World’s Best Reading Series Challenge

The Reader’s Digest World’s Best Reading series offers an exclusive selection of the finest fiction from around the world.

This highly acclaimed series features works by some of the most celebrated authors, including Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. The series is renowned for its impeccable editorial standards, ensuring that only the highest quality stories are included. With a wide range of genres and styles represented, the World’s Best Reading series has something for everyone.

World’s Best Reading Series by Reader’s Digest Reading List

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The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain
The Scarlett Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
White Fang, Jack London
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Tales of Suspense, Edgar Allan Poe
Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Silas Marner, George Eliot
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Tales, Washington Irving
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
For the Term of His Natural Life, Marcus Clarke
The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories, O. Henry
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne
A Christmas Carol and Other Stories, Charles Dickens
The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain
The Virginian, Owen Wister
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
The Sea-Wolf, Jack London
The Song of Hiawatha and Other Poems, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Twice-Told Tales, Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
On Our Selection, Steele Rudd
Our New Selection, Steele Rudd
Lost Horizon, James Hilton
The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain
O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
Tales from the Arabian Nights
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Robin Hood, Paul Creswick
A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne
The Celebrated Jumping Frog and Other Stories, Mark Twain
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Lew Wallace
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
Anne of the Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Dusty and Man Shy, Frank Dalby Davison
Life with Father, Clarence Day
The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Robe, Lloyd Cassell Douglas
The Heart of the West, O. Henry
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
The Thirty-Nine Steps , John Buchan
Greenmantle, John Buchan
Emma, Jane Austen
To Build a Fire and Other Stories, Jack London
King Solomon’s Mines, H. Rider Haggard
Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling
Roughing It, Mark Twain
Lorna Doone, R.D. Blackmore
A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
Tales of the South Pacific, James Michener
Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Beau Geste, Percival Christopher Wren
The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale, Robert Louis Stevenson
Goodbye Mr. Chips and Other Stories, James Hilton
Lost Horizon, Good-bye Mr. Chips and Other Stories, James Hilton
The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn
Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel, Jerome K. Jerome
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
Far From the Maddening Crowd, Thomas Hardy
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
My Antonia, Willa Cather
The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells
The Island of Dr. Moreau, H.G. Wells
Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
The Moon and Sixpence, W.S. Maugham
Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
Daisy Miller, Henry James
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington
Little Men, Louisa May Alcott
The Man of Property, John Galsworthy
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope
Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
The American, Henry James
The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
Persuasions, Jane Austen
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
The Black Arrow, Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
The Prisoner of Zenda, Anthony Hope
Rupert of Hentzau, Anthony Hope
The Ambassadors, Henry James
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
End of the Tether, Joseph Conrad
Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte
Howards End, E.M. Forster
The Confidence-Man, Herman Melville
Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
Summer, Edith Wharton
Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev
Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
Adam Bede, George Eliot
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Jo’s Boys, Louisa May Alcott
The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
The Jungle, Upon Sinclair
The Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<
Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott
Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore