Best Sellers & Award Winners
Books that won awards or sold tons of copies. Just trust us on these, okay?
Last updated: August 2023
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by A 2022 best seller and winner/nominee of multiple awards. A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a deeply layered and insightful testament to people who are left out of the archives.
Black Girl, Call Home by A 2022 Stonewall Honor Book in Literature. From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity.
Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus by A 2022 National Book Award finalist in Nonfiction. Tells the story of the worldwide scientific race to decipher the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, trace its source, and make possible the vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
By the Sea by A novel by the 2021 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah. Saleh Omar used to be a furniture-shop owner, house owner, husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker. When he meets Latif, a voluntary refugee, in a small English seaside town, there begins an unravelling of a story begun long ago.
Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History. A gripping account of Indigenous justice in early America, and how the aftermath of a settler’s murder of a Native American man led to the oldest continuously recognized treaty in the United States.
Cuba: An American History by Won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History. An original and compelling history, spanning five centuries, of the island that became an obsession for many presidents and policy makers, transforming how we think about the U.S. in Latin America, and Cuba in American society.
Dear Miss Metropolitan: A Novel by A finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Introducing an extraordinary and original writer in Carolyn Ferrell whose first novel Dear Miss Metropolitan explores the intersections of grief and rage, personal strength and healing--and what we owe one another.
A Desolation Called Peace by Winner of the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel. “A dizzying, exhilarating story of diplomacy, conspiracy, and first contact . . . This complex, stunning space opera promises to reshape the genre.”―Publishers Weekly, starred review
The Doctors Blackwell: How two pioneering sisters brought medicine to women--and women to medicine by A finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize. A vivid biography of two pioneering sisters who, together, became America's first female doctors and transformed New York's medical establishment by creating a hospital by and for women.
Easy Beauty: A Memoir by A 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Memoir or Autobiography. A New York Times Notable Book of 2022. A spellbinding and brutally honest memoir drawing on art, travel, cultural observation and philosophical scholarship to convey the full experience of life as a disabled person whose view of humanity becomes increasingly compassionate.
Every Body Looking by A 2021 Printz Award Honor Book. In this novel in verse, Ada recounts her freshman year as a first generation student attending a Historically Black College, while simultaneously taking the reader through her younger life.
Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story) by Winner of multiple awards in 2021. In an autobiographical novel, Daniel, formerly Khosrou, tells his unimpressed and at times cruel classmates about his experience as an Iranian refugee.
Far Sector by 2022 Hugo Award winner for best Graphic Story or Comic. For the past six months, newly chosen Green Lantern Sojourner "Jo" Mullein has been protecting the City Enduring, a massive metropolis of 20 billion people. The city has maintained peace for over 500 years by stripping its citizens of their ability to feel. As a result, violent crime is virtually unheard of, and murder is nonexistent. But that's all about to change.
Firekeeper's Daughter by A 2022 New York Times Best Seller and 2022 Michael L. Printz Award winner. A groundbreaking young adult thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community.
Freedom's Dominion: An Epic of White Resistance to Federal Power by 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History. A resonant account of an Alabama county in the 19th and 20th centuries shaped by settler colonialism and slavery, a portrait that illustrates the evolution of white supremacy by drawing powerful connections between anti-government and racist ideologies.
From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Selected for the 2022 longlist for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature. Extensively researched from court transcripts, contemporary news accounts, and in-person interviews with key participants, this book is a suspenseful, nuanced, and authoritative portrait of a pivotal moment in civil rights history, and a man who became a symbol against hatred and racism.
Hell of a Book: A Novel by The 2021 National Book Award Winner for Fiction. An astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole.
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction. A landmark biography by two that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing--telling the story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.
Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism by A 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Nonfiction. An eye-opening global investigation into the deradicalization of violent extremists that impeccably balances empathy and skepticism.
The Immortal King Rao by A finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. About a tech genius turned exile and the daughter who is struggling to break free of his hold, a complicated family saga that is also an ambitious novel exploring topics such as climate change and the legacy of colonialism in a vibrant and surprisingly humorous voice.
Intimacies by An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home. She's drawn into simmering personal dramas and explosive political fires. A 2021 National Book Award finalist.
Invisible Child by 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner in General Nonfiction. An affecting, deeply reported account of a girl who comes of age during New York City’s homeless crisis–a portrait of resilience amid institutional failure that successfully merges literary narrative with policy analysis.
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by A 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Nonfiction. A beguiling and original geopolitical account of how China’s international prominence was made possible by the preservation and modernization of the Chinese language and the integration of Mandarin into global communication.
The Legend of Auntie Po by A 2021 National Book Award Finalist in Young People's Literature. Part historical fiction, part fable, and 100 percent adventure. Thirteen-year-old Mei reimagines the myths of Paul Bunyan as starring a Chinese heroine while she works in a Sierra Nevada logging camp in 1885.
A Master of Djinn by Won the 2021 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Though Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she's certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood, Agent Fatma is called onto the case.
Matrix by Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. This book is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world. A 2022 best-seller and 2021 National Book Award finalist.
Me (Moth) by A finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, written by a JMU alumna. A debut young adult novel-in-verse about a teen girl who is grieving the deaths of her family, and a teen boy who crosses her path.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by A 2021 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction. Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative.
Monkey Boy: A Novel by A 2022 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. A Guatemalan-American writer returns to the Boston suburb of his youth in this novel "full of rebellious comedy and vitality" (New Yorker).
Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century by A 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Biography. A sweeping, eloquent, and deeply insightful portrait of the choreographer who reinvented ballet as an American art form, a man whose life was full of urgent passions and faults.
The Night Watchman by Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Based on the extraordinary life of the author's grandfather, who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
Palmares by A 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction. The epic rendering of a Black woman's journey through slavery and liberation, set in 17th-century colonial Brazil.
Parable of the Sower; a Graphic Novel Adaptation by The 2021 Hugo Award Winner for Best Graphic Story or Comic. A powerful adaptation of Octavia Butler's iconic book.
The President and the Frog by A 2022 finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award. At his modest home on the edge of town, the former president of an unnamed Latin American country receives a journalist in his famed gardens to discuss his legacy and the dire circumstances that threaten democracy around the globe. Ferrying us between a grim jail cell and the president's lush gardens, the tale reaches beyond all borders and invites us to reimagine what it means to lead, to dare, and to dream.
Punks: New and Selected Poems by Winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry. A landmark collection of poetry. The many voices that emerge in these poems--from historic Black personalities, both familial and famous, to the poet's friends and lovers in gay bars and bedrooms--form a cast of characters capable of addressing desire, oppression, AIDS, and grief through sorrowful songs that "we sing as hard as we live."
The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LBGTQ game makers are reimagining the medium of video games by The 2021 Stonewall Book Awards winner in nonfiction. Twenty interviews with twenty-two queer video game developers whose radical, experimental, vibrant, and deeply queer work is driving a momentous shift in the medium of video games.
Radiant Fugitives by A 2022 finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award. Working as a consultant for Kamala Harris's attorney general campaign in Obama-era San Francisco, Seema has constructed a successful life for herself in the West, despite still struggling with her father's long-ago decision to exile her from the family after she came out as lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the Black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks solace in the company of those she once thought lost to her.
Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by A finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in History. Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining thousands of acres of their homeland in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their roles as sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods, which made them key players in the political economy of plunder that drove white settlement and U.S. development in the Old Northwest. But, as Michael Witgen demonstrates, the credit for Native persistence rested with the Anishinaabeg themselves. Outnumbering white settlers well into the nineteenth century, they leveraged their political savvy to advance a dual citizenship that enabled mixed-race tribal members to lay claim to a place in U.S. civil society.
Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction by A 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction. A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces.
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction. An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America.
Stay True: A Memoir by The 2023 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Memoir or Autobiography. An elegant and poignant coming of age account that considers intense, youthful friendships but also random violence that can suddenly and permanently alter the presumed logic of our personal narratives.
Still Life: Poems by A 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Poetry, named a best book of 2023 by NPR and Time magazine, and longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award. Confronted with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Jay Hopler got to work. The result of that labor is this collection of poems that are heartbreaking, terrifying, and deeply, darkly hilarious.
Then the War by Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. A new collection of poems; a luminous testimony to the power of self-reckoning and to Carl Phillips as an ever-changing, necessary voice in contemporary poetry.
The Thirty Names of Night by A 2021 Stonewall Book Award Winner. A novel about three generations of Syrian Americans haunted by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts--a "vivid exploration of loss, art, queer and trans communities, and the persistence of history.
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure by A 2021 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry. A collection inspired by Hoa's mother, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-woman Vietnamese circus troupe, is verse meditation on Vietnam's diaspora.
Trust by The 2023 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City's elite in the roaring '20s and Great Depression.
Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by A 2023 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction. From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation.
Watergate: A New History by Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in History and a New York Times best seller. A definitive narrative history of Watergate, exploring the full scope of the scandal through the politicians, investigators, journalists, and informants who made it the most influential political event of the modern era.
What Noise Against the Cane by A 2021 National Book Awards Finalist in Poetry. A lyrical and polyvocal exploration of what it means to fight for yourself.
The White Mosque: A Memoir by Written by Sofia Samatar, Associate Professor of English at JMU, this book is a 2023 finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. A historical tapestry of border-crossing travelers, of students, wanderers, martyrs and invaders, The White Mosque is a memoiristic, prismatic record of a journey through Uzbekistan and of the strange shifts, encounters, and accidents that combine to create an identity.
The Wrong End of the Telescope by Winner of the 2022 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. A novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island.
Zorrie by A 2021 National Book Award finalist. A poignant novel about a woman searching for her place in the world and finding it in the daily rhythms of life in rural Indiana.
Find more best-sellers and award-winning books in these lists:
- Hugo Award Winners - literary awards given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, organized by the World Science Fiction Society
- National Book Awards winners by year - American literary awards from the National Book Foundation
- National Book Critics Circle Award - American literary awards from the National Book Critics Circle
- Nebula Awards - Awards presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association
- Nobel Prize in Literature - Swedish literature prize awarded annually from the Swedish Academy
- PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction - awards for the best works of fiction by living American citizens from the PEN/Faulkner Foundation
- Pulitzer Prizes - awards for achievements in newspaper, journalism, literature, and musical composition, administered by Columbia University
- Stonewall Book Awards - award for GLBT books, sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association
- Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature - award for the best book written for teens, sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association
- New York Times Best Sellers Lists
- USA Today Best-Selling Books
- OCLC "The Library 100" - The top 100 novels of all time found in libraries across the globe.