Announcing the 2026 Libby Book Award Finalists

The finalists for the 2026 Libby Awards have been announced.

The Libby Book Awards – also known as “the Libbys” – launched in 2024 as a way to spotlight standout reads available through the Libby app. Now in their third year, the awards celebrate the most notable books published in 2025. Each category includes just two finalists, all selected by Libby’s in‑house librarians. Librarians across North America will vote to determine the winners.

Here are the 2026 Libby Award finalists, as reported by People:

Best Adult Fiction

• Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Buckeye by Patrick Ryan

Best Adult Nonfiction

• A Flower Traveled in My Blood by Haley Cohen Gilliland
• A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst

Best Audiobook

• My Friends by Fredrik Backman
• Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

Best Book Club Pick

• Wreck by Catherine Newman
• Bog Queen by Anna North

Best Comic/Graphic Novel

• Spent by Alison Bechdel
• Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon by Hayden Sherman and Kelly Thompson

Best Cookbook

• Turtle Island by Kristin Donnelly and Kate Nelson and Sean Sherman
• Baking Across America by B. Dylan Hollis

Best Debut Author

• Alchemised by SenLinYu
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Best Fantasy

• Alchemised by SenLinYu
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

Best Horror

• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
• The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Best Memoir

• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

Best Middle Grade

• Scarlet Morning by N.D. Stevenson
• All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson

Best Mystery

• Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman
• The Librarians by Sherry Thomas

Best Personal Growth

• We Can Do Hard Things by Glennon Doyle, Amanda Doyle and Abby Wambach
• Shift by Ethan Kross

Best Picture Book

• Don’t Trust Fish! by Neil Sharpson
• Cranky, Crabby Crow (Saves the World) by Corey Tabor

Best Romance

• It Had to Be Him by Adib Khorram
• These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean

Best Romantasy

• The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
• Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

Best Science Fiction

• What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
• Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Best Thriller

• The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark
• Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang

Best Young Adult Fiction

• Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley
• Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Congratulations to all the nominees!

For more details about the Libby Book Awards or the Libby app, visit LibbyLife.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Based near Toronto, Brandon is a news writer and Book Specialist for Book Notification who covers the world of books, maintains author pages, writes a variety of content, and is an avid reader of non-fiction and biographies.

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