NYPL Recommends: Book Lists for All Ages

Each year, our expert librarians select the best books for kids, teens, and adults. Check out these outstanding titles.

Find your new favorite reads with this collection of top titles curated by our librarians every season. 

Explore new books from authors of color with NYPL's Vibrant Voices book list, created by the Library’s expert staff to amplify and celebrate diverse voices, promote discussion, and expand understanding. 

In response to the uprisings across the globe demanding justice for Black lives in 2020, the Schomburg Center published its Black Liberation Reading List. The 95 titles on the list represent books we and the public turn to regularly as activists, students, archivists, and curators, with a particular focus on books by Black authors and those whose papers we steward. 

Explore books for adults, kids, and teens that spotlight a range of experiences within Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Discover 100 books for adults, kids, and teens highlighting transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming voices recommended by NYPL staff.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment in 2020, the Library created Essential Reads on Feminism book lists, featuring titles that trace the history of feminism and the suffrage movement, its impact on the complex push for gender equality, and the issues and challenges that many women face today.

Our librarians and staff read over 400 comic books to select 50 top reads published in 2021. Whether you're a first-time comics reader or a die-hard fan, you'll find something to love here!

New York City is many things: powerful, resilient, funny, fascinating, a center of culture and literary life—a city that contains multitudes. As the Library wrapped up its 125th anniversary year, we paid tribute to the city we call home with a book list that reflects its diversity, energy, and life, plus city-centric storytimes for young readers, programs with famous New Yorkers, and more. 

As part of our 125th anniversary, The New York Public Library released our 125 Books We Love list to celebrate some of the titles that have inspired us to #LoveReading. That's a lot of books—but don't worry! We're here to help you explore the list and find your next great read.

As New Yorkers prepared for Election Day on November 3, 2020, The New York Public Library presented its Election Reading List. The books on this list illuminate voting issues including healthcare, education, climate change, and foreign policy, and explore subjects including political polarization, the media, and movements toward greater justice and socioeconomic equity. 

Following the 2020 election, The New York Public Library put together a new reading list that explores our electoral process and past elections that did not have an immediate or clear outcome.