A father and son walk south through ash and ruin after an unspecified apocalypse. McCarthy stripped his already spare prose down to its bones for this 2006 novel. No chapters, no names, and a tenderness so extreme it is almost unbearable against the surrounding horror. Won the Pulitzer. Oprah picked it for her book club, which tells you something about its emotional directness.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.