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Black Cake
by Charmaine Wilkerson

In her beautifully poignant debut novel, Wilkerson explores how secrets kept and stories left untold can “matter even more than the things we do say.” Eleanor Bennet’s final bequest, an audio recording and a homemade Caribbean black cake stowed in the freezer, puzzles her grieving children, Benny and Byron.

Top of the List: 2021

Top of the List Read-alikes: The Sentence
by Donna Seaman

Louise Erdrich anchors her newest novel and Booklist’s Top of the List winner for Adult Fiction, The Sentence, to her bookstore in Minneapolis, Birchbark Books, during the COVID-19 pandemic. These novels each engage imaginatively with some aspect of Erdrich’s setting and themes. 

Shelf Care: The Podcast

In this episode of Shelf Care: The Podcast, Booklist’s editors look back on the year in reading and talk about some of their fave titles from the Editors’ Choice list.

Top of the List Interview: Harmony Becker
by Sarah Hunter

Harmony Becker’s debut graphic novel, Himawari House, deftly balances an emotionally resonant story with impressive inventiveness of form. Read on for our conversation about her inspiration, her art style, and the in-between spaces that are the richest for storytelling.

Top of the List Read-alikes: Chasing Me to My Grace: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South
by Donna Seaman

In Chasing Me to My Grave, a unique and powerful memoir in words and paintings and Booklist’s 2021 Top of the List Adult Nonfiction winner, Winfred Rembert tells the galvanizing story of his surviving racial tyranny and violence in Georgia to become an artist. The books below address various aspects of Rembert’s experiences and showcase the work of other seminal African American artists. 

What Kristen Radtke Wants You to Read: Her Favorite Graphic Novels
by Kristen Radtke

​We invited the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence finalists to share lists of books that have resonated with them. Here’s what Kristen Radtke, author of the Carnegie shortlist title Seek You: A Journey through American Loneliness (Pantheon), wants you to read...