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
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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.

John of John
Stuart, Douglas
Paper Book
AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Oprah Daily, and Vogue "Douglas Stuart brilliantly weaved a layered, compelling and yet so intimate a story...

Recommeded by Anne Patchett.

The Left and the Lucky
Vlautin, Willy
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE A JOHN MULANEY READS BOOK CLUB PICK "One of America's greatest storytellers."--Jonathan Evison Eddie Wilkens is a housepainter in his early forties. His wife has left him, and his one employee barely shows up for work....

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.

Empire of wild
Dimaline, Cherie
Paper Book
"Deftly written, gripping and informative. Empire of Wild is a rip-roaring read!"--Margaret Atwood, From Instagram "Empire of Wild is doing everything I love in a contemporary novel and more. It is tough, funny, beautiful, honest and propulsive--all the while telling a...

Recommended by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Sula
Morrison, Toni
Paper Book
Toni Morrison's first novel,The Bluest Eye(1970), was acclaimed as the work of an important talent, written--as John Leonard said inThe New York Times--in a prose "so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry." Sulahas the same power, the same...

Recommended by John Green.

Bunny
Awad, Mona
Paper Book
"Jon Swift + Witches of Eastwick + Kelly 'Get In Trouble' Link + Mean Girls + Creative Writing Degree Hell! No punches pulled, no hilarities dodged, no meme unmangled! O Bunny you are sooo genius!" --Margaret Atwood, via Twitter "A wild, audacious and ultimately unforgettable novel."...

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
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.

South of the border, west of the sun
Murakami, Haruki
Paper Book
Following the massive complexity ofThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle--Haruki Murakami's best-selling, award-winning novel--comes this deceptively simple love story, a contemporary rendering of the romance in which a boy finds and then loses a girl, only to meet her again years later. Hajime--"Beginning"...

Recommended by Kazuo Ishiguro.

A manual for cleaning women : selected stories
Berlin, Lucia
Paper Book
One ofTheNew York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2015 One ofJezebel's Favorite Books of 2016 A Manual for Cleaning Womencompiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the...

Recommended by Colson Whitehead.


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