The 19 Best NYRB Classics Books of All Time

From rediscovered masterpieces to cult gems rescued from obscurity, this lineup spans continents and decades of overlooked brilliance. Some are quiet heartbreakers, others sly comedies or shadowy noirs. Which one wins your vote?

1. 1
   The Summer Book

   Tove Jansson's luminous portrait of a grandmother and granddaughter on a tiny Finnish island.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Butcher's Crossing

   John Williams's stark frontier novel of a buffalo hunt that becomes a descent into obsession.
   990pts
3. 3
   Stoner

   John Williams's quietly devastating 1965 campus novel, the rediscovered title that made NYRB Classics a phenomenon.
   920pts
4. 4
   Chess Story

   Stefan Zweig's taut final novella about an obsessive duel of the mind aboard an ocean liner.
   920pts
5. 5
   The Invention of Morel

   Adolfo Bioy Casares's eerie 1940 fantasy of love, illusion, and a mysterious island machine.
   809pts
6. 6
   Family Lexicon

   Natalia Ginzburg's autobiographical novel of an Italian family told through its private phrases.
   726pts
7. 7
   The Door

   Magda Szabo's piercing novel of a writer and her enigmatic Hungarian housekeeper.
   629pts
8. 8
   The Go-Between

   L.P. Hartley's haunting novel of a boy carrying secret messages across a class divide.
   629pts
9. 9
   Nightmare Alley

   William Lindsay Gresham's pitch-black 1946 noir of a carnival grifter's rise and ruin.
   629pts
10. 10
    Warlock

    Oakley Hall's sprawling 1958 anti-Western that deconstructs the myths of frontier violence.
    629pts
11. 11
    The Dud Avocado

    Elaine Dundy's sparkling 1958 romp of a young American adrift in 1950s Paris.
    515pts
12. 12
    Transit

    Anna Seghers's tense WWII novel of refugees trapped in Marseille awaiting escape.
    515pts
13. 13
    Troubles

    J.G. Farrell's darkly comic Lost Booker winner set in a crumbling Irish hotel.
    515pts
14. 14
    Hard Rain Falling

    Don Carpenter's gritty 1966 debut tracing a drifter from pool halls to prison.
    378pts
15. 15
    Life and Fate

    Vasily Grossman's epic Stalingrad-era answer to War and Peace, suppressed in the USSR.
    378pts
16. 16
    Sleepless Nights

    Elizabeth Hardwick's fragmentary, luminous autobiographical novel of a writing life.
    378pts
17. 17
    Cassandra at the Wedding

    Dorothy Baker's sharp 1962 novel of a twin spiraling on the eve of her sister's wedding.
    0pts
18. 18
    Skylark

    Dezso Kosztolanyi's tender, melancholy tale of aging parents and their plain daughter.
    0pts
19. 19
    The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

    G.B. Edwards's singular lifelong portrait of a stubborn Guernsey islander.
    0pts

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