Pulitzer Prize - Fiction
- Less by Andrew Sean Greer (Winner)
- The Idiot by Elif Batuman (Finalist)
- In the Distance by Hernan Diaz (Finalist)
Pulitzer Prize - General Non-Fiction
- Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman, Jr. (Winner)
- Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Natural World -- and Us by Richard O. Prum (Finalist)
- Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen (Finalist)
Pulitzer Prize - History
- The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis (Winner)
- Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein (Finalist)
- Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America by Stephen J. Ross (Finalist)
Pulitzer Prize - Biography or Autobiography
- Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (Winner)
- Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell (Finalist)
- Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character by Kay Redfield Jamison (Finalist)
National Book Award - Fiction
- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (Winner)
- Florida by Lauren Groff (Finalist)
- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (Finalist)
- A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley (Finalist)
- Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson (Finalist)
National Book Award - Non-Fiction
- The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart (Winner)
- American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson (Finalist)
- Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh (Finalist)
- The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, The First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation by Colin G. Calloway (Finalist)
- We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by Adam Winkler (Finalist)
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
- Improvement by Joan Silber (Winner)
- The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt (Finalist)
- In the Distance by Hernan Diaz (Finalist)
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (Finalist)
- The Tower of the Antilles by Achy Obejas (Finalist)
Man Booker Prize
- Milkman by Anna Burns (Winner)
- Everything Under by Daisy Johnson (Finalist)
- The Long Take by Robin Robertson (Finalist)
- The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (Finalist)
- The Overstory by Richard Powers (Finalist)
- Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Finalist)
Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
- Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (Winner)
- The Idiot by Elif Batuman (Finalist)
- The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar (Finalist)
- Sight by Jessie Greengrass (Finalist)
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (Finalist)
- When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy (Finalist)
Kirkus Prize - Fiction
- Severance by Ling Ma (Winner)
- Florida by Lauren Groff (Finalist)
- Halsey Street by Naima Coster (Finalist)
- Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires (Finalist)
- Mourning by Eduardo Halfon (Finalist)
- Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams (Finalist)
Kirkus Prize - Non-Fiction
- Call Them By Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) by Rebecca Solnit (Winner)
- American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer (Finalist)
- Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America by Beth Macy (Finalist)
- Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh (Finalist)
- Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Lamon (Finalist)
- The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder (Finalist)
Edgar Awards - Best Novel
- Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke (Winner)
- The Dime by Kathleen Kent (Finalist)
- Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr (Finalist)
- A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee (Finalist)
- The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti (Finalist)
Edgar Awards - Best First Novel
- She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper (Winner)
- Dark Chapter by Winnie M. Li (Finalist)
- Idaho by Emily Ruskovich (Finalist)
- Lola by Melissa Scrivner Love (Finalist)
- Tornado Weather by Deborah E. Kennedy (Finalist)
2019 Reading Across Rhode Island
- What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City by Mona Hanna-Attisha
Bonus Picks
- The Deeper the Water, The Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina
- That Kind of Mother by Rumaan Alam
- Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman
- All the Answers: A Graphic Memoir by Michael Kupperman
- Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy
- Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal
- A Girl's Guide to Missiles: Growing Up in America's Secret Desert by Karen Piper