1918: His Family by Ernest Poole

1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather

1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson

1925: So Big by Edna Ferber

1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield

1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge

1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes

1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

1933: The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling

1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller

1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson

1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis

1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand

1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow

1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair

1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin

1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener

1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens

1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

1951: The Town by Conrad Richter

1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

1955: A Fable by William Faulkner

1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee

1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor

1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor

1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner

1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau

1966: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter

1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

1970: The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford

1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson

1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike

1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy

1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison

1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

1991: Rabbit At Rest by John Updike

1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford

1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser

1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth

1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham

2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo

2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2006: March by Geraldine Brooks

2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2009: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding