Each winter, the public submits suggestions for next year’s One Read book. In January, a panel of community members reviews the suggestions, narrowing that list down to 10 titles, and then chooses two or three books to present for a public vote.
Final 10 Selections
- Bettyville (Winner)
George Hodgman - The Book of Madness and Cures
Regina O’Melveny - Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage
Kathleen Winter - H Is for Hawk
Helen MacDonald - Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Runner-up)
Jamie Ford
- The Oregon Trail: An American Journey
Rinker Buck - Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
Robert Putnam - Rocket Boys
Homer Hickam - The Story of My Teeth
Valerie Luiselli - The Wright Brothers
David McCullough
Other Suggested Titles
- 1984
George Orwell - 100 Questions & Answers About Fibromyalgia
Sharon Ostalecki - $2.00 a day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
Kathryn J. Edin - The Aeronaut’s Windlass
Jim Butcher - All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr - Almost Perfect
Brian Katcher - At the Water’s Edge
Sara Gruen - The August 5
Jenna Helland - Bad Feminist: Essays
Roxane Gay - Becoming White Smoke: A Tale of Courage and Yearning
Amanda Kreglow - Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande - Beloved
Toni Morrison - Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates - Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science
Richard Dawkins - Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson - The Chaperone
Laura Moriarty - Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
Johann Hari - Circling the Sun
Paula McLain - The Color of Water
James McBride - Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese - The Dark Is Rising
Susan Cooper - The Daughters
Adrienne Celt - The Day the World Came to Town
Jim DeFede - Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Erik Larson - Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of A President
Candice Millard - A Divine Revelation of Hell
Mary K. Baxter - A Dog’s Purpose
W. Bruce Cameron - The Doll in the Garden
Mary Downing Hahn - The Education of a Traitor
Svetlana Grobman - Eileen
Ottessa Moshfegh - Embassytown
China Mieville - The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee - Far From You
Lisa Schroeder - Fates and Furies
Lauren Groff - Fifty Shades of Grey
E.L. James - Girl in Translation
Jean Kwok - Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America
Ari Berman - The Giver
Lois Lowry - The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan
Ellen White - The Heart Goes Last
Margaret Atwood - The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien - Home Grown Stories and Home Fried Lies
Mitch Jayne - I Hunt Killers
Barry Lyga - I, Robot
Isaac Asimov - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot - The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel
Robert Mazur - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Bryan Stevenson - Kitchens of the Great Midwest
J. Ryan Stradal - Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
Sarah Vowell - Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain - Limping Through Life: A Farm Boy’s Polio Memoir
Jerold Apps - The Little Paris Bookshop
Nina George - Little Women
Louisa May Alcott - Lucky Us
Amy Bloom
- The Maid’s Version
Daniel Woodrell - Mandela: My Prisoner, My Friend
Christo Brand - The Mark and the Void
Paul Murray - Maya’s Notebook
Isabel Allende - The Memory Weaver
Jane Kirkpatrick - Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight
Martha Ackmann - Mine to Tell
Colleen Donnelly - Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
Jon Krakauer - The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah - Nine Days in Heaven
Dennis & Nolene Prince - The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith - Nora Webster
Colm Tóibín - Notes From Boomerang Creek
Cathy Salter - Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality
Danielle Allen - The Peking Man Is Missing
Claire Taschdjian - Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky - The Prince
Vito Bruschini - The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio
Terry Ryan - The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran - Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva - Ready Player One
Ernest Cline - Room Temperature
Nicholson Baker - The Sellout
Paul Beatty - The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Nicholas Carr - Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World
Linda R. Hirshman - Slaves in the Family
Edward Ball - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See - The Space Between Us
Thrity Umrigar - The Sparrow
Mary Doria Russell - The Story of Beautiful Girl
Rachel Simon - The Stranger’s Child
Alan Hollinghurst - Swamplandia
Karen Russell - This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. the Climate
Naomi Klein - Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
Edward Glaeser - Truth: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power
Mary Mapes - The Tsar of Love and Techno
Anthony Marra - Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Laura Hillenbrand - Voyage: A Novel of 1896
Sterling Hayden - Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson - We Never Asked for Wings
Vanessa Diffenbaugh - West With the Night
Beryl Markham - What Was Mine
Helen Klein Ross - Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
Maria Semple - Whistling Past the Graveyard
Susan Crandall - Why Evolution Is True
Jerry A. Coyne - A Wilder Rose
Susan Wittig Albert - The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World
David Jaher - A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L’Engle - Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Neil Shubin