| Titles | Order |
| Moby Dick by Herman Melville | Boston Globe, #1 |
| Little Women by Louisa May Alcott | Boston Globe, #2 |
| Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey | Boston Globe, #3 |
| The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath | Boston Globe, #4 |
| A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving | Boston Globe,#5 |
| Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder | Boston Globe, #6 |
| Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson | Boston Globe, #7 |
| The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X | Boston Globe, #8 |
| Empire Falls by Richard Russo | Boston Globe, #9 |
| The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins | Boston Globe, #10 |
| Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas | Boston Globe, #11 |
| Walden by Henry David Thoreau | Boston Globe, #12 |
| All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald | Boston Globe, #13 |
| Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton | Boston Globe, #14 |
| Charlotte's Web by E. B. White | Boston Globe, #15 |
| Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace | Boston Globe, #16 |
| Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer | Boston Globe, #17 |
| On Beauty by Zadie Smith | Boston Globe, #18 |
| The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne | Boston Globe, #19 |
| Carrie by Stephen King | Boston Globe, #20 |
| John Adams by David McCullough | Boston Globe, #21 |
| Blues by John Hersey | Boston Globe, #22 |
| Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat | Boston Globe, #23 |
| Affliction by Russell Banks | Boston Globe, #24 |
| The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley, 1874-1958 by Jack Beatty | Boston Globe, #25 |
| Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout | Boston Globe, #26 |
| Boston Boy: Growing up with Jazz and Other Rebellious Passions by Nat Hentoff | Boston Globe, #27 |
| She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb | Boston Globe, #28 |
| Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky | Boston Globe, #29 |
| The Prince of Providence: The True Story of Buddy Cianci, America's Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys, and the Feds by Mike Stanton | Boston Globe, #30 |
| Three Junes by Julia Glass | Boston Globe, #31 |
| Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Boston Globe, #32 |
| The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean by Trevor Corson | Boston Globe, #33 |
| The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz | Boston Globe, #34 |
| Summer of '49 by David Halberstam | Boston Globe, #35 |
| Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick | Boston Globe, #36 |
| The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men against the Sea by Sebastian Junger | Boston Globe, #37 |
| Mystic River by Dennis Lehane | Boston Globe, #38 |
| Peyton Place by Grace Metalious | Boston Globe, #39 |
| Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri | Boston Globe, #40 |
| The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams | Boston Globe, #41 |
| Promised Land by Robert B. Parker | Boston Globe, #42 |
| The Crucible by Arthur Miller | Boston Globe, #43 |
| Little Children: A Novel by Tom Perrotta | Boston Globe, #44 |
| Boston Adventure by Jean Stafford | Boston Globe, #45 |
| On the Road by Jack Kerouac | Boston Globe, #46 |
| One boy's Boston, 1887-1901 by Samuel Eliot Morison | Boston Globe, #47 |
| House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III | Boston Globe, #48 |
| Sophie's Choice by William Styron | Boston Globe, #49 |
| Waiting: A Novel by Ha Jin | Boston Globe, #50 |
| The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor | Boston Globe, #51 |
| Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom | Boston Globe, #52 |
| A Separate Peace by John Knowles | Boston Globe, #53 |
| Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton | Boston Globe, #54 |
| Our Town by Thornton Wilder | Boston Globe, #55 |
| Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy | Boston Globe, #56 |
| Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult | Boston Globe, #57 |
| Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy | Boston Globe, #58 |
| Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman | Boston Globe, #59 |
| Couples by John Updike | Boston Globe, #60 |
| The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger | Boston Globe, #61 |
| The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft | Boston Globe, #62 |
| Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy | Boston Globe, #63 |
| A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr | Boston Globe, #64 |
| The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James | Boston Globe, #65 |
| Death at an Early Age by Jonathan Kozol | Boston Globe, #66 |
| Love Story by Erich Segal | Boston Globe, #67 |
| Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden | Boston Globe, #68 |
| The Good Mother by Sue Miller | Boston Globe, #69 |
| The Bostonians by Henry James | Boston Globe, #70 |
| Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut | Boston Globe, #71 |
| Revere Beach Boulevard by Roland Merullo | Boston Globe, #72 |
| A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson | Boston Globe, #73 |
| The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings | Boston Globe, #74 |
| Strong Motion: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen | Boston Globe, #75 |
| The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown | Boston Globe, #76 |
| One L by Scott Turow | Boston Globe, #77 |
| The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud | Boston Globe, #78 |
| Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Jr. Dana | Boston Globe, #79 |
| Blanche Cleans Up by Barbara Neely | Boston Globe, #80 |
| The Secret History by Donna Tartt | Boston Globe, #81 |
| Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen | Boston Globe, #82 |
| Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman | Boston Globe, #83 |
| Blue Hill Avenue; a novel by Mark Mirsky | Boston Globe, #84 |
| The City Below by James Carroll | Boston Globe, #85 |
| Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin | Boston Globe, #86 |
| The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood | Boston Globe, #87 |
| Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich | Boston Globe, #88 |
| The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells | Boston Globe, #89 |
| Not Without Peril: 150 Years of Misadventure on the Presidential Range of New Hampshire by Nicholas Howe | Boston Globe, #90 |
| A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain | Boston Globe, #91 |
| Massachusetts by Nancy Zaroulis | Boston Globe, #92 |
| The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas by Paul Theroux | Boston Globe, #93 |
| The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve | Boston Globe, #94 |
| Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates | Boston Globe, #95 |
| The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand | Boston Globe, #96 |
| Looking Backward, 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy | Boston Globe, #97 |
| Requiem, Mass.: A Novel by John Dufresne | Boston Globe, #98 |
| The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever | Boston Globe, #99 |
| The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle | Boston Globe, #100 |
