“Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.”
The 1990s were a defining decade for fiction, introducing audiences to memorable characters, influential stories, and some of the most impactful books of the modern era. From literary classics and globally bestselling thrillers to coming-of-age stories and fantasy epics, the best books from the 1990s are still finding new readers decades on. Whether you grew up reading in the 90s or you’re looking to explore the decade’s most influential novels for the first time, this 1990s reading list is jam-packed full of changing perspectives on the decade, making them perfect choices for anyone looking for nostalgic reads or essential additions to their TBR pile. Join us at What We Reading as we dive into our favourite 90s books, including hidden gems and the unforgettable stories that helped define the decade.
Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
Kicking off our list of the best books from the 1990s is one of my all-time favourite works of fiction, Jurassic Park. An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them – for a price.
Until something goes wrong. In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerising talent and scientific brilliance to create one of the most timeless and electrifying technothrillers ever put to paper.
Release date: 20 November 1990
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The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years later, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence – the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters’ breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate, and fragile lives disappear.
From Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides is a modern literary classic with lasting cultural influence.
Release date: 1 January 1993
Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter #1) – J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters begin appearing on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his aunt and uncle.
Then, on Harry’s eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Thus begins one of the most iconic fantasy books of all time, and still one of the most defining books of the 1990s.
Release date: 26 June 1997
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
No nostalgic 1990s reading list would be complete without Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries.
But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal mortality, they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last – inexorably – into evil. Truly deserving of the accolade of a modern classic, Donna Tartt’s novel is a remarkable achievement – both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.
Release date: 16 September 1992
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The Green Mile (The Green Mile #1-6) – Stephen King
At Cold Mountain Penitentiary, along the lonely stretch of cells known as the Green Mile, condemned killers such as ‘Billy the Kid’ Wharton and the possessed Eduard Delacroix await death strapped in ‘Old Sparky’.
But, good or evil, innocent or guilty, prisoner or guard, none has ever seen the brutal likes of the new prisoner, John Coffey. Is Coffey really a devil in human form? Or is he a far, far different kind of being? There are more wonders in heaven and hell than anyone at Cold Mountain can imagine, and one of those wonders may have just stepped in amongst them.
Release date: 1 January 1996
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon, he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a group of bizarre allies and antagonists.
Japan’s most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of the Second World War.
Release date: 12 April 1994
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
This is a story of what it is like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie’s letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory.
The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has crafted one of the most iconic 90s books, and one of the most defining coming-of-age stories of all time.
Release date: 1 February 1999
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High Fidelity – Nick Hornby
Do you know your desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups? Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn’t on it – even though she’s just become his latest ex. He’s got his life back, you see. He can just do what he wants when he wants: like listen to whatever music he likes, look up the girls that are on his list, and generally behaves like Laura never mattered.
But Rob finds he can’t move on/. He’s stuck in a really deep groove – and it’s called Laura. Soon, Rob’s asking himself some big questions about love, about life – and about why we choose to share ours with the people we do.
Release date: 13 April, 1995
Fight Club (Fight Club #1) – Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk captured the spirit of the 1990s counterculture and cemented himself as one of his generation’s most visionary satirists in this, his debut novel. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lacklustre job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars.
There, two men fight “as long as they have to.” This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world, and remains one of the most influential books of the 90s.
Release date: 17 August 1996
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A Game Of Thrones (A Song Of Ice And Fire #1) – George R.R. Martin
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and knights, who come together in a time of grim omens. Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family, but the kingdom itself.
Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavours to win that deadliest of all conflicts: the game of thrones.
Release date: 6 August 1996
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The God Of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
The year is 1969 in the state of Kerala, and a skyblue Plymouth is stranded on a highway. Inside sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood in the wreck that is their family.
When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and their mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that things can change in a day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, and case forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils itself with an agonising sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.
Release date: 1 April 1997
Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil – John Berendt
Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder, or self-defence? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares.
The story is peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. A stunning nonfiction crime story that reads like a Southern Gothic thriller, John Berendt interweaves a first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.
Release date: 13 January 1994
Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of 10 May 1996, he hadn’t slept for fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin the long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. The following morning, he learned that six of his fellow climbers hadn’t made it back to camp.
Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of the global bestseller, Into the Wild. In this iconic 90s book, Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people to throw caution to the wind and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense.
Release date: 22 April 1997
Memoirs Of A Geisha – Arthur Golden
A literary sensation and runaway bestselling book from the 1990s, this brilliant novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan’s most celebrated geisha.
In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount, where a girl’s virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder, where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as an illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction – at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful – and totally unforgettable.
Release date: 27 September 1997
The Notebook (The Notebook #1) – Nicholas Sparks
Set amid the austere beauty of the North Carolina coast, the story is of Noah Calhoun, a rural Southerner recently returned from the Second World War. Noah is restoring a plantation home to its former glory, and he is haunted by images of the beautiful girl he met fourteen years earlier, a girl he loved like no other. Unable to find her, yet unwilling to forget the summer they spent together, Noah is content to live with only memories… until she unexpectedly returns to his town to see him once again.
Like a puzzle within a puzzle, the story of Noah and Allie is just the beginning. As it unfolds, their tale miraculously becomes different, with far higher stakes. The result is a deeply moving portrait of love itself, the tender moments and the fundamental changes that affect us all. It is a story of miracles and emotions that promise to stay with you forever.
Release date: 1 October 1996
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Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt #1) – Frank McCourt
Born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, Frank’s mother, Angela, had no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and, when he does, he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy does nurture Frank in an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.
Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for nappies, begging a pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation, and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbours – yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness in this timeless 90s memoir.
Release date: 5 September 1996
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it – from garden seeds to Scripture – is calamitously transformed on African soil.
What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the span of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
Release date: 24 September 1998
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Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen
In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she’d never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. She spent most of the next two years on the ward for teenage girls in a psychiatric hospital renowned for its most famous clientele – Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles- as well as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary.
Kaysen’s memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a “parallel universe” set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. Girl, Interrupted is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness, and recovery.
Release date: 1 June 1993
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Again, no list of the best books from the 1990s would be complete without mentioning American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street. He is handsome, sophisticated, charming, and intelligent. He is also a psychopath.
Taking us to head-on collision with America’s greatest dream – and its worst nightmare – American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognise, but do not wish to confront.
Release date: 6 March 1991
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The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian village at the end of the Second World War.
Hanna, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.
Release date: 1 September 1992
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
It’s 1843, and Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer and his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders.
An up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Captivating and disturbing, Alias Grace showcases Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.
Release date: 7 September 1996
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
