44 Novels set during the Vietnam War

Actress in the House is Joseph McElroy's eighth novel. Lawyer Bill Daley follows up an unusual phone call from stage actress Becca Lang by attending her show. Daley is appalled when Becca is slugged rather brutally in what was clearly supposed to have been a stage slap. He stays afterwards, and she moves into his life.

The Alleys of Eden is the first published novel of Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler, first published in 1981.

ARC Riders is a 1995 time travel/alternate history novel by David Drake and Janet Morris.

Back in the USSA is a 1997 collection of seven short stories by English writers Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman, which was published by Mark V. Ziesing Books. The title is a reference to the song "Back in the U.S.S.R." by The Beatles. The stories are linked through their setting, an alternate history of the twentieth century in which the United States experienced a communist revolution in 1917 and became a communist superpower, whereas Russia did not. Six of the stories first appeared in Interzone magazine, and the concluding story in the sequence, "On the Road", was written especially for the collection.

The Barracks Thief is a novella by American writer Tobias Wolff, first published in 1984. The story concerns paratroopers in training during the time of the Vietnam war.

The Betrayers is the tenth novel in the Matt Helm spy series by Donald Hamilton, which originated with Death of a Citizen in 1960. This novel was first published in 1966. It was reissued in 2014 by Titan Books.

Edge of Eternity is a historical and family saga novel by Welsh-born author Ken Follett, published in 2014. It is the third book in the Century Trilogy, after Fall of Giants and Winter of the World.

Fallen Angels is a 1988 young-adult novel written by Walter Dean Myers, about the Vietnam War. It won the 1988 Coretta Scott King Award. Fallen Angels is listed as number 16 in the American Library Association's list of 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000 due to its use of profanity and realistic depiction of the war.

Fields of Fire is a novel by U.S. Senator Jim Webb, first published in 1978. It follows the lives of several Marines serving in the Vietnam War.

First Blood is a 1972 American action-thriller novel by David Morrell about a troubled homeless Vietnam War veteran, known only by his last name of Rambo, who wages a brutal one-man war against local and state police in Kentucky. It was notably adapted into the 1982 film First Blood starring Sylvester Stallone, which ended up spawning an entire media franchise around the Rambo character.

Flight of the Intruder is a novel written by Stephen Coonts in 1986, telling the stories of United States Navy aviators flying the A-6 Intruder – a two-man, all-weather, aircraft carrier based strike aircraft on missions during the Vietnam War. The main character is Jake "Cool Hand" Grafton, a naval aviator who appears in a series of sequels. The book, which was made into a movie of the same name and adapted into a video game, marked the beginning of Stephen Coonts' career as a best-selling novelist.

Going After Cacciato is an anti-war novel written by Tim O'Brien and first published by Delacorte Press in 1978. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. O'Brien himself says that "Going After Cacciato is a war novel however this is a controversial idea due to the fact that the book is about a soldier going AWOL."

Highways to a War is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Christopher Koch.

The Immolation is the second novel by Goh Poh Seng, a playwright, poet and novelist who was also a practising doctor. The book was first published by Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) in 1977 under the Writing in Asia Series and republished by Epigram Books in 2011 under the Singapore Classics Series. It concerns freedom fighters in an unnamed Southeast Asian country, which can be inferred from the novel to be Vietnam.

In the Lake of the Woods (1994) is a novel by the American author Tim O'Brien. Related to the Vietnam War, In the Lake of the Woods follows the struggle of John Wade to deal with a recently failed campaign for the United States Senate. After moving to Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota, John discovers one morning that his wife, Kathy, is missing. Through flashbacks to John's childhood, college years, and war experiences, as well as testimony and evidence from affected characters, the novel provides several hypotheses for Kathy's disappearance, without resolving the question.

Inside Out & Back Again is a verse novel by Thanhha Lai. The book was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and one of the two Newbery Honors. The novel was based on her first year in the United States, as a ten-year-old girl who spoke no English in 1975.

The Khaki Mafia is a novel about the Vietnam War by Robin Moore and June Collins, published by Crown in 1971. Collins was an entertainer who had performed for US troops in Vietnam and later testified before a U.S. Senate committee about corruption among senior military personnel. The novel's lead character, an entertainer named Jody T. Neale, is based on Collins, who used the professional name Junie Moon, and the plot details diversion of taxpayer money and other criminal activities by U.S. military officials in the war zone.

Koko is an American horror-mystery novel written by Peter Straub and first published in the United States in 1988 by EP Dutton, and in Great Britain by Viking. It was the winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1989.

Krigaren is a 2001 novel by Swedish writer Björn Ranelid.

Letters From Wolfie is a children's novel by Patti Sherlock. It is about Mark Cantrell, a boy living in the United States during the Vietnam War, and his dog, Wolfie. The novel was inspired by real events, and has a strong anti-war sentiment. Letters from Wolfie won the 2005 Merial Human-Animal Bond Award from the Dog Writers Association of America and was nominated for the Young Readers Medal in California, the Young Reader's Choice Award in Rhode Island, and the Maine Student Book Award. It has been translated into Japanese.

The Lotus and the Storm is a novel about war and its casualties by Lan Cao. Cao is professor of international law at the Chapman University School of Law. She left Vietnam in 1975.

The Lotus Eaters (2010) is a novel by Tatjana Soli. It tells the story of an American woman who goes to war-torn Vietnam as a combat photojournalist and finds herself in a love triangle with two men. The novel was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

The Man From Saigon is 2009 novel by Marti Leimbach.

A Matter of Time is a novel by Glen Cook, combining elements of science fiction, crime fiction and spy thriller. In regard to the last, the novel in particular takes up and expands the theme of American prisoners of war being brainwashed in Communist China and their loyalties reversed – a theme made famous through the novel The Manchurian Candidate and film made on its basis.

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War is a novel by American author and decorated Marine Karl Marlantes. It was first published by El Leon Literary Arts in 2009 and re-issued as a major publication of Atlantic Monthly Press on March 23, 2010.

Meditations in Green is the first novel written by Stephen Wright. First published in 1983, it is an account of Spec. 4 James Griffin's tour in Vietnam.

Message From Nam is a romantic novel, written by American Danielle Steel and published by Dell Publishing in October 1990. It is Steel's 26th novel.

Monkey Bridge, published in 1997, is the debut novel of Vietnamese American attorney and writer Lan Cao. Cao is a professor of international law at Chapman University School of Law. She fled Vietnam in 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War. In addition to Monkey Bridge, Cao also co-authored Everything You Need to Know about Asian American History with Himilce Novas.

No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again is a 2003 novel by Edgardo Vega Yunqué. The author has called it a "jazz novel."

Only The Heart is a novel written by Brian Caswell and David Phu An Chiem about the Vietnamese boat people. It was first published in 1997. In contrast to Caswell's mainly futuristic style, such as his widely acclaimed Deucalion series, this book is written in the present-past style. The book is said to be based on David's life. The book is classified as young adult fiction and is one of the most successful books by the author.

Palace Council is a 2008 thriller novel by American author Stephen L. Carter. The book was Carter's third work of fiction.

The Phantom Blooper: A Novel of Vietnam is a 1990 novel written by Gustav Hasford and the sequel to The Short-Timers (1979). It continues to follow James T. "Joker" Davis through his Vietnam odyssey. The book was supposed to be the second of a "Vietnam Trilogy", but Hasford died before writing the third installment.

The Quiet American is a 1955 novel by English author Graham Greene.

Saigon is a novel by Anthony Grey. Saigon follows the lives of three families, one American, one French, and the other Vietnamese, from the French colonial era in the early 1920s until the last helicopter left Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.

The Sentimentalists is a novel by Canadian writer Johanna Skibsrud that was the winner of the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

The Short-Timers is a 1979 semi-autobiographical novel by U.S. Marine Corps veteran Gustav Hasford, about his experience in the Vietnam War. Hasford served as a combat correspondent with the 1st Marine Division during the Tet Offensive of 1968. As a military journalist, he wrote stories for Leatherneck Magazine, Pacific Stars and Stripes, and Sea Tiger. The novel was adapted into the film Full Metal Jacket (1987) by Hasford, Michael Herr, and Stanley Kubrick.

Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay is a novel by William Boyd, published by Bloomsbury in 2015. A fictional autobiography supposedly written by a woman, Amory Clay, born in 1908, it includes extracts from her diary, written on a Hebridean island in 1977, with flashbacks from her career as a photographer in London, Scotland, France, Germany, the United States, Mexico and Vietnam. The book also includes more than 70 photographs, collected by Boyd, most of which are attributed to her.

The Sympathizer is the 2015 debut novel by Vietnamese-American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen. It is a best-selling novel and recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Its reviews have generally recognized its excellence, and it was named a New York Times Editor's Choice.

A Tract of Time is an antiwar novel from 1966 by Smith Hempstone, that covers the time period about 1960, when there was an attempted coup of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Even as the United States backed Diem's government during the war, its American advisers worked with the Montagnard people who opposed Diem, to help them fight the Viet Cong, whom they also opposed. The book follows one CIA operative, Harry Coltart, as he works with the Montagnard mountain tribesmen in the Central Highlands. Harry is initially successful in getting the Montagnards to fight against the Viet Cong, but then the Montagnards are betrayed and South Vietnamese troops are sent in. Harry has to be rescued as the Montagnards join the Viet Cong.

Tree of Smoke is a 2007 novel by American author Denis Johnson which won the National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It is about a man named Skip Sands who joins the CIA in 1965, and begins working in Vietnam during the American involvement there. The time frame of the novel is from 1963 to 1970, with a coda set in 1983. One of the protagonists of Tree of Smoke is Bill Houston, who was the main character in Johnson's 1983 debut novel Angels.

Tucker's Last Stand is a 1990 Blackford Oakes novel by William F. Buckley, Jr. It is the ninth of 11 novels in the series.

Ugly Rumours was the first novel by American writer Tobias Wolff. It was published only in Britain, in 1975, and has never been reprinted. The book does not appear in Wolff's list of publications included in recent books—the London Review of Books commented on this omission, stating that "to read (Ugly Rumours) is to understand why "—and when his novel Old School was published in 2004, all publicity copy referred to it as his first novel.

Why Are We In Vietnam? (WWVN) is a 1967 novel by the American author Norman Mailer. It focuses on a hunting trip to the Brooks Range in Alaska where a young man is brought by his father, a wealthy businessman who works for a company that makes cigarette filters and is obsessed with killing a grizzly bear. As the novel progresses, the protagonist is increasingly disillusioned that his father resorts to hunting tactics that seem dishonest and weak, including the use of a helicopter and taking credit for killing a bear. At the end of the novel, the protagonist tells the reader that he is soon going to serve in the Vietnam War as a soldier.

Without Remorse is a thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and published on August 11, 1993. Set during the Vietnam War, it serves as an origin story of John Clark, one of the recurring characters in the Ryanverse. Without Remorse introduces Clark as former Navy SEAL John Kelly and explains how he changed his name. G.P. Putnam's Sons paid $14 million for the North American rights, a record for a single book. The book debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.