Robert Penn Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with All the King's Men, a roman à clef about the political career of assassinated Louisiana politician Huey P. Long. The novel was made into a successful film, and gained Warren a notable amount of literary success. Warren is the only person to win a Pulitzer for Fiction and Poetry, having won the latter prize in both 1958 and 1979.

Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita caused almost instant controversy, as its subject matter was about a college professor in his late thirties who was obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl. The book's narrative format, featuring an unreliable narrator, proved engrossing to readers and critics. As well, Nabokov's use of language and plumbing of psychological problems made the book considered one of the best of the century.

William Faulkner is well known both for exploring the culture and habits of the inhabitants of his native Mississippi and using inventive and creative forms of narrative and literary structure. Both of these elements are exhibited in his book As I Lay Dying. Covering the attempt of the dysfunctional Bundren family to bury their mother Addie in her family cemetery, the chapters take the point of view of different members of the family.

Ray Bradbury was well known as a general science fiction author in the early 1950s who covered topics like space flight and aliens. His 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 was a much more obviously allegorical tale about the social and political situation in 1950s America. The book's discussion of banning and burning books was an intentional effort by Bradbury to address the Red Scare, censorship, and political banishment.

J.R.R. Tolkien was an Oxford University professor who began telling his children stories about a fictional time and place as bedtime stories. Eventually, Tolkien molded and reshaped these stories into the novels The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Tolkien's books became classics of the fantasy genre, and have been turned into successful film franchises.

J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye is the story of the teenager Holden Caulfield, who feels disillusioned with his life at a boarding school and leaves for a break to go back to his native New York City. The book is told from Holden's point of view and presents an early version of teenage angst as it details Holden's wanderings. The book is a popular book still, and often appears on "Best Books" lists.

Ellen Olenska, Newland Archer, and May Welland are main characters in Edith Wharton's novel Age of Innocence. The novel was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

"Novella" is a diminutive of "novel," and authors will often use the term "novella" to describe a story that falls between a short story and a novel in length. An author will usually choose to do so because he or she believes that a story needs development beyond the length of a short story, but cannot be sustained over the full length of a novel.

A roman à clef, French for "novel with a key," is a term describing a work of literature that is based on actual events and people who are only lightly fictionalized. A chief concern for a novelist in writing a roman à clef is to tell a real story without having to clear everything. Examples of such novels are Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The Irish author James Joyce had experimented with various styles and uses of language throughout his career, in books like Ulysses and The Dubliners. Joyce went even a step further with his final book, Finnegans Wake, which was published in 1939 after seventeen years of writing. The book's language is largely constructed by Joyce, and uses odd slang and forms somewhat based around English to tell a story about the Earwicker family. The book is often cited as one of the most difficult books to read.