Distinct not working with LINQ to Objects

The Distinct() method checks reference equality for reference types. This means it is looking for literally the same object duplicated, not different objects which contain the same values.

There is an overload which takes an IEqualityComparer, so you can specify different logic for determining whether a given object equals another.

If you want Author to normally behave like a normal object (i.e. only reference equality), but for the purposes of Distinct check equality by name values, use an IEqualityComparer. If you always want Author objects to be compared based on the name values, then override GetHashCode and Equals, or implement IEquatable.

The two members on the IEqualityComparer interface are Equals and GetHashCode. Your logic for determining whether two Author objects are equal appears to be if the First and Last name strings are the same.

public class AuthorEquals : IEqualityComparer<Author>
{
    public bool Equals(Author left, Author right)
    {
        if((object)left == null && (object)right == null)
        {
            return true;
        }
        if((object)left == null || (object)right == null)
        {
            return false;
        }
        return left.FirstName == right.FirstName && left.LastName == right.LastName;
    }

    public int GetHashCode(Author author)
    {
        return (author.FirstName + author.LastName).GetHashCode();
    }
}

There is one more way to get distinct values from list of user defined data type:

YourList.GroupBy(i => i.Id).Select(i => i.FirstOrDefault()).ToList();

Surely, it will give distinct set of data

Another solution without implementing IEquatable, Equals and GetHashCode is to use the LINQs GroupBy method and to select the first item from the IGrouping.

var temp = books.SelectMany(book => book.Authors)
                .GroupBy (y => y.FirstName + y.LastName )
                .Select (y => y.First ());

foreach (var author in temp){
  Console.WriteLine(author.FirstName + " " + author.LastName);
}

LINQ Distinct is not that smart when it comes to custom objects.

All it does is look at your list and see that it has two different objects (it doesn't care that they have the same values for the member fields).

One workaround is to implement the IEquatable interface as shown here.

If you modify your Author class like so it should work.

public class Author : IEquatable<Author>
{
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }

    public bool Equals(Author other)
    {
        if (FirstName == other.FirstName && LastName == other.LastName)
            return true;

        return false;
    }

    public override int GetHashCode()
    {
        int hashFirstName = FirstName == null ? 0 : FirstName.GetHashCode();
        int hashLastName = LastName == null ? 0 : LastName.GetHashCode();

        return hashFirstName ^ hashLastName;
    }
}

Try it as DotNetFiddle