8 Greatest Books of the Last 26 Years, Ranked

Image via 20th Century Studios Published Aug 27, 2026, 1:18 PM EDT Remus is a writer, editor, journalist, and author with an eye for detail and an extremely active imagination. He is an enthusiast of everything to do with the graphic medium, whether it's Western comics and their adaptations or manga and anime. Remus is also the author of the sci-fantasy novel Once Upon a Time in Hyperspace and several works of short fiction in the mystery, comedy, and horror genres. Sign in to your Collider account 26 years ago, as human civilization stepped into another new century, the world of literature expanded in exciting new directions. Creators of both fiction and non-fiction saw the new world through new lenses. Some told the old stories through new perspectives, and some found stories that were never told before. From fictional tales packed with emotions to revelatory non-fiction themes, the last 26 years have seen some phenomenal works in literature around the world. In the last couple of decades, we’ve seen seminal non-fiction books that address significant questions about human existence, as well as fiction sensations ranging from sci-fi masterpieces like The Three-Body Problem to phenomenal thrillers like Gone Girl and everything in between, each breaking new ground with their originality and vision. While it would be criminally unfair to select just a handful of books to define the new era, here’s our ranked selection of some of the greatest books of the last 26 years. 8 ‘Gone Girl’ (2012) Image via Phoenix The third novel penned by American author Gillian Flynn, this psychological crime thriller is easily her most successful and acclaimed work to date. Gone Girl revolves around Amy Dunne, who mysteriously disappears on her fifth marriage anniversary, leaving her husband, Nick, and everyone around them in shock. When the police discover seemingly damning evidence in Amy’s personal journal, Nick becomes the main suspect, triggering a huge public spectacle. Told from Nick and Amy’s respective POVs, the book unfolds competing and often contradictory perspectives on their lives, marriage, and the events that led to Amy’s vanishing. A dark and twisted tale about a complicated marital relationship, Gone Girl is a deliciously thrilling read with dual unreliable narrators. A literary phenomenon of the 2010s, the crime fiction novel was uniquely groundbreaking in the way it flips the classic missing-person tropes and takes readers in completely unexpected directions. Gone Girl has since been widely praised for its ingenious writing and remains an icon of 21st-century thriller literature. 7 ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ (2011) Image via HarperCollins Written by military historian Yuval Noah Harari and based on his series of lectures, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a popular science and popular history nonfiction book that surveys the history of Homo Sapiens. The account blends natural science, anthropology, and macro-history to survey the entire journey of human existence, beginning in the Stone Age and ending in the 21st century. The book covers four major turning points: the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific revolutions, and the unification of humankind. When first published, the book became a New York Times bestseller and earned global recognition, winning the National Library of China's Wenjin Book Award for the best book published in 2014. While critics have acclaimed Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind for making complex timelines, biology, and anthropology easy to understand, there is also substantial scholarly criticism of the same. However, the book became a publishing phenomenon and is widely considered one of the best books of its decade. 6 ‘Brief Answers to the Big Questions’ (2018) Image via Bantam Books Stephen Hawking’s final literary work, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, is a popular science book that examines the greatest mysteries of the universe. Described as "a selection of the most profound, accessible, and timely reflections" from Hawking’s personal materials, including essays, lectures, and speeches, the book addresses four main subjects: “Why Are We Here?” “Will We Survive?” “Will Technology Save Us or Destroy Us?” and “How Can We Thrive?” The book also includes a foreword by Eddie Redmayne, who won an Academy Award for portraying Hawking in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything. Published just a few months after Hawking’s death, Brief Answers to the Big Questions re-establishes the respected physicist’s deep faith in science and how essential it is in solving humanity’s biggest problems. The book came to be noted for making several striking predictions and warnings about the future of humanity, including topics of gene editing, artificial intelligence, and religion, and how those changes could impact the trajectory of human civilization. While the book did not win any major awards, it ranks among the top nonfiction titles of the 2010s and was widely praised as Hawking’s poignant final message to humanity. Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best PictureIs Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one. 🪜Parasite 🌀Everything Everywhere ☢️Oppenheimer 🐦Birdman 🪙No Country for Old Men FIND YOUR FILM → 01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind. ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours? AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does. NEXT QUESTION → 03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means. AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you? AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical. NEXT QUESTION → 05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like? AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible. AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable. AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you. ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense. NEXT QUESTION → 09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately. AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action. NEXT QUESTION → 10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want? AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days. REVEAL MY FILM → The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works. ParasiteYou are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image. Everything Everywhere All at OnceYou want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about. OppenheimerYou are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort. BirdmanYou are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all. No Country for Old MenYou are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ (2005) Image via Norstedts Förlag An international bestseller written by Swedish author Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first book of the Millennium series. The novel follows Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced journalist who is hired by a wealthy businessman to search for his niece, who disappeared 40 years earlier. Mikael takes the help of a skilled but deeply troubled hacker named Lisbeth Salander and dives into the family’s dark secrets to uncover the truth. Published in 2005, a few months after Larsson’s death, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo broke all the conventions of contemporary crime fiction with its atypical heroine, stark Nordic realism, and social critique. The novel became globally popular and remains Larsson’s most famous work, winning Sweden’s Glass Key Award and a British Book Award. The novel’s success set new trends for Nordic crime noir in mainstream art and culture, prompting highly acclaimed film adaptations in both Sweden and America. 4 ‘Before the Coffee Gets Cold’ (2015) Image via Hanover Square Press A Japanese magic realism novel by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold tells the story of people in a small basement café in Tokyo called Funiculi Funicula. The café allows its customers to travel back in time, but they must return to their present before their cup of coffee gets cold, or they will get trapped as a ghost. Their presence and actions in the past have no bearing on their present, and the travelers can only meet those people who have visited the café. Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a charming, emotionally resonant meditation on how we perceive time, and a beautiful and hopeful reminder that though the past cannot be changed, the future holds possibilities of doing things differently. The book was an instant success in Japan when it was published in 2015, followed by the English translation by Geoffrey Trousselot published in 2019, which became a trending topic on social media. Before the Coffee Gets Cold was followed by five sequels, with the latest being Before I Knew I Loved You, published in 2026. 3 ‘The Kite Runner’ (2003) In his debut novel, Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini pens one of the most powerful novels of 21st-century literature. The Kite Runner is set against the backdrop of the Afghan conflict of the 1970s and focuses on the Soviet–Afghan War and the exodus of Afghan refugees, as well as the rise of the Taliban regime. Growing up in a tormented nation, Amir and Hassan develop a bond that breaks on Amir’s act of transgression, leaving him to atone for two decades. Deeply moving and often startling, The Kite Runner offers a raw window into the modern political and social history of Afghanistan, depicted through the story of two childhood friends and a father-son relationship. With themes of guilt, redemption, loyalty, and how they are impacted by classism, The Kite Runner is gut-wrenching and inspiring at the same time. The book became a global bestseller, earned widespread acclaim, and has since been adapted into several stage performances, a graphic novel, and a 2007 film by Marc Forster. 2 ‘The Underground Railroad’ (2016) Image via Doubleday Written by Afro-surrealist novelist Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad is an alternate-history novel that reimagines the historical titular underground network used by enslaved people to escape to the abolitionist North. Set in the 19th-century Antebellum South, the story centers on Cora, a young woman enslaved at a brutal Georgia plantation, who escapes using the titular route while being hunted down by a ruthless slave catcher. The novel depicts the titular escape network as a literal subterranean railroad system with safe houses and secret passages, tracking Cora’s escape state by state. The Underground Railroad was massively successful at the time of its publication, winning several prestigious literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award for Fiction, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Reviewers and critics have since praised the novel for its commentary on American history. Bold, imaginative, honest, and painful, The Underground Railroad turns a historical metaphor into a remarkable commentary on the past and present of America. 1 ‘The Three-Body Problem’ (2008) Image via Tor Books A Chinese hard science fiction novel by Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem is the first book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy and is followed by The Dark Forest and Death’s End. The 2008 novel explores a fictional past, present, and future of Earth, where people encounter an alien civilization from a nearby star system with three Sun-like stars orbiting each other, defining the titular problem of astrodynamics. The book started in 2006 as a serialized story in Science Fiction World. The Three-Body Problem became a sci-fi sensation and China's most successful full-length novel of recent decades, earning endorsements from literary legends like George R.R. Martin and inspiring multiple adaptations. Liu Cixin’s work has been compared to that of Arthur C. Clarke and heavily praised for its mind-bending combination of hardcore physics, grand cosmic horror, and a distinct non-Western historical perspective on global affairs. The original edition won the Galaxy Award for Chinese science fiction, while the 2014 English translation by Ken Liu became the first novel by an Asian writer to win a Hugo Award for Best Novel. Release Date March 21, 2024 Network Netflix Directors Minkie Spiro, Jeremy Podeswa, Derek Tsang Kwok-Cheung, Andrew Stanton