| Title | Author | Shortlisted |
|---|
| The Bird of Night | Susan Hill | |
| To Your Scattered Bodies Go | Philip José Farmer | |
| The Complete Stories | Flannery O'Connor | |
| Chimera | John Barth | |
| Gravity's Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon | |
| Dog Soldiers | Robert Stone | |
| The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven | Charles Rosen | |
| Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers | Joseph P. Lash | |
| The Organized War, 1863–1864 | Allan Nevins | |
| Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America | Martin E. Marty | |
| The Blue Whale | George L. Small | |
| The Last Whole Earth Catalogue | Stewart Brand | |
| A Girafa de Vidro | Luis Martins | |
| G. | John Berger | |
| The Lathe of Heaven | Ursula K. Le Guin | |
| Dragonquest | Anne McCaffrey | |
| Jack of Shadows | Roger Zelazny | |
| A Time of Changes | Robert Silverberg | |
| Lion Country | Frederick Buechner | |
| The Book of Daniel | E. L. Doctorow | |
| The Dick Gibson Show | Stanley Elkin | |
| Farragan's Retreat | Tom McHale | |
| Wonderland | Joyce Carol Oates | |
| The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories | Cynthia Ozick | |
| Love in the Ruins | Walker Percy | |
| A Garden of Sand | Earl Thompson | |
| Rabbit Redux | John Updike | |
| The Late Great Creature | Brock Brower | |
| Hermaphrodeity | Alan H. Friedman | |
| Geronimo Rex | Barry Hannah | |
| The Friends of Eddie Coyle | George V. Higgins | |
| The Prince | R. M. Koster | |
| Transparent Things | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| Mumbo Jumbo | Ishmael Reed | |
| The Confessions of a Child of the Century | Thomas Rogers | |
| Enemies, A Love Story | Isaac Bashevis Singer | |
| The Optimist's Daughter | Eudora Welty | |
| Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories | Doris Betts | |
| The World of Apples | John Cheever | |
| Apostles of Light | Ellen Douglas | |
| Searches and Seizures | Stanley Elkin | |
| Nickel Mountain | John Gardner | |
| Black Conceit | John Leonard | |
| Ninety-Two in the Shade | Thomas McGuane | |
| People Will Always Be Kind | Wilfrid Sheed | |
| Burr | Gore Vidal | |
| State of Grace | Joy Williams | |
| Guilty Pleasures | Donald Barthelme | |
| The Odd Woman | Gail Godwin | |
| Something Happened | Joseph Heller | |
| Sula | Toni Morrison | |
| Look at the Harlequins! | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| Enormous Changes at the Last Minute | Grace Paley | |
| My Life As a Man | Philip Roth | |
| The Death of the Detective | Mark Smith | |
| Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature | M. H. Abrams | |
| Sorties | James Dickey | |
| Imagination and Power: A Study of Poetry on Public Themes | Thomas R. Edwards | |
| Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel | Norman Fruman | |
| Fact and Symbol: Essays in the Sociology of Art and Literature | César Graña | |
| Ballet Chronicle | B. H. Haggin | |
| Harlem Renaissance | Nathan Huggins | |
| Images and Shadows | Iris Origo | |
| Movies into Films: Film Criticism, 1967–1970 | John Simon | |
| After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson | John Cody | |
| Charles Demuth: Behind A Laughing Mask | Emily Farnham | |
| Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly | David Freeman Hawke | |
| James Madison: A Biography | Ralph Ketcham | |
| Inside, Looking Out: A Personal Memoir | Harding Lemay | |
| Indian Man: A Life of Oliver La Farge | D'Arcy McNickle | |
| Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times | Ronald Paulson | |
| Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty | Lacey Baldwin Smith | |
| Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 | Barbara Tuchman | |
| Pasmore | David Storey | |
| The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith | Thomas Keneally | |