After months and months (and months) of reading non-stop, our committee from the Texas Library Association has published its list of recommended novels from 2025. We did it!
It has been a wild ride. (According to Goodreads, reading 38,869 pages last year means I’ve read enough pages to reach the Mariana Trench — the ocean’s deepest point — with pages to spare.)
While there were days (and books) that I wasn’t too keen to read, I truly enjoyed the experience of working with my fellow committee members and debating what should be included, how we felt about so many of the books that we’d picked up — and even convincing my peers that The Whyte Python World Tour, a book about the CIA recruiting the drummer of a hair metal band to foment revolution in Eastern Europe in 1986, was absolutely crazy and yet the must-read of the summer.
I’d say that I’m taking a break from reading, but who’s kidding? I’ve been enjoying some of the cast-offs from last year’s consideration and have already started making a list of potential titles for the next list. And even started reading some of the them.
2026 Lariat List
- Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid *
- Back After This: A Novel by Linda Holmes
- The Blackbirds of St. Giles by Lila Cain *
- The Book of Lost Hours: A Novel by Hayley Gelfuso
- Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall
- Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab *
- The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans
- Culpability by Bruce Holsinger *
- The Dream Hotel: A Novel by Laila Lalami
- The Favorites: A Novel by Layne Fargo
- Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
- Hollow Out the Dark by James Wade
- The Human Scale: A Novel by Lawrence Wright *
- I See You’ve Called In Dead by John Kenney
- Julie Chan Is Dead: A Novel by Liann Zhang *
- Make Your Way Home: Stories by Carrie R. Moore
- The Names: A Novel by Florence Knapp
- Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis *
- The Once and Future Me: A Novel by Melissa Pace
- Promise Me Sunshine: A Novel by Cara Bastone *
- The Road to Tender Hearts: A Novel by Annie Hartnett
- Salt Bones: A Novel by Jennifer Givhan *
- The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau: A Novel by Kristin Harmel
- This Book Will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead
- What Kind of Paradise: A Novel by Janelle Brown
- When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
- The Whyte Python World Tour: A Novel by Travis Kennedy *
- Wild Dark Shore: A Novel by Charlotte McConaghy
- Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
- You Deserve to Know by Aggie Blum Thompson
* Titles marked with an asterisk were my top 10 titles.