The undeniably prolific Eudora Welty published more than a dozen books of short stories, essays, and novels over the course of her life. Added together, her Collected Stories are over 600 pages long.

So, in honor of what would have been Welty's 99th birthday, we asked our book experts to recommend their favorite long books—the ones that are really, truly worth the time it takes to read them.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren is a sci-fi behemoth spanning 801 pages. The first chapter starts mid-sentence, and the rest of the novel is just as disorienting. Kidd, a drifter suffering from amnesia, finds himself in the mysterious city of Bellona, lit by a giant sun and two moons. Enigmatic and complex, Dhalgren is worth a read, especially for fans of the sci-fi genre. —Crystal Chen, Muhlenberg

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson.  Teen thief Vin joins a group of superpowered grifters in their attempt to overthrow a godlike emperor. Secrets, snark, and fight scenes abound in this thrilling tale. —Althea Georges, Mosholu

The Black Prism by Brent Weeks is the first book in a world where people known as drafters can harness light and transform it into luxin, a substance that can be gas, liquid, or solid. Amazing world-building, military power, and political subterfuge give rise to an empire. Follow the stories of several characters: a fraud ruler, an aspiring bastard son, a slave enlisted as a spy, and a turncoat. You will be pulled into an unforgiving world... until you finish all 688 pages and move on to book two! —Alexander Mouyios, 67^th Street

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke is a “fantasy of manners” — imagine Tad Williams by way of Charles Dickens — where magic is restored to England in time to fight Napoleon.  Clarke supplements her matter-of-fact, arch voice with fake footnotes for verisimilitude. And there’s a BBC miniseries adaptation waiting for you at the end of the 1,000-page tunnel. —Meredith Mann, Manuscripts and Rare Books

Dave Duncan’s The King’s Blade series. I went out and bought a Sony e-reader when the Library started its first round of ebooks. There are orphans, a rebellion, traders, loyalists, and magic; marriage and time travel, kingdoms and the king’s blade. We have two of the series on ebook and available on SimplyE: The Sky of Swords and The Gilded Chain. —Alison Williams, Parkchester

History, Psychology, Mythology

Historian Annette Gordon-Reed weaves a massive pile of research together into the important but little known story of the children of master Thomas Jefferson and slave Sally Hemings in The Hemingses of Monticello. —David Nochimson, Pelham Parkway-Van Nest 

For those who enjoy mythology, Shanemah: The Persian Book of Kings is an excellent introduction to Persian culture and poetry, and luckily can be read piecemeal as it weighs in at 1,040 pages. —Liz Baldwin, Mid-Manhattan

I devoured Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. Before he created The Wire and Treme, Simon was a cub reporter at the Baltimore Sun who spent a year embedded with the city’s homicide detectives. It’s 646 pages of police procedures, personalities, and investigations, and it remains all too relevant. —Charlie Radin, Inwood

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. A deep dive into our shared biases and misconceptions cleverly categorized as System 1 and System 2 (or, fast thinking and slow thinking) that I would recommend to anyone, if they could get through a dense, fascinating and insightful 400+-page read. The book chronicles at least half a century worth of insightful experiments in psychology that reveal various cognitive biases that all humans seem to possess. —Andrey Syroyezhkin, Dorot Jewish Division

Hamilton by Ron Chernow. I swear I am not biased because I am seeing the Broadway play in a couple of days. This was the basis for said Broadway play. Hamilton toes the line of being informative without being dry and, by the end of the book, you feel as if you know the complex character that is Alexander Hamilton. —Grace Loiacono, St. George

Horror & Mystery

Thirst, No. 1 by Christopher Pike is a 594-page omnibus composed of the The Last Vampire, Black Blood and Red Dice. The epic series tells the story of Alisa, a 5,000-year-old vampire on the run from her creator. Alisa finds her way to Ray, whom she needs to survive… but as she gets closer to him and begins to fall in love, his life is threatened. —Lilian Calix, Hamilton Grange

The Stand by Stephen King. I read it in college and literally could not put it down. A powerful post-apocalyptic story of good and evil. —Nicole Rosenbluth, Pelham Bay

Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian is 704 pages of Vlad the Impaler (Bram Stoker’s Dracula is only 488 pages, by comparison). Her new work, The Shadow Land, is about Bulgaria and comes in at a slightly less weighty 496 pages. —Jenny Baum, Jefferson Market

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears is an engrossing literary murder mystery set in Restoration England, complete with all the dirt, squalor, and brutality one might expect to find in the 17^th century. It also offers four narrators of varying degrees of reliability and an exploration of the scientific inquiry percolating at the time. (Four different versions of a story in 691 pages: not a bad time investment.) —Elizabeth Waters, Mid-Manhattan

Historical Fiction

Not every historian can turn a scholarly study into an engaging, thought-provoking page-turner that has the potential to excite enthusiasts and turn on masses of new readers whose knowledge of (and interest in) the subject at hand is limited or even non-existent. Mary Beard, classical studies professor and researcher extraordinaire, possesses that rare ability; her hefty, but hard-to-put-down exploration of Ancient Rome, SPQR, is a wonderful example of a book that can appeal to just about any lover of a good, juicy story. And, in this case, the juicy story told by Beard is one that helps us to understand a great deal about how modern politics and the modern world were shaped. —Jeff Katz, Chatham Square 

The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison Salisbury. This 635-pager is stunning narrative nonfiction about the (you guessed it) 900-day siege of Leningrad by the Nazis during World War II. Harrison Salisbury was in Leningrad right after the city fell and was able to interview many survivors. Little details still stick in my head, despite reading this tome over a decade ago.—Kate Fais, Bloomingdale

For readers who like to curl up and wheeze under the weight of a good long novel, I’d remind them of Herman Wouk’s fictional two-fer following an American family caught up in World War II, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Together they make over 1,800 pages of well-researched, un-put-downable, globe-spanning drama. Wouk, who turns 102 in May, wrote with a cinematographic flair that helped a post-Vietnam generation of Americans understand the horrors of the holocaust and the emotional drain of being caught up in a world-wide conflict. —Christopher Platt, Library Administration

All of the action in The Brothers Karamazov unfolds slowly, so that the passage of time in the novel feels like the passage of time in life. This means that the book is big--both in size and in scope. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece is worth it! The patient reader will be exposed to philosophical and spiritual wisdom that sticks with you long after finishing the novel. I recommend Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation. (Because I can’t resist plugging a program: we’re having a four-session seminar on it at Jefferson Market this summer starting May 25, meeting every two weeks. Sign-up starts May 18!) —Nancy Aravecz, Jefferson Market

An eerie cross between a fairy tale, dreamy philosophy, and a soap opera, Cao Xueqin’s Story of the Stone (also known as “Dream of the Red Chamber”) is unlike any other story I’ve read before. While readers may come for the alluring otherworldly creation tale that introduces the book’s first volume, they will surely stay for the unfolding, tragic romance between Bao-yu and Dai-yu, which the reader witnesses throughout the over-2,300 pages of this absolutely captivating classic work of Chinese fiction. —Benjamin Fairweather, Seward Park

Fall of Giants (Century Trilogy #1) by Ken Follett. A sprawling historical epic that delves into the social and political upheavals of the early 20^th century. Starting in 1911, it follows five families whose lives slowly become entwined through war, revolution, and fights for equality. There’s a Welsh coal mining family, the aristocratic family whose land they live on, an ambitious aide to President Woodrow Wilson and two Russian brothers who want to immigrate to America. Readers will be engrossed through all 985 pages; it’s a great read-alike for anyone who misses Downton Abbey or loves Doctor Zhivago. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street

Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks’ doorstopper, is a heavily fictionalized retelling of the life of John Brown, the famous abolitionist. Although the historical details have been altered for the sake of the plot, the novel really captures the feeling of living in a divided nation on the brink of war. —Benjamin Sapadin, Morris Park 

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is a wonderful novel linking the code-breakers of WWII to today’s computer geeks. This one broke me out of a month-long reading slump when nothing I read was catching my attention. —Judd Karlman, Pelham Bay

Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle, each book of which hovers around 900 pages, but which can also be downloaded as a bundle for the full immersive experience. And an experience it is. As with everything he writes, this series is fast-paced, complex, and filled with an unbelievable level of detail (much of it, in this case, historical). As a bonus, it’s technically a prequel to Cryptonomicon, which is itself over 1000 pages, and worth every one. —Kay Menick, Schomburg Center

No list of doorstoppers can be considered complete without James Clavell's 1000+ page epic, Shogun. After surviving a shipwreck, John Blackthorn and his crew are embroiled in a burgeoning civil war in medieval Japan. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil

Julie Orringer’s The Invisible Bridge is the fastest 784 pages I have ever read. It’s a World War II love story between a young, Jewish architecture student and the much older woman to whom he delivers a letter containing a dark secret. Fans of The Nightingale will devour this sprawling epic. —Ronni Krasnow, Morningside Heights

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Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend. And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for more recommendations!