Welcome to the 2019 Best Books for Adults. The New York Public Library is a premier resource for connecting readers with great books, with a staff dedicated to spreading a love of reading and sharing their book expertise. Our librarians—through their experience recommending books to patrons and as readers themselves—have highlighted their picks for 100 best books written for adults and published in 2019. (You can also check out 2019 Best Books for Kids and Teens.)

No matter what kind of reader you are, what genres or subjects you normally gravitate to, we're confident that you will find a book to pull you deep into its world or open yours up.

Browse through the categories below, or go straight to our top 10 list (selected by a vote among our staff), and find your next great read.

Best Books For Adults: Top 10

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacobs

Normal People by Sally Rooney

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

Biographies & Memoirs

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob

A thoughtful examination of race and family. Good for a New York audience.

In Waves by A.J. Dungo

Depicts Dungo's relationship with a girlfriend dying of cancer, mixed in with the history of surfing.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

A fresh approach to recognizing and deconstructing racism and inequality in ourselves and in society.

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer

A narrative portrait of the influential American diplomat that explores how his achievements over half a century of history were complicated by his political ambitions.

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

The 13th daughter of a widowed mother recalls her childhood in New Orleans's 13th Ward.

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Provocative and witty essays about beauty standards, media, money, and more.

Fantasy

The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson

Set in the royal court of Granada during the Spanish Inquisition, a concubine is accused of sorcery.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

Tracker is hired to find a boy who disappeared years before. He and his search party are quickly targeted by deadly creatures.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

A lesbian necromancer becomes an emperor's bodyguard in order to secure her freedom.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Set against the Jazz age in Mexico's underworld, Casiopea Tun is sent by the Mayan God of Death on a mystical adventure.

Lovely War by Julie Berry

A romance set in WWI and WWII, where the gods hold the fate of four mortals in their hands.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

A poor girl is unexpectedly offered a full scholarship to Yale by mysterious benefactors.

Fiction

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

When her neighbor turns up dead, then others within the Polish village and outsiders turn up dead, Janine inserts herself in the investigation.

Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

When Toby Fleishman's soon-to-be-ex-wife Rachel drops their two kids at his place a day early and fails to pick them up as scheduled, things quickly get desperate.

Fly Already by Etgar Keret

A smart, quirky, and irreverent collection with nearly two dozen stories.

Girl by Edna O'Brien

A young Nigerian woman kidnapped by Boko Haram escapes, but not before becoming pregnant by one of her captors.

A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, trans. by Ann Goldstein

An unnamed 13-year-old girl is sent away from the family she has always thought of as hers to live with her birth family, whom she has never met.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Portraits of interconnected Black British women.

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

An Iron Age reenactment trip with a group of experimental anthropologists turns sinister.

Lanny by Max Porter

In a small English village, a mythical creature is awakened by the arrival of a young boy.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

A novel about a family on a road trip across America told in varying perspectives and with archival documents and photographs.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

While posing for a photograph on Abbey Road in London, an imitation of the Beatles' iconic album cover, Saul Adler is sideswiped by a car, setting off a spiral of events.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, trans. by Stephen Snyder

A young novelist hides her editor from mysterious authorities who erase memories.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

A will-they won't-they story with two very complicated and sympathetic characters.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Written as a letter to a mother who cannot read, the narrator confesses difficult memories from childhood and stories about his current life.

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma

A spirit tells the story of a Nigerian farmer who sacrifices everything for a wealthy woman with whom he is in love.

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

The suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant in California impacts the lives of a diverse cast of characters.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

While Melody celebrates a coming of age ceremony at her grandparents' house in 2001 Brooklyn, her family remembers 1985, when Melody's own mother prepared for a similar party that never took place.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood finally answers the lingering question from The Handmaid's Tale: what happened to Offred?

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

A family drama set in the American Midwest in the 90s.

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

The novel follows two 15-year-old students in a 1980s performing arts school.

The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona

Follow Vollie Frade through three tours in Vietnam, a black ops mission he will forever regret, and a marriage to the last survivor of a free-love commune in New Mexico.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

A Virginia slave narrowly escapes a drowning death through the intervention of a mysterious force that compels his escape and personal underground war against slavery.

Graphic Novels

Bad Gateway by Simon Hanselmann

This graphic novel deals with addiction and desperation and is funny until it's not.

BTTM FDRS by Ezra Claytan Daniels, art by Ben Passmore

Set in Chicago and reminiscent of Get Out, this gentrification horror story presents an apartment building that comes alive and seems to be eating the inhabitants.

Cannonball by Kelsey Wroten

Angsty and beautiful and will resonate with the young hipster crowd.

Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers

Coming of age stories centered around race, class, and identity.

Mister Miracle by Tom King, art by Mitch Gerads

People have been raving about this comic for two years and the trade finally arrived this year. Definitely part of the top echelon when it comes to superhero comics.

Off Season by James Sturm

A couple separates during the fall of 2016 as Bernie Sanders loses the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton, and Hillary loses the presidency to Donald Trump.

Penny Nichols by M.K. Reed and Greg Means, art by Matt Wiegle

Temp worker Penny falls in with amateur filmmakers and she begins to find a place for herself. Funny, chaotic, sarcastic.

Rusty Brown by Chris Ware

A nerdy, bullied, Nebraska teen trying to survive junior high school.

Historical fiction

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal

In 1850s London, an aspiring artist takes a job as a model working for an obsessive painter.

Inland by Téa Obreht

Set in the Arizona Territory in 1893, the novel follows the intertwining stories of a frontierswoman waiting for the men in her life to return home and an outlaw who is haunted by ghosts.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

The story of two teenage boys in a brutal segregated reform school in Florida.

The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames

The story of an Italian American family and the complicated woman at its heart, Stella Fortuna.

A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier

Winchester, 1932: A war widow joins a circle of embroiderers.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

A BBC radio producer finds herself targeted by dangerous individuals from her past as a World War II espionage monitor for MI5.

Horror

A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill

A Texas family that runs a haunted house is haunted by monsters.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Darkly funny and sardonic, an MFA student at an elite New England university is asked to join the popular clique.

The Institute by Stephen King

Teens with psychic abilities are held captive at the institute.

The Need by Helen Phillips

Scientist Molly is home alone with her two young children when an intruder enters her home.

Mystery & Suspense

American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

A Cold War FBI agent sets out to seduce a Communist African president.

The Current by Tim Johnson

Surviving the accident that killed her friend, a young woman delves into the case of another victim from a decade earlier.

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

The disappearance of two young girls from the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka shakes the community.

Lady In the Lake by Laura Lippman

Baltimore, 1966: A woman reporter investigates the murder of an African-American party girl.

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

A psychopathic couple in suburbia decides to spice things up.

The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan

When your nanny is getting too close to your family, perhaps it is time to get rid of her?

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

Two drug smugglers reflect on their choices while waiting in a Spanish ferry terminal.

The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney

A woman miraculously restored to health by the innovations of her tech-icon husband struggles with her missing memories.

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Two CIA agents help to publish Doctor Zhivago despite the censorship of Cold War Moscow.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

An incarcerated woman struggles to explain the sequence of events that started with her taking a job as a nanny in the Scottish highlands and ended with her imprisonment for child murder.

Romance

Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin

A modern Muslim adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore

Annabelle Archer recruits men of influence to fight in the suffrage movement in 1879 England. She sets her sights on a cold and calculating duke and their romance nearly upends British society.

A Prince On Paper by Alyssa Cole

Nya Jerami is forced into a pretend engagement with the infamous prince Johan von Braustein, whom she loves to hate.

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

America's First Son and the Prince of Wales must pretend to be friends—until they are so much more than friends.

The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai

A cynical dating app creator has to decide whether or not to take a second chance at romance.

Science Fiction

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

A space salvager finds an ancient technology that is of great interest to both pirates and the government.

Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation by Ken Liu, ed.

A collection of contemporary Chinese science fiction in translation.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

A story collection with themes including the effects of technology on humans, free will, fate, and consciousness.

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

A geologist and a teen rebel are swept up in a historical parallel-world America where time travel is possible.

Story Collections

Grand Union by Zadie Smith

A collection filled with radically different characters in varied settings with unique sets of struggles.

Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin

A darkly funny and disturbing collection. Inventive and full of haunting imagery.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

A sequel to Olive Kitteridge finds our beloved and cantankerous lead struggling to understand herself and the people around her in Crosby, Maine.

Orange World by Karen Russell

Let's just say the title story is about a new mother who strikes a deal to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection over her baby.

Raised in Captivity by Chuck Klosterman

A witty, satirical collection of high-concept stories.

Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

A collection of stories featuring Latina characters in the American West.

The World Doesn't Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott

Stories set in a fictional town in Maryland that is at times surreal, offbeat, and darkly funny.

Nonfiction

Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom by Katherine Eban

An investigation into the generic drug boom.

Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration by Emily Bazelon

An investigation into the unchecked power of the prosecutor in this era of mass incarceration.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

An anthropologist chronicles Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present day.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

A critique of the forces vying for our attention that redefines what we think of like productivity, and reveals all that we’ve been too distracted to see.

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl

A beautifully written collection of essays about nature and the author's childhood.

Parkland: Birth of a Movement by Dave Cullen

An account of the teenage survivors of the Parkland massacre who became powerful activists.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

It begins with an IRA kidnapping of a mother of 10 in 1972 Belfast and ends with the discovery of her remains. Sandwiched between is the story of one facet of the IRA.

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Megan Twohey & Jodi Kantor

The story of Harvey Weinstein's decades of sexual abuse in Hollywood.

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

A close look at the sex lives of three American women, in all their complexity.

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion by Jia Tolentino

A collection of essays about the fractures in today's culture from a writer who indulges in all she takes on.

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

An account of all the many possible ways climate change will be the end of humanity as we know it.

Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane

Richly described nature writing about various worlds that exist under our feet.

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell

Traces the story of Virginia Hall, a WWII spy who coordinated Resistance efforts in Europe.

Poetry

Black Condition Ft. Narcissus by Jayy Dodd

Struggle, resilience, and alienation in the internet age are deconstructed in Dodd’s experimental collection.

The Crazy Bunch by Willie Perdomo

This savage, funny, and lyrical hymn speaks to Perdomo’s formative years in East Harlem.

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Kaminsky maps a republic of the imagination that has an unsettling contemporary resonance.

In Her Feminine Sign by Dunyā Mīkhāʼīl

Mikhail’s poetry renders sublime and ordinary the enigmatic states of womanhood.

Library of Small Catastrophes by Alison C. Rollins

The complexities of life are cataloged and archived in a simple and effective poetic style.

Lima :: Limón by Natalie Scenters-Zapico

Borders exist inside and out; traverse them if you can.

Soft Science by Franny Choi

Savagely erotic, Choi surveys the future with a razor-sharp eye. This collection has the sharp power of a razor to the sensibilities.

Some Girls Survive on Their Sorcery Alone by Thiahera Nurse

Fierce, real, and unapologetic, Nurse’s poetry portrays the vulnerability and subjective view of women.

Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50 by Lee Ann Roripaugh

A playful and inventive portrait of nature’s fierce and humorous indifference toward humanity and its accessories.

The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi

Deceptively simple, The Year of Blue Water speaks to anyone finding their place in the world with emotional depth and clarity.

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