LitHub's Top Novels of the Decade

LitHub chose their top novels of the decade. How many of these have you read?

Updated December 4, 2023
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
The fifth season
Jemisin, N. K.
Paper Book
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times) This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time. ...
A little life
Yanagihara, Hanya
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A stunning "portrait of the enduring grace of friendship" (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST *...
Milkman
Burns, Anna
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018: A tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences. 'Milkman is extraordinary. I've been reading passages aloud for the pleasure of hearing it. It's frightening, hilarious,...
Outline
Cusk, Rachel
Paper Book
A Finalist for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction One of The New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year. Named a A New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book...
The overstory
Powers, Richard
Paper Book
*THE MILLION-COPY GLOBAL BESTSELLER *WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION* A wondrous, exhilarating novel about nine strangers brought together by an unfolding natural catastrophe. 'It changed how I thought about the Earth and our place...
The sellout
Beatty, Paul
Paper Book
Born in the 'agrarian ghetto' of Dickens - on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles - the narrator of The Sellout is raised by his single father, a controversial sociologist, and spends his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. Led to believe that his father's...
The sympathizer
Nguyen, Viet Thanh
Paper Book
Now an HBO Limited Seriesfrom Executive Producers Park Chan-wook and Robert Downey Jr., StreamingExclusively on Max Winner of the 2016Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Winner of the 2016 EdgarAward for Best First Novel Winner of the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medalfor...
The Underground Railroad
Whitehead, Colson
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. One of The New York Times's 10...
A visit from the Goon Squad
Egan, Jennifer.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER * With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption "features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously,...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.