“What are T.C. Boyle’s Best Books?” We looked at all of Boyle’s authored bibliography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the books written by T.C. Boyle and looked at their Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing scores, ranking them against one another to see which books came out on top. The books are ranked in our list below based on which titles have the highest overall score between all 3 review sites in comparison with all of the other books by the same author. The process isn’t super scientific and in reality, most books aren’t “better” than other books as much as they are just different. That being said, we do enjoy seeing where our favorites landed, and if you aren’t familiar with the author at all, the rankings can help you see what books might be best to start with.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

The Top Book’s Of T.C. Boyle

34 ) The Lie

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 31
• Amazon: 32
• LibraryThing: 30

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. Lonnie is tired. He’s tired of his job, the monotony of it, and tired of the predictability ofhis home life now that he’s a father. It’s a day like every other day, and hecan’t face the inevitability of it all. So he lies. It’s a small lie, but heknows small lies become big ones. He knows it as soon as he says his daughteris in the hospital. But he can’t stop himself, and he can’t stop the lie fromtaking on a life of its own.

33 ) Rock and Roll Heaven

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 31
• Amazon: 31
• LibraryThing: 30

A trio of uncollected stories from early in TC Boyle’s career, Rock and Roll Heaven shows all of the qualities that have people excited about Boyle from the beginning–great ideas, dazzling writing full of wit, black humor and wisdom. These three stories were published in journals but have not been included as of yet in any of Boyle’s short story collections. Combined here so all Boyle fans have easy access to reading them now.

32 ) I’m with the Bears

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 30
• Amazon: 27
• LibraryThing: 28

A stellar line-up of fiction writers envision the terrors of impending climate change. The magnitude of the global climate crisis is such that even the most committed environmentalists are liable to live in a state of denial. The award-winning writers collected here have made it their task to shake off this disbelief, bringing the incomprehensible within our grasp and shaping an emotional response to mankind’s unwitting creation of a tough new planet. From T. C. Boyle’s account of early eco-activists, to David Mitchell’s vision of a near future where civilization dwindles as oil sells for $800 a barrel – these stories blend speculative and literary fiction and range across time. The aim is to make the danger posed by climate change as accessible to the imagination as subjects more common to the best of contemporary fiction. Royalties from I’m With the Bears will go to 350.org, an international grassroots movement working to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

31 ) The Terranauts

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 28
• Amazon: 26
• LibraryThing: 29

A deep dive into human behavior in an epic story of science, society, sex, and survival, from one of the greatest American novelists today, T. C. Boyle, the acclaimed best-selling author of the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning World’s End and The Harder They Come. It is 1994, and in the desert near Tillman, Arizona, 40 miles from Tucson, a grand experiment involving the future of humanity is underway. As climate change threatens the Earth, eight scientists, four men and four women dubbed the Terranauts, have been selected to live under glass in E2, a prototype of a possible off-Earth colony. Their sealed three-acre compound comprises five biomes – rain forest, savanna, desert, ocean, and marsh – and enough wildlife, water, and vegetation to sustain them. Closely monitored by an all-seeing Mission Control, this New Eden is the brainchild of ecovisionary Jeremiah Reed, aka G. C. – God the Creator – for whom the project is both an adventure in scientific discovery and a momentous publicity stunt.

30 ) She Wasn’t Soft

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 17
• Amazon: 32
• LibraryThing: 27

29 ) Talk Talk

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 27
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 24

The first time he saw Dana, she was dancing barefoot, her hair aflame in the red glow of the club, her body throbbing with rhythms and cross-rhythms that only she could hear. He was mesmerised. That night they were both deaf, mouthing to each other over the booming bass. And, it was not until their first date, after he had agonised over what CD to play in the car, that Bridger learned that her deafness was profound and permanent. By then he was falling in love. Now, she is in a courtroom, her legs shackled, as a list of charges is read out. She is accused of auto theft, possession of a controlled substance, assault with a deadly weapon – the list goes on. Clearly there has been a terrible mistake. And, as Dana and Bridger set out to find the person who is living a blameless life of criminal excess at her expense, they begin to test the life they have built together to its limits. “Talk Talk” is both a thrilling road trip across America and a moving story about language, love and identity from one of America’s finest novelists.

28 ) The Inner Circle

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 25
• Amazon: 21
• LibraryThing: 24

Fresh on the heels of his New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-nominated novel, Drop City, T.C. Boyle has spun an even more dazzling tale that will delight both his longtime devotees and a legion of new fans. Boyle’s tenth novel, The Inner Circle has it all: fabulous characters, a rollicking plot, and more sex than pioneering researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey ever dreamed of documenting . . . well, almost. A love story, The Inner Circle is narrated by John Milk, a virginal young man who in 1940 accepts a job as an assistant to Dr. Alfred Kinsey, an extraordinarily charming professor of zoology at Indiana University who has just discovered hislife’s true calling: sex.

27 ) The Human Fly

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 18
• Amazon: 24
• LibraryThing: 26

The author, known for his trademark wit, unforgiving take on American life, and his all-too-human protagonists, presents a collection of classic stories about teenagers, including “The Love of My Life.” Simultaneous.

26 ) Riven Rock

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 20
• Amazon: 27
• LibraryThing: 19

Two years after marrying Katherine Dexter, Stanley McCormick falls victim to a tormenting sexual mania and is imprisoned in the forbidding mansion known as Riven Rock. Yet Katherine remains strong in her belief that one day he will return to her whole.

25 ) Wild Child

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 12
• Amazon: 32
• LibraryThing: 21

The fourteen stories in this rich new collection display T.C. Boyle s astonishing range and imaginative muscle. Nature is the dominant player in many of these stories, whether in the form of a catastrophic mudslide that allows a cynic to reclaim his humanity or in Boyle s powerfully original retelling of the story of Victor, the feral boy who was captured running naked through the forests of Napoleonic France a moving and magical investigation of what it means to be human. Other tales range from the drama of a man who spins Homeric lies in order to stop going to work to the sad comedy of a child born to Mexican street vendors who is unable to feel pain. Brilliant, incisive, and always engaging, Boyle s short stories showcase the mischievous humor and socially conscious sensibility that have made him one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.

24 ) The Women

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 26
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 22

Paparazzi lie in wait outside the front door, hounding for the latest scandal, the latest tragedy in this never-ending drama. For this is the home of the great architect of the twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright, a man of extremes in both his work and his private life: at once a force of nature – arrogant and infuriating – and an avalanche of need and emotion that sweeps aside everything in its path. This is the story of the wives and mistresses who fall under Frank’s spell. There is the delusional Kitty, his first wife, convinced that his affair with the defiant Mamah can’t possibly last. There is Miriam, his crazed, demented second wife, hell-bent on wreaking revenge most public and most vicious after the bitter demise of their marriage.And there is Oglivanna, the Serbian immigrant, who waits with Frank in constant terror for the next wave of desolation from Miriam as she stalks them at every turn, unleashing a torrent of sheriffs, immigration officials, bankers, lawyers and journalists. Sharp, savage and subtle in equal measure, The Women plumbs the chaos, horrors and uncontainable passions of a fascinating American icon.

23 ) Ten

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 28
• Amazon: 3
• LibraryThing: 30

22 ) East Is East

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 20
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 23

Trained in the way of the Samurai and dreaming of the city of brotherly love, Hiro Tanaka impetuously jumps off the coast of Georgia, only to wash up on a barrier island populated by rednecks, descendants of black slaves and a colony of crazed artists.

21 ) Descent of Man

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 31
• Amazon: 11
• LibraryThing: 15

In seventeen slices of life that defy the expected and launch us into the absurd, T.C. Boyle offers his unique view of the world. A primate-center researcher becomes romantically involved with a chimp; a Norse poet overcomes bard-block; collectors compete to snare the ancient Aztec beer can, Quetzacoatl Lite; and Lassie abandons Timmy for a randy coyote. Dark humor, delirious fantasy, and surreal satire come together in this collection that brilliantly expresses just what the “evolution” of mankind has wrought.

19 ) Without a Hero

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 11
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 16

A collection of 15 short stories. Meet Bernard Puff, proprietor of an all-American dude safari ranch just outside Bakersfield, California, where you can shoot big-game without the inconvenience of travelling to Africa. Or Susan Certaine, a professional organizer and acquisitive disorders therapist.

19 ) The Harder They Come

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 22
• Amazon: 21
• LibraryThing: 13

Set in contemporary Northern California, The Harder They Come explores the volatile connections between three damaged people – an aging ex-marine and Vietnam veteran, his psychologically unstable son, and the son’s paranoid, much older lover – as they careen toward an explosive confrontation. On a vacation cruise to Central America with his wife, 70-year-old Sten Stensen unflinchingly kills a gun-wielding robber menacing a busload of senior tourists. The reluctant hero is relieved to return home to Fort Bragg, California, after the ordeal – only to find that his delusional son, Adam, has spiraled out of control. Adam has become involved with Sara Hovarty Jennings, a hardened member of the Sovereign Citizens’ Movement, right-wing anarchists who refuse to acknowledge the laws and regulations of the state, considering them to be false and nonapplicable. Adam’s senior by some 15 years, Sara becomes his protector and inamorata. As Adam’s mental state fractures, he becomes increasingly schizophrenic – a breakdown that leads him to shoot two people in separate instances. On the run, he takes to the woods, spurring the biggest manhunt in California history.

17 ) When the Killing’s Done

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 22
• Amazon: 14
• LibraryThing: 19

From the bestselling author of The Women comes an action- packed adventure about endangered animals and those who protect them. Principally set on the wild and sparsely inhabited Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, T.C. Boyle’s powerful new novel combines pulse-pounding adventure with a socially conscious, richly humane tale regarding the dominion we attempt to exert, for better or worse, over the natural world. Alma Boyd Takesue is a National Park Service biologist who is spearheading the efforts to save the island’s endangered native creatures from invasive species like rats and feral pigs, which, in her view, must be eliminated. Her antagonist, Dave LaJoy, is a dreadlocked local businessman who, along with his lover, the folksinger Anise Reed, is fiercely opposed to the killing of any species whatsoever and will go to any lengths to subvert the plans of Alma and her colleagues. Their confrontation plays out in a series of escalating scenes in which these characters violently confront one another, and tempt the awesome destructive power of nature itself. Boyle deepens his story by going back in time to relate the harrowing tale of Alma’s grandmother Beverly, who was the sole survivor of a 1946 shipwreck in the channel, as well as the tragic story of Anise’s mother, Rita, who in the late 1970s lived and worked on a sheep ranch on Santa Cruz Island. In dramatizing this collision between protectors of the environment and animal rights’ activists,

17 ) Outside Looking In

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 24
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 30

One family’s adventures in LSD: the brilliantly strange new novel from the mind of ‘one of the most inventive, adventurous and accomplished fiction writers in the US today’ (Lionel Shriver) It is Harvard in the early 1960s. Just off campus, Dr Timothy Leary plays host for his PhD students, laying on a spread of cocktails, pizza and LSD. Among the guests is Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology student, and his librarian wife Joanie. Married young, and both diligently and unglamorously toiling to support their son, theirs are hardly the faces you would put to the spectre of counterculture haunting the campus. But their nights on LSD prove so extraordinary – so revelatory, so earth-shattering, so downright seductive – that Fitz and Joanie soon find themselves captivated captives to the whims of the charismatic and subversive Dr Tim. Join Fitz and Joanie for the trip: as sultry Mexican nights at Hotel Catalina give way to a ramshackle mansion in upstate New York, where thirty devotees – students, wives and children – play out the final act of a terrible, beautiful experiment.

16 ) A Friend of the Earth

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 15
• Amazon: 21
• LibraryThing: 18

It is 2025 and Tyrone O’Shaughnessy Tierwater is the manager of a private menagerie of some of the last surviving animals in the world. Global warming is a reality. In his youth, as an environmental activist, Tyrone endangered the life of his wife, Andrea, and daughter, Sierra. Now Andrea is back.

15 ) Budding Prospects

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 31
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 5

Felix is a quitter, with a poor track record behind him. Until the day the opportunity presents itself to make half a million dollars tax-free – by nurturing 390 acres of cannabis in the lonely hills of northern California.

14 ) Watchlist

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 7
• Amazon: 7
• LibraryThing: 30

Threats known and unknown. Etgar Keret. Robert Coover. Aimee Bender. Jim Shepard. Alissa Nutting. Charles Yu. Cory Doctorow. Randa Jarrar. Katherine Karlin. Miracle Jones. Mark Irwin. T. Coraghessan Boyle. Dale Peck. Bonnie Nadzam. Lucy Corin. Chika Unigwe. Footsteps in the night. Paul Di Filippo. Lincoln Michel. Dana Johnson. Mark Chiusano. Juan Pablo Villalobos. Chanelle Benz. Sean Bernard. Kelly Luce. Zhang Ran. Miles Klee. Carmen Maria Machado. David Abrams. Steven Hayward. Deji Bryce Olukotun. Alexis Landau. Bryan Hurt. We are being watched. That this statement no longer shocks is itself shocking. Post-Snowden, we know that the government – everywhere – has been reading our emails, listening to our phone calls, and watching whatever we do on the Internet. The only thing concealed is the nature of our watchers. In Watchlist, some of today’s most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, reflect on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live.

13 ) The Road to Wellville

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 15
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 16

An account of: Dr John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the cornflake and peanut butter; his profligate, degenerate and opportunistic son; and the birth of America’s first health fanatics.

12 ) The Tortilla Curtain

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 18
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 9

When Delaney Mossbacher runs over a Mexican pedestrian, he neither reports the accident nor takes the man to hospital. He leaves him $20 before returning to his privileged life in California while the Mexican staggers home to poverty and his pregnant 17-year-old wife.

11 ) If the River Was Whiskey

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 6
• Amazon: 29
• LibraryThing: 6

Eccentrics, charlatans, and decent, vulnerable people. You’ll find them all in this acclaimed collection of stories. From “Sorry Fugu,” the tale of an improbable romance between a restaurateur and a food critic, to “The Little Chill,” a chronicle of 60’s survivors in arrested development, these works are magical, surprising, haunting, and hilarious.

10 ) San Miguel

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 14
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 10

Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of T. C. Boyle’s haunting new novel. Thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel on New Year’s Day 1888 to restore her failing health. Joined by her husband, a stubborn, driven Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives to persevere in the face of the hardships, some anticipated and some not, of living in such brutal isolation. Two years later their adopted teenage daughter, Edith, an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her. Time closes in on them all and as the new century approaches, the ranch stands untenanted. And then in March 1930, Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, settles on San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy. As the years go on they find a measure of fulfillment and serenity; Elise gives birth to two daughters, and the family even achieves a celebrity of sorts.

8 ) After the Plague

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 8
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 10

Hailed as one of the best short story writers of his generation, T.C. Boyle presents sixteen stories–nine of which appeared in The New Yorker–that highlight the evolving excellence of his inventive, modern, and wickedly witty style. In After the Plague, Boyle exhibits his maturing themes through an amazing array of subjects in a range of emotional keys.

8 ) The Relive Box

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 12
• Amazon: 4
• LibraryThing: 10

While T. C. Boyle is known as one of our greatest American novelists, he is also an acknowledged master of the short story and is perhaps at his funniest, his most moving, and his most surprising in the short form. In The Relive Box, Boyle’s sharp wit and rich imagination combine with a penetrating social consciousness to produce raucous, poignant, and expansive short stories defined by an inimitable voice. From the collection’s title story, featuring a Halcom X1520 Relive Box that allows users to experience anew almost any moment from their past, to “The Five-Pound Burrito”, the tale of a man aiming to build the biggest burrito in town, the 12 stories in this collection speak to the humor, the pathos, and the struggle that is part of being human while relishing the whimsy of wordplay and the power of a story well told.

7 ) Greasy Lake

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 5
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 8

Mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, The Washington Post Book World says these masterful stories mark T. Coraghessan Boyle’s development from “a prodigy’s audacity to something that packs even more of a wallop: mature artistry.” They cover everything, from a terrifying encounter between a bunch of suburban adolescents and a murderous, drug-dealing biker, to a touching though doomed love affair between Eisenhower and Nina Khruschev.

6 ) World’s End

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 15
• LibraryThing: 4

Haunted by the burden of his family’s traitorous past, woozy with pot, cheap wine and sex, disturbed by a frightening real encounter with some family ghosts, Walter Van Brunt is about to have a collision with history. It will lead Walter to search for his father.

5 ) Drop City

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 8
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 13

With Drop City, T. Coraghessan Boyle offers proof that he has become one of America’s most prolific, gifted storytellers. Set in the 1970s, Boyle entertains readers with the denizens of “Drop City,” a counterculture California commune that welcomes anyone wanting to live off the grid, use drugs, and practice free love. Boyle sublimely captures the sociology of its rebellious members, who doubt the sincerity or beliefs of newcomers, express some insecurity about nonconformity, and chastise outsiders while remaining oblivious to their own hypocrisy. Marco, Pan, Star, and other “cats” and “chicks” live hassle-free until dissention and cries of racism mount amid increasing run-ins with the local government (a young girl is raped, installation of a sewage system is mandated, a mother lets her toddlers drink LSD-laced juice). Seeking refuge, the citizens move north, to Alaska, to reinvent their utopia, but soon learn the natural environment is more unforgiving of a lackadaisical lifestyle. Drop City is funny, evocative, and well-paced, shifting between the hippies and the Alaskan locals–primarily Sess and his new bride Pamela (a city dweller who arranged stays with several trappers over a few weeks to determine whom she would marry)–until the two cultures collide.

4 ) Tooth and Claw

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 10
• Amazon: 4
• LibraryThing: 7

Since Descent of Man appeared in 1979, T. C. Boyle has transformed the nature of short fiction in our time; in a review of his most recent collection, After the Plague, The New York Times hailed him as “a writer who can take you anywhere.” Which is exactly what Boyle does in Tooth and Claw. These fourteen stories, which have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and Playboy, display Boyle’s imaginative muscle, emotional sensitivity, and astonishing range. Here you will find the whimsical tales for which Boyle is famous, including “The Kind Assassin,” about a radio shock jock who sets the world record for most continuous hours without sleep.

2 ) T. C. Boyle Stories

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 3

Twenty-five years of dazzling short stories, including seven never before published in book form, from the bestselling author of Riven Rock and The Tortilla Curtain T. C. Boyle is one of the most inventive and wickedly funny short story writers at work today. Over the course of twenty-five years, Boyle has built up a body of short fiction that is remarkable in its range, richness, and exuberance. His stories have won accolades for their irony and black humor, for their verbal pyrotechnics, for their fascination with everything bizarre and queasy, and for the razor-sharp way in which they dissect America’s obsession with image and materialism.

2 ) The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle Volume II

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 3
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 1

A second volume of collected short fiction – from the bestselling author and winner of the 2015 Rea Award for the Short Story Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T.C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. In 1998, T.C. Boyle Stories brought together the author’s first four collections to critical acclaim. Now, T.C. Boyle Stories II gathers the work from his three most recent collections along with fourteen new tales previously unpublished in book form as well as a preface in which Boyle looks back on his career as a writer of stories and the art of making them. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle’s stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions.

1 ) Water Music

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 2
• Amazon: 4
• LibraryThing: 2

Set in 1795, “Water Music” is the rambunctious account of two men’s wild adventures through the gutters of London and the Scottish Highlands to their unlikely meeting in darkest Africa.

T.C. Boyle’s Best Books

T.C. Boyle Review Website Bibliography Rankings