There is a veritable smorgasbord of fantastic and very well-known French literature. The best known ones, and thus the easiest to find information on in the case of a school project or similar, are as follows (names of some well-known works, but not all, follow):
Honoré de Balzac (1799 - 1850) - La Comedie Humaine
Albert Camus (1913-1960) - L'ètranger, The Plague, The Fall, A Happy Death, The First Man
Colette (1873-1954) - Gigi, Cheri
Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) - The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Nutcracker, The Vicomte de Bragelonne
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) - Jacques the Fatalist
Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) - Le Petit Chose, Tartarin de Tarascon
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) - Madame Bovary
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) - The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Misérables
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) - Remembrance of Things Past
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) - Discourse on Inequality, The Social Contract
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) - No Exit, The Words, The Flies, Being and Nothingness
Gertrude Stein* (1874-1946) - Three Lives, The Making of Americans, How to Write
Jules Verne (1828-1905) - Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, Five Weeks in a Balloon
Voltaire (1694-1778) - Candide
Emile Zola (1840-1902) - L'Oeuvre, La Joie de Vivre
*Born in the US, spent most of life in France.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but should get you started!
Alain Trouve has written: 'La lumiere noire d'Elsa Triolet' -- subject(s): Biography, French Novelists, Novelists, French
Lotte Husung has written: 'Paul Nizan, der \\' -- subject(s): Biography, Communists, French Novelists, Friends and associates, Novelists, French
Violaine Massenet has written: 'Alain-Fournier' -- subject(s): Biography, French Novelists, Novelists, French 'Le sang des ruches'
Marianne Schmutz has written: 'Enfance de Nathalie Sarraute comme autobiographie' -- subject(s): Biography, Criticism and interpretation, French Novelists, Novelists, French
Leah Dianne Hewitt has written: 'Autobiographical tightropes' -- subject(s): Autobiography, Biography, Feminism and literature, French Autobiographical fiction, French Novelists, French Women novelists, French prose literature, History, History and criticism, Women and literature, Women authors
Jean-Pierre Saccani has written: 'Nelson et Simone' -- subject(s): American Novelists, Authors, French, Biography, Feminists, French Authors, Novelists, American, Relations with men, Relations with women
Curtis Cate has written: 'Antoine de Saint-Exupery' -- subject(s): Air pilots, Authors, French, Biography, French Authors 'George Sand' -- subject(s): Biography, French Women novelists, Sand, George, 1804-1876, Women novelists, French 'Andre Malraux' 'Russia 1812'
Milton H. Stansbury has written: 'French novelists of today'
Balzac (1799-1850) is one of the leading French novelists. See the link below.
Victor Hugo, Émile Zola are important novelists of the 19th.
Philip D. Walker has written: 'Zola' -- subject(s): Biography, French Novelists
Notes on Novelists has 360 pages.