December 2026
December Read More Reading Challenge
Save the best for last! Award-winning books are calling you to check them out! Perhaps you’ve had a book from a debut author or a New York Times bestseller sitting on your To Be Read pile for what seems like ages. Let this challenge inspire you to finally carve out time to read one of those novels before the year closes! Get out your sharpie, cross off a book from your list, and wrap up the 2026 Read More Reading Challenge with a feeling of accomplishment!
An Award Winner from the Last 3 Years
Blackouts by Justin Torres
Genre: Fiction
Description: Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life.
Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke
Genre: Crime
Description: In the fall of 1863, the Union Army was in control of the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate Army is in disarray, corrupt structures are falling apart, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom.
James by Percival Everett
Genre: Fiction
Description: When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Genre: Fiction
Description: In this moving elegy to our humanity, environment and planet, six astronauts, selected for one of the last space station missions, leave their lives behind to travel at a speed of over 17,000 miles an hour to orbit Earth, witnessing the marks of civilization below.
Looking for even more recommendations? Check out novelist for look-alike reads or visit our staff picks! Please stop by the library or browse our online catalog. Happy reading!