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Year consensus · 2016

The Most Recommended Books of 2016

We counted 4,871 entries from 134 sources in 2016. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead appeared on 27, 7 more than any other book.

A source counts once per book, whatever the result: a win, a shortlist place, or a list pick. We show books named by 3 or more sources. 2016 is the award or list year, not the publication year.

27 sources

  1. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

20 sources

  1. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

  2. Swing Time by Zadie Smith

17 sources

  1. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

15 sources

  1. My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

  2. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

14 sources

  1. The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee

  2. The Nix by Nathan Hill

13 sources

  1. March: Book Three by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell

  2. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

  3. The Girls by Emma Cline

12 sources

  1. Barkskins by Annie Proulx

  2. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

  3. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

  4. The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar

11 sources

  1. Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

  2. Burn, Baby, Burn by Meg Medina

  3. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

  4. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

  5. The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

  6. The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

10 sources

  1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

  2. Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett

  3. News of the World by Paulette Jiles

  4. School's First Day of School by Adam Rex

  5. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

  6. What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

9 sources

  1. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

  2. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

  3. Moonglow by Michael Chabon

  4. Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich

  5. The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan

  6. The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan

  7. The Vegetarian by Han Kang

  8. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

8 sources

  1. All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister

  2. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

  3. Freedom Over Me by Ashley Bryan

  4. In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi

  5. LaRose by Louise Erdrich

  6. The Best Man by Richard Peck

  7. Thunder Boy Jr. by Sherman Alexie and Yuyi Morales

  8. Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple

7 sources

  1. As Brave as You by Jason Reynolds

  2. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

  3. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

  4. Ghost by Jason Reynolds

  5. Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard

  6. Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown by James McBride

  7. Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat by Javaka Steptoe

  8. Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

  9. Shrill by Lindy West

  10. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

  11. The Mothers by Brit Bennett

  12. The North Water by Ian McGuire

  13. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

  14. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

  15. They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel

  16. We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen

6 sources

  1. A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

  2. All That Man Is by David Szalay

  3. Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge

  4. At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell

  5. Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

  6. Blood at the Root by Patrick Phillips

  7. Dodgers by Bill Beverly

  8. Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston

  9. Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford

  10. Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

  11. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

  12. His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae by Graeme Macrae Burnet

  13. Jazz Day: The Making of a Famous Photograph by Roxane Orgill and Francis Vallejo

  14. Look by Solmaz Sharif

  15. Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilie by Ross King

  16. Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets by Luke Dittrich

  17. Pax by Sara Pennypacker

  18. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

  19. Say Something Back by Denise Riley

  20. Some Writer!: The Story of E.B. White by Melissa Sweet

  21. The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

  22. The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz

  23. The Journey by Francesca Sanna

  24. The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride

  25. The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

  26. The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry

  27. The Trespasser by Tana French

  28. Uprooted by Naomi Novik

  29. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil

  30. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

  31. When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

  32. Zero K by Don DeLillo

5 sources

  1. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

  2. Before Morning by Joyce Sidman

  3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  4. City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence

  5. East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity by Philippe Sands

  6. Everybody's Fool by Richard Russo

  7. Falling Awake by Alice Oswald

  8. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

  9. Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey by Frances Wilson

  10. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

  11. If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

  12. Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta

  13. Miss Jane by Brad Watson

  14. Ms. Bixby's Last Day by John David Anderson

  15. Nutshell by Ian McEwan

  16. Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

  17. Pumpkinflowers: An Israeli Soldier's Story by Matti Friedman

  18. Samurai Rising: The Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune by Pamela S. Turner and Gareth Hinds

  19. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli

  20. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

  21. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

  22. Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet

  23. Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

  24. The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward

  25. The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott

  26. The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

  27. The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

  28. The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

  29. The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney

  30. The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie

  31. The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee

  32. The Reader by Traci Chee

  33. The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon

  34. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

  35. To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey

  36. Truevine by Beth Macy

  37. Vietnam: A History of the War by Russell Freedman

  38. When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin

  39. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

  40. Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

4 sources

  1. A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS by Robert F. Worth

  2. American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin

  3. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

  4. Beetle Boy by M.G. Leonard

  5. Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson

  6. Booked by Kwame Alexander

  7. Bubonic Panic: When Plague Invaded America by Gail Jarrow

  8. Darktown by Thomas Mullen

  9. Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

  10. Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis

  11. Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

  12. Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach

  13. Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh

  14. Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer

  15. Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley

  16. House of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson

  17. Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen

  18. In Gratitude by Jenny Diski

  19. Juana & Lucas by Juana Medina

  20. King Baby by Kate Beaton

  21. Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart

  22. Maybe Something Beautiful by F. Isabel Campoy

  23. Mischling: A Novel by Affinity Konar

  24. Modern Lovers by Emma Straub

  25. Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt

  26. Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

  27. Olio by Tyehimba Jess

  28. Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton

  29. Patience by Daniel Clowes

  30. Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor's Story by Caren B. Stelson

  31. Scythe by Neal Shusterman

  32. Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume

  33. Still Life with Tornado by A. S. King

  34. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild

  35. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

  36. The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

  37. The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies

  38. The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

  39. The Killing Kind by Chris Holm

  40. The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047 by Lionel Shriver

  41. The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay

  42. The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

  43. The Princess and the Warrior: The Tale of Two Volcanoes by Duncan Tonatiuh

  44. The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  45. The Second Life of Nick Mason by Steve Hamilton

  46. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

  47. The Story Of A Brief Marriage: A Novel by Anuk Arudpragasam

  48. The Widow by Fiona Barton

  49. The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

  50. The Yid: A Novel by Paul Goldberg

  51. Time Travel by James Gleick

  52. Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes

  53. We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

  54. We Will Not Be Silent by Russell Freedman

  55. When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano

  56. Willem de Kooning's Paintbrush by Kerry Lee Powell

  57. You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein

3 sources

  1. 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad

  2. A Child of Books by Oliver Jeffers

  3. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

  4. A Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of The Snowy Day by Andrea Davis Pinkney

  5. A Promise of Fire by Amanda Bouchet

  6. A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas

  7. American Housewife by Helen Ellis

  8. Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

  9. Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit

  10. Being a Beast by Charles Foster

  11. Blood Brothers by Randy W. Roberts

  12. Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon by Larry Tye

  13. Borderline by Mishell Baker

  14. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

  15. Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone) by Kamal Al-Solaylee

  16. Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich

  17. By Gaslight by Steven Price

  18. Children of the New World: Stories by Alexander Weinstein

  19. Cure by Jo Marchant

  20. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

  21. Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay

  22. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

  23. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

  24. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben

  25. Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid

  26. Frank and Lucky Get Schooled by Lynne Rae Perkins

  27. Frantumaglia by Elena Ferrante

  28. Full of Beans by Jennifer L. Holm

  29. Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras by Duncan Tonatiuh

  30. Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi

  31. Garvey's Choice by Nikki Grimes

  32. Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard

  33. High Dive by Jonathan Lee

  34. How To Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France

  35. I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark by Debbie Levy

  36. I Hear A Pickle: (and Smell, See, Touch, and Taste It, Too!) by Rachel Isadora

  37. I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

  38. Ideas Are All Around by Philip C. Stead

  39. It Ain't So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas

  40. Jerusalem by Alan Moore

  41. Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

  42. Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña

  43. Leave Me Alone! by Vera Brosgol

  44. Life or Death by Michael Robotham

  45. Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

  46. Loner by Teddy Wayne

  47. Lucy by Randy Cecil

  48. Measures of Expatriation by Vahni Capildeo

  49. Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel

  50. Morning Star by Pierce Brown

  51. Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin

  52. My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand

  53. My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier

  54. Night Tremors by Matt Coyle

  55. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen

  56. On Trails by Robert Moor

  57. Ooko by Esmé Shapiro

  58. Party of One by Dave Holmes

  59. Problems by Jade Sharma

  60. Rani Patel in Full Effect by Sonia Patel

  61. Reputations by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

  62. Rilke Shake by Angélica Freitas

  63. Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

  64. Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older

  65. Sing for Your Life by Daniel Bergner

  66. So Sad Today: Personal Essays by Melissa Broder

  67. Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

  68. Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand

  69. Steamboat School by Deborah Hopkinson

  70. Stone Cold Dead by James W. Ziskin

  71. Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue

  72. Sunshine by Melissa Lee-Houghton

  73. The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew

  74. The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood by Belle Boggs

  75. The Bad-Ass Librarians Of Timbuktu: And Their Race To Save The World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer

  76. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

  77. The Blind Roadmaker by Ian Duhig

  78. The Break by Katherena Vermette

  79. The Caped Crusade: Batman And The Rise Of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon

  80. The Cartel by Don Winslow

  81. The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson

  82. The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector

  83. The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis

  84. The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma

  85. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

  86. The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel

  87. The Golden Age by Joan London

  88. The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle

  89. The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz

  90. The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf

  91. The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith

  92. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

  93. The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett by Nathan Ward

  94. The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby

  95. The Masque of a Murderer by Susanna Calkins

  96. The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

  97. The Night Gardener by Terry Fan and Eric Fan

  98. The One Hundred Nights Of Hero: A Graphic Novel by Isabel Greenberg

  99. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez

  100. The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

  101. The Parcel by Anosh Irani

  102. The Party Wall by Catherine Leroux

  103. The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov

  104. The Regional Office is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales

  105. The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

  106. The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  107. Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings by Stephen O'Connor

  108. Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake

  109. Trombone Shorty by Troy Andrews, Bill Taylor and Bryan Collier

  110. Unbecoming by Jenny Downham

  111. Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

  112. Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II by Albert Marrin

  113. War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans

  114. When Mischief Came to Town by Katrina Nannestad

  115. Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves

  116. Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File by John Edgar Wideman

  117. Yiddish for Pirates by Gary Barwin

  118. You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

Sources counted in 2016