Trends in AP Literature: 2026 FRQ New Titles & Trends

The 2026 AP Lit Reading happened just two weeks ago and I’ve had some time to study the prompts. Every year, I’m always the most interested in studying the titles used on the open question. While students are not limited to these titles in any way, the ones chosen as suggested texts can be illuminating. These titles can be studied for trends, used to cultivate a classroom library, and even help choose new curriculum for future years. Here’s my breakdown of what I learned from studying the 2026 AP Lit open question.

This is normally where I put my affiliate link warning, but my husband deleted my Amazon affiliate account. And you know what? Good riddance. Instead, all the book links are to Bookshop.org, which supports local bookstores. 🙂

New Titles

Since College Board only released one set of the questions this year, there are only 5 new titles appearing on the FRQ3 open question title list. Here are the books with short descriptions (also taken from Bookshop.org). These books are great for cultivating a diverse classroom library!

The Ambassadors by Henry James (pub. 1903)

One of the final masterpieces from one of the world’s greatest authors, Henry James’s The Ambassadors is now available for the first time in a Modern Library edition, with a new Introduction by acclaimed novelist Colm Tóibín. A keenly observed tale of a man’s awakening to life, this dark comic novel follows Lewis Lambert Strether, a middle-aged widower, on a mission to Europe to convince his fiancée’s wayward son to forsake the pleasures of Paris and return to America.

Rich with fin de siècle detail, The Ambassadors brims with finely drawn character portraits, including one of the Master’s most unforgettable heroines–the beguiling Madame de Vionnet. This was the novel that Henry James himself considered his finest, and no one is better equipped to put it into literary and historical context than Colm Tóibín, whose award-winning novel The Master depicted the inner life of James in the final years of the nineteenth century.

Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (pub. 2003)

This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of Depression-era America. Set in Ybor City (Tampa) in 1930, Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new “lector” (who reads Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family. Cruz celebrates the search for identity in a new land.

This free lesson helps you use data from the open question (FRQ3) to prep students for their own essays on the exam.

Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska (pub. 1925)

First published in 1925, Anzia Yezierska’s “Bread Givers” is the tale of a young Jewish-American immigrant woman and her struggle to control her own destiny in Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the turn of the century. The novel is based in large part on Yezierska’s own life experiences immigrating from Poland as a child and growing up in New York City in an Orthodox Jewish family. “Bread Givers” centers on the story of its main character, Sara Smolinsky, who lives with her older sisters and parents in a poor tenement in the Lower East Side.

The Smolinsky family is destitute and struggles to make ends meet as the father, Reb, refuses to work and spends all his time studying the Torah and clinging to the traditions of the country he left behind. He arranges unhappy marriages for his older daughters in the hope of becoming rich himself. Sara vows to avoid her sisters’ fates and takes her life into her own hands, pursuing an education and refusing to marry just because it is expected of her. “Bread Givers” is both an engaging portrait of New York at the beginning of the twentieth-century and a timeless tale of a young woman’s journey of self-discovery and determination.

Monkey Hunting by Christina García (pub. 2003)

In this deeply stirring novel, acclaimed author Cristina García follows one extraordinary family through four generations, from China to Cuba to America. Wonderfully evocative of time and place, rendered in the lyrical prose that is García’s hallmark, Monkey Hunting is an emotionally resonant tale of immigration, assimilation, and the prevailing integrity of self.

The Rainbow by Yasunari Kawabata (pub. in serialized form 1950)

With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters—born to the same father but different mothers—struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age. Asako, the younger, has become obsessed with locating a third sibling, while also experiencing love for the first time. While Momoko, their father’s first child—haunted by the loss of her kamikaze boyfriend and their final, disturbing days together—seeks comfort in a series of unhealthy romances. And both sisters find themselves unable to outrun the legacies of their late mothers. A thoughtful, probing novel about the enduring traumas of war, the unbreakable bonds of family, and the inescapability of the past, The Rainbow is a searing, melancholy work from one of Japan’s greatest writers.

Trending Titles

Another thing I do with the titles on the AP Lit open question is to study “trending titles,” the works mentioned the most in the past 10 years. Here are the most suggested titles from the past 10 years:

Great Expectations (7 times)
Wuthering Heights (6 times)
A Raisin in the Sun (6 times)
The Awakening (6 times)
Kindred (6 times)
Jane Eyre (6 times)
Frankenstein (6 times)
Beloved (5 times)
Invisible Man (5 times)
Native Son (5 times)
Passing (5 times)
Fences (5 times)
Brave New World (4 times)
The Scarlet Letter (4 times)
Ceremony (4 times)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (4 times)
A House for Mr. Biswas (4 times)
The Namesake (4 times)
The Nickel Boys (4 times)

Trending titles don’t just show a title’s versatility but can tell us the titles that College Board question writers like to use time and time again. This is the list I study the most when choosing curriculum and cultivating my classroom library.

To get a printout of only the titles used in the past 10 years, you can download this free file here.

Interesting Trends

The last thing I like to do is study the extensive list of ALL titles used on the AP Lit exam. AP Lit goddess Sandra Effinger first compiled this list (which can still be found online here!). I also have a version free in my TpT store and my free resource library. Here are some things I noticed in the titles used (or ignored) from this list:

Out of favor classics

Some “classics” seem to be falling in popularity on the open question. The following titles were popular before, but now are noticeably absent from recent years:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (referenced 15 times but not mentioned since 2013)
Billy Budd (referenced 11 times but not since 2015)
All the Pretty Horses (referenced 8 times but not mentioned since 2013)
As I Lay Dying (referenced 10 times but only mentioned once since 2009)
Jude the Obscure (referenced 10 times but hasn’t been suggested in the past 10 years)
The Jungle (referenced 8 times, but only once since 1996)
Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (referenced 8 times but hasn’t been suggested in the past 10 years)
Hedda Gabler (referenced 6 times, but not since 2005)
Gulliver’s Travels (referenced 6 times, but not since 2009)
The Hairy Ape (referenced 5 times but not since 2000)
The Brothers Karamazov (referenced only twice and not since 2008)
1984 (referenced only once since 2009)

Tried-and-True Titles

In Trevor Packer’s data posts this year, he shared the most common titles that students wrote about for the FRQ 3 Open Question. His list is posted below, alongside how often that title has been suggested on the exam:

Top choices:

Death of a Salesman (12)
Fences (10)
Frankenstein (12)
The Great Gatsby (15)
Romeo and Juliet (5)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (17)

Other frequently chosen texts:

Animal Farm (0)
Anna Karenina (10)
The Awakening (18)
Beloved (17)
Bless Me, Ultima (8)
Brave New World (8)
Ceremony (15)
Crime and Punishment (19)
The Divine Comedy (1)
Great Expectations (26)
The House of Mirth (5)
Invisible Man (33)
Jane Eyre (23)
King Lear (20)
Les Misérables (0)
Macbeth (8)
The Metamorphosis (5)
Native Son (15)
1984 (6)
Othello (13)
Pride and Prejudice (11)
The Scarlet Letter (18)
Song of Solomon (13)
Things Fall Apart (10)
Wuthering Heights (28)

Recap

After the exam, I asked my class what titles they used for the open question. Most used The Kite Runner, which excited me. This was only the second year I used that book as a whole class read and it has definitely paid off. Several more used Frankenstein, our first novel of the year, the rest used independent reads.

I hope you found this data interesting and insightful in making plans for next year. Please bookmark this website and keep it in mind when doing research and preparation for AP Lit. And remember, I have a TpT store with dozens of AP Lit resources, including a download of ALL my AP Lit units (valued at more than $600!)