William Faulkner's Light in August -- James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice -- Katherine Ann Porter's Noon Wine -- Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls -- Truman Capote's In Cold Blood -- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five -- E.L. Doctorow's Billy Bathgate -- Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian -- Toni Morrison's Beloved -- Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn and Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho