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Like Totally Awesome: Books of the 80s January 2026 |
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Popular Books Published in the 1980s
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Flowers in the Attic
by V. C. Andrews
The four Dollanganger children move to their grandparents house with their mother. But things are not as they seem. Their mother then locks them in an abandoned wing of the large house and tells them it's only for a few days ...
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The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
Offred, a Handmaid, describes life in what was once the United States, now the Republic of Gilead, a shockingly repressive and intolerant monotheocracy, in a satirical tour de force set in the near future.
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The Mammoth Hunters: Earth's Children, Book Three
by Jean M. Auel
Ayla and Jondalar embark on a journey that takes them to the Mamutoi, the Mammoth Hunters, and Ayla must make a fateful choice between two men--Jondalar and Ranec, the Mamutoi's master carver--in a story of Ice Age Europe.
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Clear and Present Danger
by Tom Clancy
The assassinations of U.S. ambassador and the visiting head of the F.B.I. by Colombian drug lords trigger a mysterious covert response and an investigation of U.S. and Colombian actions by Jack Ryan.
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Red Storm Rising
by Tom Clancy
From the author of The Hunt For Red October, a New York Times bestseller for over 40 weeks, comes his greatest performance yet. Red Storm Rising is an alarmingly authentic portrait of escalating aggression between superpowers on all fronts--land, sea, air and space.
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The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
An international sensation and winner of the Premio Strega and the Prix Médicis Etranger awards, this enthralling medieval murder mystery is a brilliant deconstruction of the traditional crime novel.
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A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays
by Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time has become a landmark volume in science writing. Stephen Hawking, one of the great minds of our time, explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin--and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending--or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?
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Iacocca: An Autobiography
by Lee Iacocca
The celebrated chief executive officer of Chrysler Corporation offers a straightforward account of his career at Ford, of the recent resurgence of Chrysler, and of what is wrong and right with American business.
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The Hotel New Hampshire
by John Irving
John, the middle son in an eccentric family with five children, one bear, and a dog named Sorrow, describes growing up in a hotel.
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North and South
by John Jakes
A novel of two families during twenty turbulent, troubled years that culminate in the shattering Civil War.
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Cujo
by Stephen King
Cujo used to be a big friendly dog, lovable and loyal to his trinity (The Man, The Woman, and The Boy) and everyone around him, and always did his best to not be a BAD DOG. But that all ends on the day this nearly two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard makes the mistake of chasing a rabbit into a hidden underground cave, setting off a tragic chain of events.
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The Dark Half
by Stephen King
Thad, a college professor who moonlights as a writer of pop thrillers under the pseudonym George Stark, finally writes a serious novel, and decides to stop writing shockers. But George Stark has come to life and doesn't want to die. Thad is forced to battle his own creation for the control of the mind which both must share.
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It
by Stephen King
They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they were grown-up men and women who had gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them could withstand the force that drew them back to Derry, Maine, to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.
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Smiley's People: A George Smiley Novel
by John Le Carré
Paris, London, Germany, and Switzerland are the settings for a tale of espionage in which a final, conclusive confrontation takes place between George Smiley and his Russian adversary, Karla.
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The Bourne Identity
by Robert Ludlum
His memory is a blank. His bullet-ridden body was fished from the Mediterranean Sea. His face has been altered by plastic surgery. A frame of microfilm has been surgically implanted in his hip. Even his name is a mystery. Marked for death, he is racing for survival through a bizarre world of murderous conspirators--led by Carlos, the world's most dangerous assassin. Who is Jason Bourne? The answer may kill him.
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Space
by James A. Michener
Engineer Stanley Mott, astronomy student John Pope, naval hero Norman Grant, and rocket engineer Dieter Kolff serve as principals in the forty-year history of America's space program and share the complex drama with numerous others.
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In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies
by Thomas J. Peters
The Greatest Business Book of All Time (Bloomsbury UK), In Search of Excellence has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school, and bedside table.Based on a study of forty-three of America's best-run companies from a diverse array of business sectors, In Search of Excellence describes eight basic principles of management -- action-stimulating, people-oriented, profit-maximizing practices -- that made these organizations successful.Joining the HarperBusiness Essentials series, this phenomenal bestseller features a new Authors' Note, and reintroduces these vital principles in an accessible and practical way for today's management reader.
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The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
Gibreel Farishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices, fall earthward from a bombed jet toward the sea, singing rival verses in an eternal wrestling match between good and evil.
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Cosmos
by Carl Sagan
A companion text to Sagan's 13-part PBS television series.
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If Tomorrow Comes
by Sidney Sheldon
Lovely, idealistic Tracy Whitney is framed into a fifteen year sentence in an escape-proof penitentiary. With dazzling ingenuity she fights back to destroy the untouchable crime lords who put her there. With her intelligence and beauty as her only weapons, Tracy embarks on a series of extraordinary escapades that sweep her across the globe. In an explosive confrontation Tracy meets her equal in irresistible Jeff Stevens, whose past is as colorful as Tracy's.
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Daddy
by Danielle Steel
In Daddy, Danielle Steel's 25th novel and one of her top-selling works, the #1 bestselling author of Malice, Silent Honor, and The Ranch probes the hearts and minds of three generations of men--and demonstrates the extraordinary storytelling abilities that have made her America's most widely read author.
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Gorky Park
by Martin Cruz Smith
In contemporary Moscow, Chief Homicide Investigator Arkady Renko unravels the mystery of a triple murder--involving three corpses buried in the snow with their faces and fingers missing--complicated by the shadowy and uncooperative presence of the KGB, the FBI, and the NYPD and by his falling in love.
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Presumed Innocent
by Scott Turow
When a beautiful lawyer from the prosecuting attorney's office, Carolyn Polhemus, is brutally murdered, assistant prosecutor Rusty Sabich is entrusted with the case. But he and Carolyn were much more than colleagues, and a zealous fellow prosecutor becomes convinces that Sabich is guilty of the crime.
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The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into the experiences of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia.
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The Bonfire of the Vanities
by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe's panoramic novel of the go-go New York City of the 1980s, discussing power and the racial and ethnic tensions simmering below the city's gleaming veneer.
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A People's History of the United States
by Howard Zinn
Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers.
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