Skip to Main Content

Prep School Library: Free Choice Recommendations

This guide contains resources for PS students including database links, tutorials, book recommendations and more!

Free Choice

Looking for a free-choice book? Here are 100 excellent titles. Explore the genres below! 

If you are still struggling to find a book that piques your interest, check out these lists of recent book award winners: The Printz, The Alex Award, The National Book Award, The Stonewall, The Correta Scott King Award.

Or fill out the SUMMER READING BOOK MATCH FORM if you'd like a recommendation from Ms. Friedlander, the PS Librarian.

Realistic Fiction

  • A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

  • All American Boys by Jason Reynolds

  • All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

  • Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

  • Clap When You Land by Acevedo, Elizabeth

  • Dear Martin by Nic Stone

  • Dig by A.S. King

  • Everywhere You Don't Belong by Gabriel Bump

  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

  • Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Malonado 

  • Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

  • Furia by Yamile Saled Mendez

  • How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

  • I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erica L. Sanchez 

  • Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

  •  Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D Jackson

  • The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

  • The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

  • The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

  • White Teeth by Zadie Smith

Historical Fiction

  • Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

  • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

  • Code Name Verity by Wein, Elixabeth

  • Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

  • My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

  • Prisoner 3087 by Alan Gratz

  • The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

  • The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas 

  • The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Dantica

  • The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee

  • The Oppermans by Lion Feuchtwanger

  • The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

  • We Are Not Free by Traci Chee

Horror

  • Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  • The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

  • The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

  • The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

  • The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

  • There's Someone in your House by Stephanie Perkins

Science Fiction

  • 1984 by George Orwell

  • Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

  • Brave New World by by Aldous Huxley

  • Exhalation by Ted Chiang

  • Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

  • Kindred by Octavia Butler

  • Neuromancer by William Gibson

  • Red Rising by Pierce Brown

  • The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

  • The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen

Mystery

  • Chronicle of a Death Fortold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  • Clockers by Richard Price

  • Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

  • Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

  • The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

  • The Depths by Nicole Lesperance

  • The Fire Keeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

  • The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  • The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

  • The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

Non-Fiction

  • A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

  • A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

  • Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

  • Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire & Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernandez

  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  • Black Boy by Richard Wright

  • Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood byTrevor Noah

  • Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

  • Educated by Tara Westover

  • I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World by Malala Yousafzai

  • I Will Alway Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives by Martin Ganda

  • Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

  • Manhunt: The 12-day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson

  • Night by Elie Wiesel

  • Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson

  • Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora

  • Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi

  • Stormy Seas: Stories of Young Boat Refugees by

  • Mary Beth Leatherdale The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater

  • The Black Count: Glory Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

  • The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam

  • The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

  • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

  • The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

  • The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

  • Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

  • Where Good Ideas Come From by Stephen Johnson

  • Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions by Frank Bruni

  • White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo