Wanting to try something new? I’ve learned that a good place to look for fresh, new book recommendations is Award Winners and their longlisted peers! Many of these awards are voted on by a panel of reputable judges and often award prize money to the winners, as well as introducing thousands of new readers to the lauded work. Below are some recent award-winners and information about the awards behind them.
The prizes below include the Booker Prize, the International Booker Prize, the National Book Award, the Goodreads Choice Awards, the Nebula Awards, and the Lambda Literary Awards, though those are just a few of the literary awards out there. Don’t see anything here that interests you? I also recommend checking the long- and shortlists of these awards, as those are often gold mines for quality reading as much as the winners are! Happy reading!
The Booker Prize
The longlist for the 2026 Booker Prize was just recently announced at the end of July, so start reading now if you want to guess what book will win this year! Founded in 1969 in the UK, the Booker Prize is one of the oldest and most significant English-language fiction awards. Until 2014 when the prize was opened to all English-language fiction, Booker Prize nominees were books published in either the UK or Ireland. Booker Prize nominations are literary works that highlight timely issues and ideas while also standing up to the test of time.
Last year’s winner, Flesh, tracks a Hungarian man’s life from adolescence through old age, whereas the previous year’s winner, Orbital, follows six astronauts floating on the International Space Station, philosophizing during their extreme day-to-day life. Want a taste of what the 2026 Booker Prize may hold? Kenan Orhan’s The Renovation is one of 13 books on the longlist this year. The Renovation is about a Turkish immigrant living in Italy who walks into her newly renovated bathroom to find a Turkish prison cell has been constructed in its place. Booker Prize-nominated books never cease to introduce fresh perspectives to readers!
The 2026 shortlist will be announced on September 22nd, so stay tuned to find out what books make it to the next round!
The International Booker Prize
The International Booker Prize is a much younger award, founded in 2005 to highlight exceptional translated fiction. This is where I first learned how useful a book award list can be. At the beginning of the 2026 calendar year, I decided my reading resolution was to read more translated fiction, but I had no idea where to start. I ended up reading my way through the International Booker Prize shortlist, and I was surprised by how much I learned about translated fiction throughout the process. By reading my way through the International Booker Prize winners, I knew the books would be well-vetted for quality and that no matter which book I picked up, it would expose me to interesting ideas and new places.
Taiwan Travelogue, the International Booker Prize Winner for 2026, is translator metafiction, a fictional lost book that looks back at colonial Taiwan to reflect on the interconnectedness of food and culture, whereas last year’s winner, Heart Lamp: Selected Stories tells the woven stories of women in southern India. Small Boat, from the 2025 shortlist, retells the true story of an emergency dispatcher in France who is on call when 27 migrants drown on the border between France and England. These are just a small fraction of the perspectives we see on the International Booker Prize longlist. Reading International Booker Prize honorees, you can travel the world without ever leaving your couch!
The National Book Award
While the Booker Prize started across the pond, the National Book Award is a prestigious literary award that celebrates the best writing in the United States. To be eligible for the award, a work simply needs to be written within the calendar year and the author must reside in the United States. Iconic National Book Award winners include authors such as Toni Morrison, James Faulkner, and Ralph Ellison. There are currently five categories of the award: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Fiction, and Young People’s Literature. Between these five categories, a broad spectrum of literature is celebrated.
Last year in 2025, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible, the story of a Lebanese man and his mother, won for Fiction. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, the Non-Fiction Winner, expounds on the impacts of the bombardment at Gaza. We Are Green And Trembling, the 2025 Winner for Translated Fiction, is a historical reimagining of a traditional South American community of trans men. The ideas and perspectives in these books are as vast as the American experience- and these are just three out of five of the 2025 winners from last year! The 2026 National Book Award longlist will be announced beginning on September 15, 2026, so keep your eyes peeled for this year’s nominations!
The Goodreads Choice Awards
If the Booker Prize and National Book Award winners aren’t your cup of tea, the Goodreads Choice Awards are reader-nominated awards that much more closely reflect what’s popular with layman readers. Looking for the most buzzy book of the year? This is where you should look. Every November, Goodreads users vote for their favorite books of the year in just about every genre possible for The Goodreads Choice awards. This means the judges panel aren’t made up of editors and authors, but you get to participate in the judging!
The 2025 overall Fiction Winner was My Friends by Fredrik Backman, a Swedish author known for writing fiction about human connection. The 2025 Romance Winner was Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry, who has won the Goodreads Choice Award for Romance every year since 2021- a clear fan favorite! One of my favorite Goodreads Choice Awards categories every year is the Debut Novel category, which honors first-time authors. In 2025, the Debut Novel Winner was SenLinYu’s Alchemised, a dark romance amidst a magical war. There’s something for everybody in the Goodreads Choice Awards!
The Nebula Awards
Book awards don’t have to be about the most prestigious, highbrow literature- they can also honor genre fiction, like the Nebula Awards! Every year, The Nebula Awards recognize outstanding Science Fiction and Fantasy writing. Frank Herbert’s Dune was famously the first Nebula Award winner for Best Novel in 1965, though other legendary science fiction authors such as Ursula K. LeGuin and Orson Scott Card have also won the award. A wide variety of exceptional Science Fiction and Fantasy writing is recognized by this prize every year.
Just this year, the winner for best novel was The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, a horror novel and American Indian revenge story, while the winner for best novella was The River Has Roots, an atmospheric story about two sisters who live on the edge of Faerie. Two very different winners from the same voting year, but both great, surprising reads! Last year’s Novel Winner, Someone You Can Build A Nest In is a twisted love story about a shapeshifter who is nursed back to health by a shapeshifter-hunter. With Nebula Award nominees, the possibilities are endless!
Looking for more Science Fiction and Fantasy award winners? Check out the Hugo Awards too!
The Lambda Literary Awards
The Lambda Literary Awards celebrate LGBTQ+ voices. The Lambda has a lot more categories than the other awards I’ve discussed thus far with as many as 27 categories per year, as the Lammys break down categories into representations of different queer identities as well as by genre. Even without that, the genres represented are many, ranging from fiction to nonfiction, from comics to memoirs, even including children’s books, middle grade, and young adult literature, with lots in between.
Categories include Transgender Fiction, this year’s winner being The Lilac People, about a trans man and his community during the Holocaust. Sympathy For Wild Girls won for Bisexual Fiction this year, a series of interconnected stories about the longing of Black, Queer women. Last year, the LGBTQ+ Non-Fiction Winner was The Other Olympians, which uncovers the real stories of Trans athletes in the Olympics in the early 20th century. The Lambda Literary Awards celebrate a wide variety of both fiction and nonfiction for reading with pride.
Looking for more LGBTQ+ award winners? Check out the Stonewall Book Awards as well, a major literary award sponsored by the American Library Association that also recognizes exceptional LGBTQ+ literature.
Other literary awards to look into include the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Nonfiction, The Michael L. Printz Award (which specifically honors Young Adult Literature), The Newberry Medal (which recognizes Children’s Literature), The Edgar Awards (Mysteries), the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and many more. You won’t agree with every longlist, and just because a book has won an award, doesn’t guarantee that you’ll love it, but book awards are a great place to start if you want to expose yourself to new ideas and good books.
