Summer Challenge 2026: Recommended By An Author You Admire

Looking for help completing your Summer Challenge Bingo Card? Here are some books recommended by well-known authors.

Updated June 27, 2026
G
Greater Victoria Public Library
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Kin
Jones, Tayari
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR  OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage--Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit...

Recommeded by Anne Patchett.

Words without music : a memoir
Glass, Philip
Paper Book
The long-awaited memoir by "the most prolific and popular of all contemporary composers" (New York Times). A world-renowned composer of symphonies, operas, and film scores, Philip Glass has, almost single-handedly, crafted the dominant sound of late-twentieth-century classical...

Recommended by George Saunders.

My brilliant friend. Book one, childhood, adolescence
Ferrante, Elena.
Paper Book
#1 BEST BOOK OF THE CENTURY - NEW YORK TIMES Now an HBO series: the first volume in the New York Times-bestselling "enduring masterpiece" about a lifelong friendship between two women from Naples (The Atlantic). Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the...

Recommended by Esi Edugyan.

Such a fun age : a novel
Reid, Kiley
Paper Book
A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post * Chicago Tribune * NPR * Vogue * Elle * Real Simple * InStyle * Good Housekeeping * Parade * Slate...

Recommended by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

The only good Indians : a novel
Jones, Stephen Graham
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a "masterpiece" (Locus Magazine) of a novel about revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition. This is a remarkable horror story that "will give you nightmares-...

Recommended by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Sula
Morrison, Toni
Paper Book
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years * A modern masterpiece about love and kinship, about living in an America birthed from slavery. Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison gives life to characters who struggle with what society tells them to be, and the love they...

Recommended by John Green.

Bunny
Awad, Mona
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Enter the Bunnyverse with the "wild, audacious . . . unforgettable" (Los Angeles Times) #DarkAcademia novel that started it all - the precursor to We Love You, Bunny "[A] cult classic." --People "[A] viral...

Recommended by Margaret Atwood.

The adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi : a novel
Chakraborty, S. A.
Paper Book
"A thrilling, transportative adventure that is everything promised--Chakraborty's storytelling is fantasy at its best." -- R.F. Kuang, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and The Poppy War "An exhilarating, propulsive adventure, stitched from the threads of real history, Amina's...

Recommended by Rebecca Yarros.

Yellowface : a novel
Kuang, R. F.
Paper Book
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK "Hard to put down, harder to forget." -- Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences... Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who...

Recommended by Rebecca Yarros.

The remains of the day
Ishiguro, Kazuo 1954-
Paper Book
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER * From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, here is "an intricate and dazzling novel" (The New York Times) about the perfect butler and his fading, insular world in post-World War II England.   This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly...

Recommended by R.F. Kuang.

Piranesi
Clarke, Susanna
Paper Book
The award-winning, New York Times bestselling fantasy sensation that Madeline Miller called, "a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling," Piranesi is an intoxicating, hypnotic novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.<...

Recommended by R.F. Kuang.

Exhalation
Chiang, Ted
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR * Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories--two published for the very first time--all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others ...

Recommended by R.F. Kuang.

Georgie, all along
Clayborn, Kate
Paper Book
"Perfect for Emily Henry fans. [This] is the love story that proves you can go home again...It's so rich and wonderful." - Julia Quinn on The TODAY Show "A sweet novel that reminds you going back is sometimes the best path forward . . . and that planning is never as rewarding as...

Recommended by Ali Hazelwood.

The lost ticket
Sampson, Freya
Paper Book
One of Amazon's Best Books of September! Strangers on a London bus unite to help an elderly man find his missed love connection in the heartwarming new novel from the acclaimed author of The Last Chance Library. When Libby Nicholls arrives in London,...

Recommended by Ali Hazelwood.


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