The American Library Association released the six-book shortlist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, awarded for the best fiction and nonfiction books written for adult readers and published in the U.S. The two medal winners, who each receive $5,000, will be named January 27. The shortlisted titles:
Fiction
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (Knopf)
The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses (Scribner)
We Do Not Part by Han Kang, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hogarth/Random House)
Nonfiction
Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc (Biblioasis)
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone (Crown)
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)