Barnes & Noble revealed their picks for best books of the year so far yesterday.

• 38 titles made the cut, each accompanied by a note from a B & N bookseller.

Though the list is not ranked—come on and give us a #1, you cowards!—it’s hard not to read into tradwife thriller Yesteryear’s position at the top.

• Fiction highlights include Kin by Tayari Jones, Go Gentle by Maria Semple, John of John by Douglas Stuart, and Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu
• Discourse drivers can be good, actually, as evidenced by Strangers by Belle Burden and London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl author Matt Dinniman makes his debut on a B&N best-of with Operation Bounce House, a book that is not in the DCC universe.
• Genre fans will be delighted to see Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic (horror + mythology), Devney Perry’s Rites of the Starling (romantasy), and The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery (mystery), among others.

B&N also posted dedicated lists for the best audiobooks, YA books, and children’s books of 2026 so far.

👀 What we’re watching: Amazon’s mid-year check-in is due any day now. My money is on Kin for the #1 slot. — RJS

Publishers are bringing their A-game to vie for space in your beach bags and carry-ons as summer reading season hits full swing. Here’s our highly scientific vibes-based process of elimination to determine the It Book of the Month.

The ideal It Book rings four bells:

• 🔔 Zeitgeist - What’s the buzz?
• 🔔 Art - Is it good?
• 🔔 Acclaim - Will it contend for awards and best-of lists?
• 🔔 Sales - Where’s the money?

Among the contenders for It Book of June:

• Hot off his Pulitzer win, Daniel Kraus drops a sci-fi adventure in The Sixth Nik.
• Ann Patchett and Maggie O’Farrell compete for lit fic supremacy with Whistler and Land.
• Amitav Ghosh returns with a decade- and continent-spanning tale in Ghost Eye.
• I’ll Take the Fire by Leila Slimani, which was on basically all of the most-anticipated lists, finally hits shelves.

🎧 Listen as we play a knockout round to crown the It Book of June.

The Apocalypse WILL be televised.​

Dungeon Crawler Carl, ranked the #1 best new series on WEBTOON by Screenrant, is now a graphic novel! Volume 1 collects episodes 1-13, which also inspired a series of New York Times bestselling books.

Catch up with the adventures of Carl and Princess Donut as they fight their way through a trap-filled fantasy dungeon where survival is optional but keeping the viewers entertained is not, and watch for Volume 2 on sale in October.

TikTok tapped some notable creators to curate its first ever U.S. #BookTok Summer Reading list. Here is a selection of the picks:

Daggermouth by H.M. Wolfe (Dystopian Romance) selected by @aymansbooks: "My heart was racing every page."

There Is No Anti Memetics Division by QNTM (Science Fiction) selected by @baker.reads : "This is a fever dream of a story that will have you questioning everything and that will break your brain."

The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee (Science Fiction) selected by @vinopapi23: "Fonda Lee gave us one of the greatest fantasy trilogies ever with the Green Bone Saga, and now she’s coming in hot with a highly anticipated sci-fi story that feels absolutely perfect for summer reading."

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector (Literary Fiction) selected by @hina: "A perfect choice for those who cannot decide between poetry and philosophy for their next read."

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Historical Fiction) selected by @kierralewis75: "A story that will stick with you even after you’ve put the book down!"

Each creator has a second selection as well, so visit their profile to find out more.

Book Riot All Access members get a pile of benefits, including unlimited reading on bookriot.com, recommendations for the Read Harder Challenge, and access to our New Release Index to curate your TBR. Here are a few recent highlights:

• 👀 Learn about Australia’s infamous literary hoax.
• 🎧 Discover the best romance audiobook narrators working today.
• 👻 Add some  new queer horror to your Pride Month TBR.
• 🎬 Read these books being adapted for the screen and stage in 2026.
• 🚀 Escape into these fun space operas.

🔓 Unlock access for just $6/month.

This Pride Month, fill your shelves with stories that are bold, heartfelt, twisty, swoony, unforgettable—and unapologetically queer!

From pulse-pounding psychological thrillers to romances you’ll obsess over and cozy fantasies you’ll want to live inside, this curated collection from Sourcebooks Casablanca and Poisoned Pen Press celebrates LGBTQIA+ voices, iconic characters, and stories that stay with you.

Featuring bestselling authors like Alexis Hall, Joshua Moehling, and more, you’re sure to find at least one book in this collection that you’ll immediately start recommending to everyone you know—for Pride, and beyond.

Catch up with three of 2025’s buzziest titles, among the latest new offerings on Kindle Unlimited.

• 📚 Katabasis by R.F. Kuang - Dark academia fantasy about two grad students who go to literal Hell to save their professor’s soul
• 🦷 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab - Toxic lesbian vampires. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
• 🔥 King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby - A Southern crime epic and family drama inspired by The Godfather in the hands of S.A. Cosby is a recipe for a good and VERY TENSE time. 

Samantha Allen is the author of Puck, out this week from Zando. Below, she discusses what keeps bringing her back to writing fiction about reality TV.

After I wrote Patricia Wants to Cuddle, a horror novel about a Sasquatch attacking the cast and crew of a fictionalized Bachelor-style dating competition, I thought I’d never go back to the reality TV well again. I’ve always wanted to be a moving target as an author, hopping from genre to genre and theme to theme. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what the shows we watch say about modern life.

In the time since my fiction debut, shows like Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum supplanted The Bachelor in our cultural consciousness, replacing the simple game-show formats of yesteryear with formats that force “everyday” people into arcane systems with rules and literal walls and forced partner swaps.

• It seems as though, in our increasingly alienated and disconnected age, many people are intrigued by the idea of arbitrary romantic constraints: What if allwe had to judge a potential partner by was their voice? What if more of us tried arranged marriage?

But of course, there’s a difference between fantasizing about our choices being narrowed and actually having them narrowed for us. That’s why Love Is Blind, despite presenting itself as a refreshing alternative to unserious modern dating, has such an abysmal success rate: At the end of the day, most people would rather take their chances swiping and praying than pick their spouse through an intercom.

• That tension between what we yearn for and what we actually desire made me break my rule against double-dipping.

Puck , my new queer Shakespeare retelling out from Zando this week, is about a 30-year-old nonbinary reality TV producer who decides their friends aren’t marrying the right people and takes it upon themself to fix it. In fact, if you think about it, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was kind of the original reality show, following a group of hapless lovers being watched over—and toyed with—by powerful fairies.

Both the play and my reimagining explore the same ideas as the current Netflix chart-toppers: Would it secretly be kind of nice for a tinkering mischief maker to fix us up? Or does the heart still want what it wants?

Love gets dangerous.

Brynne Weaver’s Ruinous Love Trilogy gives you permission to fall for the bad boy.

In Leather & Lark, a fake marriage traps enemies in undeniable desire, blurring the line between pretense and something real. Scythe & Sparrow brings a broken doctor and a chaotic performer together, where healing hearts and buried secrets collide.

Press play and fall recklessly into this dark, compelling world of romance and obsession.

Did you know? To get into the groove to write his novel Horns, Joe Hill spent days copying out pages of Elmore Leonard’s 1969 novel The Big Bounce to get the feeling of what good writing was. He ended up handwriting about 50 pages of the novel.

🗞️ Keep up with all the latest literary news by signing up for Book Riot’s daily Today in Books newsletter.

🏖️ Bust your summer TBR with the best beach reads of all time.

🚗 Hit theroad to visit author-owned indie bookstores.

🏳️‍🌈 Keep the Pride parade going with great comics and graphic novels.

🫂 Boost your mood with these children’s books about unlikely friendships.