers and has remained on bestseller lists in every country where published. Four films and a Netflix animated series extended the franchise further.

Thomas the Tank Engine

Originally written by a father for his sick son, published continuously since 1945, helped by each new generation of parents who grew up with the stories themselves.

The Chronicles of Narnia

Lewis completed the entire series in six years. Never out of print, attracting readers through school curricula, church reading groups, and repeated film adaptations.

The Twilight Saga

Sold over 120 million copies and drove a film franchise grossing over three billion dollars worldwide. Opened the door for a decade of paranormal YA fiction.

Peter Rabbit

Potter self-published the first edition after being rejected by publishers. In continuous publication for over 120 years, translated into dozens of languages and adapted into ballets, films, and television series.

The Baby-Sitters Club

172 million copies across 131 volumes, unusual for the era in centring the ambitions of young girls. A Netflix series in 2020 introduced the characters to a new generation.

Star Wars

Over 100 novels across five decades, one of the most commercially successful licensed fiction franchises in publishing history. The novelisations of the films alone sold tens of millions of copies.