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100 Must-Read Second Novels

A list of 100 wonderful, must-read second novels, from a broad, diverse array of authors, spanning several decades and genres.

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Liberty Hardy

Senior Contributing Editor

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

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Amazing debut novels are a thing of joy, and lucky us, it seems like there are more of them than ever these days. But what about the follow-ups? How many authors survived the dreaded sophomore slump? And how many famous novels were actually an author’s second?

 

100 Must-Read Second Novels

 

I was curious about this, but when I Googled “second novels,” there were a lot of articles about people trying to write a second novel, but not many on great second novels themselves.

So here’s a list of fantastic second novels that I hope will give people lots of new books to check out. There are literally hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of second novels in existence, so I went with the first 100 that popped into my brain.

Some of these are an author’s most famous work, and some of them are an author’s lesser known work, but all are wonderful.

What are your favorite second novels? Tell us in the comments! And stay tuned for more “second” book lists in the future.

  1. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
  2. At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón
  3. The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
  4. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Álvarez
  5. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
  6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  7. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
  8. Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
  9. City of Thieves by David Benioff
  • The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman
  • The Blood of Others by Simone de Beauvoir
  • Peacekeeping by Mischa Berlinski
  • Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  • O Pioneers! By Willa Cather
  • The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
  • The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  • The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
  • Kings of the Earth by Jon Clinch
  • Open City by Teju Cole
  • Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
  • The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
  • Moonheart by Charle de Lint
  • The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
  • The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
  • Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion
  • The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
  • The Brothers K by David James Duncan
  • Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
  • The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
  • The Magus by John Fowles
  • Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
  • The Agüero Sisters by Cristina García
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
  • Arcadia by Lauren Groff
  • The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
  • Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
  • Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
  • The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
  • The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez
  • The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
  • The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
  • Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
  • Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
  • The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
  • Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome
  • Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
  • Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
  • The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour
  • The English Teacher by Lily King
  • ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
  • Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera
  • The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli
  • The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
  • The Assistant by Bernard Malmaud
  • They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
  • Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
  • How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
  • All Quiet on the Orient Express by Magnus Mills
  • Heft by Liz Moore
  • Sula by Toni Morrison
  • The Flight from the Enchanter by Iris Murdoch
  • Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
  • Inferno by Eileen Myles
  • Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe
  • Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
  • In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
  • My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
  • Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
  • True Grit by Charles Portis
  • The Chosen by Chaim Potok
  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
  • Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
  • The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
  • Family Life by Akhil Sharma
  • Hotel World by Ali Smith
  • The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
  • The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar
  • Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
  • Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
  • The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
  • The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
  • The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa
  • Meridian by Alice Walker
  • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • Land of the Blind by Jess Walter
  • Affinity by Sarah Waters
  • The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber
  • John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
  • Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
  • Annabel by Kathleen Winter
  • The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
  • All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
  • A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
  • Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto