29 best books to read for 12th graders

An undisputed masterpiece of twentieth-century literature, perfect for Fitzgerald lovers and classics collectors alike.

Set against a backdrop of jazz music, bootlegging, and lavish parties, The Great Gatsby is the story of Midwesterner Nick Carraway’s curious introduction to the decadent world of his mysterious, wealthy neighbor Jay Gatsby, whose thirst for riches is matched only by his tragic obsession with the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.

Penned in the “roaring twenties,” the novel continues to be the subject of numerous film and stage adaptations and has become a fixture in the American classroom. This dangerously propulsive tale of glitz and glamour continues to be relevant as readers long for escapist novels–a chance to flee into Gatsby’s famed mansion and lose oneself in the rush of opulence.

The Great Gatsby audiobook is brought to life by Tim Robbins, famed American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, and musician.

FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
The World’s Leading Center for Shakespeare Studies

The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, brings Hamlet to life with this new full-length, full-cast dramatic recording of its definitive Folger Edition.

Hamlet–Shakespeare’s most popular, and perhaps most puzzling play–follows the form of a “revenge tragedy,” in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father’s murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its uncertainties.

This new full-cast recording–based on the most respected edition of Shakespeare’s classic–expertly produced by the Folger Theatre, is perfect for students, teachers, and the everyday listener.

Why do some children succeed while others fail?

The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs.

But in How Children Succeed, Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control.

How Children Succeed introduces us to a new generation of researchers and educators who, for the first time, are using the tools of science to peel back the mysteries of character. Through their stories—and the stories of the children they are trying to help—Tough traces the links between childhood stress and life success. He uncovers the surprising ways in which parents do—and do not—prepare their children for adulthood. And he provides us with new insights into how to help children growing up in poverty.

Early adversity, scientists have come to understand, can not only affect the conditions of children’s lives, it can alter the physical development of their brains as well. But now educators and doctors around the country are using that knowledge to develop innovative interventions that allow children to overcome the constraints of poverty. And with the help of these new strategies, as Tough’s extraordinary reporting makes clear, children who grow up in the most painful circumstances can go on to achieve amazing things.

This provocative and profoundly hopeful book has the potential to change how we raise our children, how we run our schools, and how we construct our social safety net. It will not only inspire and engage readers, it will also change our understanding of childhood itself.

A Stunning Novel of Hope and Redemption

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable and beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant, is a Hazara — a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and about the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of fathers over sons — their love, their sacrifices, and their lies. Written against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But through the devastation, Khaled Hosseini offers hope: through the novel’s faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows us for redemption.

This special unabridged, multivoiced production of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece of nineteenth-century Gothic horror is narrated by film and television star Anthony Heald, joined by Grammy winner Stefan Rudnicki and actor Simon Templeman, under the direction of award-winning audio producer Yuri Rasovsky.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious young scientist, is consumed by a fanatic desire to create a living being. He fashions an eight-foot creature and succeeds in animating him but, horrified by his visage, perceives his creation to be a monster and frightens him away. The monster, wandering in search of human companionship, is spurned and repulsed by all he approaches and learns to hate and to kill. He confronts his maker with a terrible choice: unless Frankenstein creates for him a mate, he will go on a rampage of destruction.

A subversive tale about the corrupt tendencies in humanity’s most “civilized” ambitions, this haunting thriller, the original science fiction novel, maintains its hold in the collective imagination centuries after its first publication.

Less a mystery unsolved than a secret well kept…

Using new technology, recently discovered documents and sophisticated investigative techniques, an international team–led by an obsessed retired FBI agent–has finally solved the mystery that has haunted generations since World War II: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why?

Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works–journalism, books, plays and novels–devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years–and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.

With painstaking care, retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and a team of indefatigable investigators pored over tens of thousands of pages of documents–some never before seen–and interviewed scores of descendants of people familiar with the Franks. Utilizing methods developed by the FBI, the Cold Case Team painstakingly pieced together the months leading to the infamous arrest–and came to a shocking conclusion.

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation is the riveting story of their mission. Rosemary Sullivan introduces us to the investigators, explains the behavior of both the captives and their captors and profiles a group of suspects. All the while, she vividly brings to life wartime Amsterdam: a place where no matter how wealthy, educated, or careful you were, you never knew whom you could trust.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Dorian Gray, a handsome and narcissistic young man, lives thoughtlessly for his own pleasure–an attitude encouraged by the company he keeps. One day, after having his portrait painted, Dorian makes a frivolous Faustian wish: that he should always remain as young and beautiful as he is in that painting, while the portrait grows old in his stead.

The wish comes true, and Dorian soon finds that none of his wicked actions have visible consequences. Realizing that he will appear fresh and unspoiled no matter what kind of life he lives, Dorian becomes increasingly corrupt, unchecked by public opinion. Only the portrait grows degenerate and ugly, a powerful symbol of Dorian’s internal ruin.

Wilde’s dreamlike exploration of life without limits scandalized its late-Victorian audience and has haunted readers’ imaginations for more than a hundred years.

One of the twentieth century’s enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career.

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendia family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility, the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth–these universal themes dominate the novel. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an account of the history of the human race.

Novel by Charles Dickens, published both serially and in book form in 1859. The story is set in the late 18th century against the background of the French Revolution. Although Dickens borrowed from Thomas Carlyle’s history, The French Revolution, for his sprawling tale of London and revolutionary Paris, the novel offers more drama than accuracy. The scenes of large-scale mob violence are especially vivid, if superficial in historical understanding. The complex plot involves Sydney Carton’s sacrifice of his own life on behalf of his friends Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette. While political events drive the story, Dickens takes a decidedly antipolitical tone, lambasting both aristocratic tyranny and revolutionary excess–the latter memorably caricatured in Madame Defarge, who knits beside the guillotine. The book is perhaps best known for its opening lines, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” and for Carton’s last speech, in which he says of his replacing Darnay in a prison cell, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” — The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London.

This is the novel that ensured Fyodor Dostoevsky’s place as a giant of Russian literature. First published in 1866, this legendary work continues to enthrall readers around the world and earn Dostoevsky legions of fans with every printing. Timeless, and breathtaking in scope, Crime and Punishment-the story of a young Russian intellectual’s decision to murder a cruel pawnbroker and his subsequent intellectual and spiritual crisis-is one of the most famous novels in all of literature. This absorbing book attacks the overly logical nihilistic ideals of reason and science and proves that only through love, self-denial and suffering comes salvation. George Guidall’s fluent interpretation of the Russian names enhances this deep, multi-leveled text, and liberates Dostoevsky’s eternal prose with dimensions of color and feeling lost to the printed page alone.

A realistic and emotional look at a woman who falls into the grips of insanity written by the iconic American writer Sylvia Plath

“It is this perfectly wrought prose and the freshness of Plath’s voice in The Bell Jar that make this book enduring in its appeal.” — USA Today

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under–maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther’s breakdown with such intensity that Esther’s neuroses become completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

Paul Baumer is just 19 years old when he and his classmates enlist. They are Germany’s Iron Youth who enter the war with high ideals and leave it disillusioned or dead. As Paul struggles with the realities of the man he has become, and the inscrutable world to which he must return, he is led like a ghost of his former self into the war’s final hours. All Quiet is one of the greatest war novels of all time, an eloquent expression of the futility, hopelessness and irreparable losses of war.

Hemingway’s brilliant first novel is a poignant tale of love, loss, and the power to endure.

In his unforgettable first novel, Hemingway artfully illuminates the plight of the Lost Generation, weaving a poignant tale of love and loss in the aftermath of World War I. The story follows two expatriates living in Paris in the 1920s: Jake Barnes, an American war veteran and journalist, and Lady Brett Ashley, an independent Englishwoman exploring the opportunities afforded by a new era of liberated women and sexual freedom. Impotent due to an injury suffered during the war, Jake must navigate his hopeless love for Brett in a changed world of waning morality.

From Parisian society’s vibrant nightlife to the ruthless bullfighting rings of Spain, The Sun Also Rises takes readers on a powerful journey through mass disillusionment, moral bankruptcy, and elusive could-have-beens. All the while, we see both the brokenness and resilience of a generation scarred physically and emotionally by the horrors of war.

Classic novel of consuming passions, played out against the lonely moors of northern England, recounts the turbulent and tempestuous love story of Cathy and Heathcliff. A masterpiece of imaginative fiction, the story remains as poignant and compelling today as it was when first published in 1847.

“A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don’t know how to live properly.” –Zadie Smith

One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years–due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist–Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature. The audio is performed by the legendary Ruby Dee.

One of the century’s most challenging novels of ideas, The Fountainhead champions the cause of individualism through the story of a gifted young architect who defies the tyranny of conventional public opinion.

The struggle for personal integrity in a world that values conformity above creativity is powerfully illustrated through three characters: Howard Roarke, the genius who is resented because he creates purely for the delight of his own work and on no other terms; Gail Wynand, the newspaper mogul and self-made millionaire whose power was bought by sacrificing his ideals to the lowest common denominator of public taste; and Dominique Francon, the devastating beauty whose desperate search for meaning has been twisted, through despair, into a quest to destroy the single object of her desire: Howard Roarke.

Dramatic, poetic, and demanding, The Fountainhead remains one of the towering books on the contemporary intellectual scene.

MORE THAN EIGHT YEARS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST

The extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, “nothing short of spectacular” (Entertainment Weekly) memoir from one of the world’s most gifted storytellers.

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing–a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

The memoir was also made into a major motion picture from Lionsgate in 2017 starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts.

Voted America’s Best-Loved Novel in PBS’s The Great American Read

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South–and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred

One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father–a crusading local lawyer–risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

New York Times best-selling author of such hits as How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan utilizes her trademark sass to craft this funny and extremely useful guide for today’s college-bound young adults. When she was asked to speak at her son’s high school commencement, McMillan started jotting down practical tips to share. She eventually collected enough wisdom to produce a pamphlet and hand it out at the ceremony. To her surprise, advice like, “Don’t listen to your parents,” was a big hit with the graduates and their parents. Now all of McMillan’s tidbits are collected here in this witty, concise volume. University students-to-be will appreciate the vital information and conversational tone of this honest book, as will anyone who has ever been through the college transitional process.

The go-to bestselling guide to help young people navigate from a middle school book report to English Comp 101

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times bestselling author and professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers.

With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot, and other key techniques to make a story come to life.

From that very first middle school book report to that first college course, kids need to be able to understand the layers of meaning in literature. Foster makes learning this important skill fun and exciting by using examples from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from short stories and poems to movie scripts.

This go-to guide unlocks all the hidden secrets to reading, making it entertaining and satisfying.

From syndicated humor columnist Marc Acito comes a wildly inventive and hysterically funny novel that is equal parts Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fame, Risky Business, Dead Poets Society and The Catcher in the Rye. It’s 1983, and 17-year-old Edward Zanni wants to study acting at Juilliard, but his newly remarried father – who earns too much for Edward to claim scholarship money – refuses to pay. So, Edward enlists the aid of his creative theater pals to swindle the money from his father.

*Read by the author.

You may not hold a position of leadership or think of yourself as a leader. But if you want to create, change, or impact the world around you–even in a modest way–then you’re guided by a leader’s impulse and shaped by a leader’s principles.

You are an aspiring leader.

But the fact is that you’ve come to this role at a time when leadership–like everything else–is rapidly changing…and too many leaders are addressing the problems of today and tomorrow with the style and substance of yesterday’s leadership. We need an update.

In The Aspiring Leader’s Guide to the Future, Clay Scroggins (author of How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge) explores nine new principles of leadership that will help leaders adapt to a changing world and work culture, such as:

• Today’s leaders lean into vulnerability.
• Today’s leaders develop relationships primarily around trust.
• Today’s leaders celebrate the successes of others.

These may seem like counter-intuitive principles, but they provide a new way forward for leaders and teams and will prove versatile in the event of change and durable in the face of conflict. With humor and a pastor’s candor, Clay will show you why the old ways need updating and what developing new leadership skills could look like for your future.

To be clear, the author does not know the future. If he did, he would have used his talents on sports betting or stock trading. What he does know is that yesterday’s leadership axioms are today’s myths and what that means. The way forward requires an understanding of the past, a conviction of what’s at stake today, and a vision for how different tomorrow will be.

You don’t have to be a young entrepreneur with big dreams or someone looking to land a leadership role just to be considered an aspiring leader. You are one now. And by developing your skills for the future, you can become today’s version of a leader worth following.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Winner of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars (Season 27)

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Bare Bones, host of the marquee morning program “The Bobby Bones Show,” comedian and dedicated philanthropist delivers an inspirational and humorous collection of stories about his biggest misses in life and how he turned them into lessons and wins.

Bobby Bones is the youngest inductee ever into the National Radio Hall of Fame alongside legends Dick Clark, Larry King, and Howard Stern. As “the most powerful man in country music” (Forbes), he has reached the peak of his profession and achieved his childhood dreams. Each weekday morning, more than five million fans tune in to his radio show.

But as Bobby reveals, a lot of what made him able to achieve his goals were mistakes, awkward moments, and embarrassing situations–lemons that he turned into lemonade through hard work and humility. In this eye-opening book, he’ll include ideas and motivations for finding success even when seemingly surrounded by impossible odds or tough failures. He also includes anecdotes from some of his famous friends–Andy Roddick, Chris Stapleton, Charlamagne Tha God, Charles Esten, Brooklyn Decker, Walker Hayes and Asa Hutchinson–who open up about their own missteps.

Bobby’s mantra is Fight. Grind. Repeat. A man who refuses to give up, he sees failure as something to learn from–and the recollections in this funny, smart book, full of Bobby’s brand of self-effacing humor, show how he’s become such a beloved goofball.

“Readers won’t be able to get enough of these dope-ass characters.” –Elizabeth Acevedo, author of Clap When You Land

Hitch meets The Sun Is Also a Star in this “mega swoon-worthy, effortlessly cool” (Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author) novel about a self-professed teen love doctor with a popular radio segment who believes he can get a girl who hates all things romance to fall in love with him in only three dates.

Prince Jones is the guy with all the answers–or so it seems. After all, at seventeen, he has his own segment on Detroit’s popular hip-hop show, Love Radio, where he dishes out advice to the brokenhearted.

Prince has always dreamed of becoming a DJ and falling in love. But being the main caretaker for his mother, who has multiple sclerosis, and his little brother means his dreams will stay just that and the only romances in his life are the ones he hears about from his listeners. Until he meets Dani Ford.

Dani isn’t checking for anybody. She’s focused on her plan: ace senior year, score a scholarship, and move to New York City to become a famous author. But her college essay keeps tripping her up and acknowledging what’s blocking her means dealing with what happened at that party a few months ago. And that’s one thing Dani can’t do.

When the romantic DJ meets the ambitious writer, sparks fly. Prince is smitten, but Dani’s not looking to get derailed. She gives Prince just three dates to convince her that he’s worth falling for. Three dates for the love expert to take his own advice, and just maybe change two lives forever.

Make the most of your college years with these 175+ unique activities for the ultimate college experience.

From finding the perfect friend group to succeeding academically to exploring your newfound freedom, there’s a lot that goes into making your college experience a success. Instead of getting trapped in the myth that you can “do it all,” 175+ Things to Do Before You Graduate College will help you figure out what’s most important to you…and how to make it happen.

With this college-themed bucket list, you’ll find everything you need to do before you graduate. Whether you’re trying to make sure your four years in college are the best they can be or preparing for next steps post-graduation, you’ll learn exactly how to set yourself up for success (and fun!) with activities like:
-Becoming a TA as an undergrad for a subject you’re truly passionate about
-Heading off-campus with your friends to snag the first fresh donuts of the day
-Paying it forward by buying lunch for the person behind you in the dining hall line, even if you don’t know them
-Getting creative and starting up a campus-wide game of hide-and-seek
-And much more!

It’s easy: first, check out the 175+ unique and interesting activities you can do to add some fun, excitement, and maybe even a few impressive accomplishments to your life. Then, use the journaling space to create and update your own personal college bucket list. From there, just gather some friends and get started on making sure your college experience is as happy, healthy, and successful as possible!

This book starts you at square one: before you know what questions to ask, what colleges to read about, or what statistics to look up. Sowell pulls no punches as he candidly describes the inner and outer workings of scores of American colleges and universities, big and small. He gives equal attention to special programs, financial aid, and the academic environment.