Clicking on the following links or images will take you to the popular fiction book collections covered in this section:
Commentary:
Starting roughly in the 1960s, a new category of popular novels emerged which was somewhat different from what had come in the earlier part of the 20th century. These new novels were much longer (often well over 400 pages) and focused less on literary elegance and more on pure entertainment for the reader. They also began to be more explicit in their descriptions of sex and violence (with books like The Carpetbaggers breaking new ground in these areas). The paperback versions of these books usually came out shortly after the hardcover editions, and many of these books sold millions of copies. I have broadly classified these modern bestsellers as Popular Fiction.
I have a number of favorite authors in this category and have created separate lists for each of their works. The one thing that all these authors have in common is that they are masters of consistently turning out page-turners which are wildly popular with the reading public. These authors can be broadly classified into two groups, based on the period during which they were at the peak of their popularity:
(1960s & 1970s) Arthur Hailey, Frederick Forsyth, Irving Wallace, Sidney Sheldon
(1980s & beyond) Dan Brown, David Baldacci, John Grisham, Ken Follett, Robin Cook.
Besides the nine authors named above, there are also other authors in this category. I have endeavored to create a selection of a number of books by these writers in the subsection called Other Bestselling Authors. These books encompass various genres such as mystery, crime, action, espionage, horror, humor and romance. Some notable authors whose works are prominent in the list are Jeffrey Archer, Mario Puzo, Michael Crichton and Nelson DeMille. In recent years, some Indian writers have joined the ranks of bestselling authors, notably Amish (Tripathi) and Chetan Bhagat – their works are also included on the list.
One final note. There is often overlap between the Popular Fiction category and other categories which have their own section, and sometimes a given book may not fit neatly into one category or the other. When such cases arise, I have used my judgment to assign a book to the proper category. (In a very small number of cases, I have also listed a particular book in two different categories.) I realize that this assignment could be subjective; however, I believe the vast majority of books covered here have been properly assigned to the correct category.