Booklist Reader

Published by Booklist, an imprint of the American Library Association. Booklist Reader features diverse book and audiobook recommendations, for readers and listeners of all ages. Filled with high-interest, themed lists that showcase books for your family or book discussion group.

From the Publisher

Booklist Reader

Top 10 First Novels • The 10 dazzling adult debuts below introduce marvelously rendered settings, unforgettable characters, and 10 authors we can’t wait to see second novels from.

Recent First Novels of India • These first novels about India and the Indian diaspora, all by writers connected to India, are brilliantly imagined, compassionate, dramatic, and comedic as they offer intriguing characters, difficult and ludicrous predicaments, transfixing stories, shrewd satire, and sharp and resonant social commentary.

What Carnegie Medal Winners Percival Everett and Kevin Fedarko Want You to Read • Each year we ask the six finalists for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction to create and share reading lists related to their books. We’re now happy to present the recommendations of the 2025 Carnegie winners: Percival Everett for James and Kevin Fedarko for A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon. Both writers went deep, calling up classics of renewed relevance.

Read-alikes Women Friends for Life • Novels about circles of women friends have long fascinated readers, reaching back to The Group, by Mary McCarthy, which tracks the lives of eight women who graduated from Vassar College in 1933, and another landmark work, Waiting to Exhale, by Terry McMillan. This list of recommended female-friendship titles was inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s recently published Dream Count, an intricate tale laced with psychological and social complexities revolving around the lives of four women friends. You will find other manyfaceted literary novels here as well as popularfiction titles that tilt toward entertainment and humor even as they also address serious issues. All of these titles cast light on the struggles and paradoxes girls and women must navigate and the many ways friendship consoles, challenges, enlightens, and empowers.

Reserve These Reads Adult • Get your hands on these hotly anticipated books, all out this month.

10 Questions Adriana Allegri

The 1,000 Anton Hurs Problem

Top 10 Poetry Collections • The 10 most exceptional poetry books reviewed in Booklist over the past 12 months include debuts and major selected collections, works of exquisite intimacy and historical depth.

April 2025 • The Top Ten Adult Fiction and Nonfiction Chosen Monthly by America’s Library Staff

HALL OF FAME TITLES • The LibraryReads Hall of Fame designation honors authors who have had multiple titles appear on the monthly list since 2013.

PBS BOOK Program Highlights

Top 10 First Novels on Audio • Debut novels are full of promise! What will these authors do next? Striking narrations provide even more to love in the top 10 debuts of the past year on audio.

Listen to Your Mother! Earth-Month Audiobooks • Honor Mother Earth this month with a walk outside while an eco-oriented audiobook keeps you company.

Youth Audiobooks in Verse • Poetry can be an intimidating literary form for kids to start reading. But when poems work together to tell a story, and when they are read by talented narrators, suddenly poetry doesn’t seem so out of reach! Here are enjoyable audio productions.

Top 10 Novels in Verse for Youth • The novel in verse is known for the accessibility it can offer struggling readers, the intensity with which it can focus on a single point, and its elevation of deep and difficult feelings through limited use of language. The...