Novels

• The Sins of Philip Fleming: A Compelling Novel of One Man's Intimate Problem (1959)
• The Chapman Report (1961)
• The Prize (1962)
• The Man (1964)
• The Three Sirens (1964)
• The Plot (1967)
• The Seven Minutes (1969)
• The Word (1972)
• The Fan Club (1974)
• The R Document (1976)
• The Pigeon Project (1979)
• The Second Lady (1980)
• The Almighty (1982)
• The Miracle (1984 / 2005)
• The Seventh Secret (1985) (with an additional chapter by Tom Posch in the Dutch translation of 1989 )
• The Celestial Bed (1987)
• The Golden Room (1988)
• The Guest of Honor (1989)

Non-fiction

• Lives of Extraordinary People Who Inspired Memorable Characters in Fiction (1955)
• Some Americans Who Dared to Be Different (1958)
• The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P.T. Barnum (1959)
• The Twenty-Seventh Wife (1961)
• The Sunday Gentleman (1966) (non-fiction)
• Writing of One Novel (1968)
• The Lives, the Loves and the Sexual Adventures of Some Scandalous and Liberated Ladies (1971)
• The People's Almanac (1975) (with David Wallechinsky)
• Stardust to Prairie Dust (1976)
• The Book of Lists (1977) (with David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace)
• Biography of The Original Siamese Twins (1978) (with Amy Wallace)
• The People's Almanac No. 2 (1978) (with David Wallechinsky)
• The Book of Lists 2 (1980) (with Amy Wallace and David Wallechinsky)
• The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (1981)
• The Book of Lists 3 (1983) (with Amy Wallace and David Wallechinsky)
• Significa (1983) (with Amy Wallace and David Wallechinsky)
• Secret Sex Lives of Famous People (1993)

• "To be one's self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity."
• "If successful novelists had a formula, they would not have failures, and I know of no novelist who has not had a failure at one time or another."
• "Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure."
• "We have placed security in a position of primacy and subordinated individual liberty to it."