100 Years of Books Adults
1 October 2025
We celebrated our 100th anniversary this year, and to celebrate we picked our favourite book published each year that we've been open.
Village Books originally opened as the Gallery Bookshop and Lending Library in 1925. While it’s name has changed over the years it has remained a bookshop for the past century. To celebrate this milestone, we have selected one book published for every year that we’ve been open. Below is the full list of adult titles that we selected. You can have a look here for the full children’s list.
1925 – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1926 – Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway
1927 – To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
1928 – Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
1929 – A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
1930 – Very Good Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
1931 – The Waves by Virginia Woolf
1932 – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1933 – Heavy Weather by P.G. Wodehouse
1934 – Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
1935 – It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
1936 – Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich
1937 – Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
1938 – Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
1939 – Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1940 – For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
1941 – Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier
1942 – The Outsider by Albert Camus
1943 – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
1944 – Absent in the Spring by Agatha Christie
1945 – Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
1946 – Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
1947 – Joy in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse
1948 – Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki
1949 – 1984 by George Orwell
1950 – A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
1951 – Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
1952 – Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1953 – Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
1954 – Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien
1955 – Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
1956 – Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
1957 – On the Road by Jack Kerouac
1958 – Breakfast at Tiffany’s Truman Capote
1959 – Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1961 – Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
1962 – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
1963 – The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
1964 – Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin
1965 – Dune by Frank Herbert
1966 – Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney
1967 – 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1968 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick
1969 – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
1970 – 84 Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff
1971 – Maurice by E.M. Forster
1972 – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Tompson
1973 – The Princess Bride by William Goldman
1974 – Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre
1975 – The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
1976 – Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
1977 – The Shining by Stephen King
1978 – Tales of the City by Andre Maupin
1979 – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
1980 – The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
1981 – Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
1982 – The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1983 – Heartburn by Nora Ephron
1984 – Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
1985 – The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
1986 – It by Stephen King
1987 – Beloved by Toni Morrison
1988 – A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
1989 – Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
1990 – Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
1991 – Wild Swans by Jung Chang
1992 – Secret History by Donna Tartt
1993 – A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
1994 – Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
1995 – Imperium by Robert Harris
1996 – Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
1997 – American Pastoral by Philip Roth
1998 – The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
1999 – The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
2000 – White Teeth by Zadie Smith
2001 – Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2002 – Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
2003 – Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
2004 – Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
2005 – Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
2006 – Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2007 – Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman
2008 – American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
2009 – Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2010 – The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
2011 – My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
2012 – Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
2013 – The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
2014 – All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
2015 – Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
2016 – My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
2017 – Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
2018 – Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
2019 – Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
2020 – Small Things Likes These by Clare Keegan
2021 – Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
2022 – Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
2023 – Orbital by Samantha Harvey
2024 – James by Percival Everett
2025 – Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams