Barnes & Noble Best Books of the Year

About the Barnes & Noble Best Books of the Year

Barnes & Noble's year-end Best Books picks, chosen by its booksellers and editors. Category Best Books is B&N's overall top list (15 in 2018, 10 or 11 in 2020-2022). Fiction and Nonfiction are B&N's general fiction and nonfiction lists. Sources: B&N press releases on barnesandnobleinc.com for 2017, 2018 and 2022, and B&N Reads blog posts for 2016 (10 Must-Read Novels of 2016), 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025. The 2021 1619 Project entry lists Nikole Hannah-Jones only; the page also names The New York Times Magazine as editor. Genre and subject lists (mystery, thriller, SF and fantasy, romance, horror, history, biography, science, business, cookbooks, YA, kids, audiobooks, gifts) are left out, as are mid-year 'so far' lists and customer-voted lists. The B&N Book of the Year is its own source (barnes-noble-book-of-the-year) and is not repeated here. Missing years: B&N's year-end lists before 2016 and for 2019 and 2023 lived only on barnesandnoble.com collection pages, which now sit behind a Cloudflare human check, and the Wayback Machine was offline; the 2015 press release uses themed categories (coloring books, celebrity memoirs) and is left out. The 2022 fiction blog post lost half its book links when B&N moved its site, so 2022 has only the overall list. 2024 and 2025 have no general nonfiction list, only subject lists. No list is ranked.

Organization: Barnes & Noble. Official site (opens in a new tab)