Here is a list of books, plays and stories that I have found compelling (not exhaustive and in no particular order):
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- The Odyssey by Homer
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Yellow Raft on Blue Water by Michael Dorris
- Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- Fried Green Tomatoes by Fannie Flagg
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
- The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
- The Narnian Tales by C.S. Lewis
- A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
- The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
- Miss Piggle Wiggle series
- The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis
- Beowolf
- Oedipus
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- Night by Elie Wiesel
- The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
- The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
- Loving Eleanor by Susan Albert
- The Swimmer by John Cheever
- The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
- Sherlock Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
- Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Cider House Rules by John Irving
- Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
- City of Night by John Rechy
- Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein