stimulus of the occasional hit of “serious” fiction or nonfiction. Also, I’m on an ongoing project to increase my knowledge about my adopted home, Minnesota, so I’m always looking for a good book that takes place in Minnesota.
One of the selection criteria that the Coffman Library uses for new book purchases or reviewing donations is whether or not the title has won one of the “big” awards: National Book Award, Pulitzer, Booker, Edgar Award for Best Mystery, Pen/Faulkner, Nobel Prize, and Minnesota Book Award. Keeping track of these is not easy, relying on the memories of Library Committee members and doing the research. A few months ago I did a review of our collection coverage on major winners published in the last five years, just to see how we were doing. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many we owned, except for the Edgars. Given that Mystery/Spy is our highest circulating collection, how did that happen? It was quickly rectified, and we now have the last five Edgar winners, and they are waiting for you in Mystery/Spy! Here are a few good reading options from our award winners. Summaries assisted by Gemini, Google’s AI. Edgar Award for Best Novel, chosen by the Mystery Writers of America. All of these are in Mystery/Spy in the Coffman Library:
Nobel Prize, given for a writer’s body of collective works.
National Book Award, books nominated by publishers to celebrate the best literature in America. Selected by a group of writers, librarians, booksellers, and critics.
Here are some of the awards won by a few of our most popular authors.
To find titles, authors or subjects in our online catalog, TinyCat, type in the search box your title or whatever. You can find this at 1666 Coffman Library Find and Check Out Books, then “Use our Online Catalog.” You do not need to log into Residents Realm. This should get you started on some good reading!
Tamil community, located at the northern tip of Sri Lanka. The narrator, Shashikala (Sashi), is 16 and is living in Jaffna with loving parents and four brothers. She aspires to be a doctor like her eldest brother, Niranjan, whom she idolizes, her late grandfather who was a renowned physician in Colombo, and her brilliant, charismatic neighbor K whom Sashi hero worships and has a crush on. The burning of the local library signals the start of the civil war, which wreaks havoc in Sashi’s idyllic life. Her beloved family is torn apart. Niranjan is killed in the violence. Two of her brothers, Dayalan and Seelan, join the Tamil Tigers, as does K. Sashi’s younger brother, Aran, decides not to join the Tigers and stays at home. As events unfold around her, Sashi is forced to make difficult choices about her life, politics and activism. She is an eyewitness to the plight of the civilians, especially women, who are caught between the battling Sinhala government, the Tamil tigers, the Indian peace-keeping forces and the United Nations which failed to act in a timely manner.
The content is harrowing, but the writing and the plot kept me spell-bound as I devoured every word of this novel with fleshed-out characters. This historical novel also highlights the strength and courage of women in pain and adversity within a culture that undermines women. The narrator is a female, and women are at the center of the story. Ganeshananthan lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota. Brotherless Night is available in the Coffman Library.
vs 10 percent), a change from the past two years when women made up 80 percent of all checkouts.
Our reading habits stayed steady. Fiction made up 40 percent of all loans, and mystery/thriller followed closely with 37 percent. Biography and memoir were 6 percent, and history was 4 percent. Poetry and nature/science were each 2 percent. Our most borrowed book was Louise Penny’s 2025 title, Grey Wolf. Among non-mystery fiction, our top choices were Orbital by Samantha Harvey and James by Percival Everett. Our most borrowed author was Minnesotan William Kent Krueger, with thirteen of his books checked out a total of thirty-six times. Krueger, who has twenty-five titles on our shelves, has been our most popular author for four of the last five years, coming in second only in 2021 when Louise Penny won the honor. Krueger is one of several mystery/ thriller authors whose back lists are very popular at Coffman. Among them are Donna Leon (13 books checked out), Louise Penny (7), and Mick Herron (7). Most popular non-mystery fiction authors are Louise Erdrich (7) and Ann Patchett (5). Not all readers were looking for today’s best sellers. Brontë, Wharton, Austen, Cather, Twain, and Fitzgerald were all read. Classic mystery writers also made their appearances: March, Christie, Sayers, James, and Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall. Our nonfiction reading ranged from the very popular The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, to Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux. If you are a regular at our library, keep reading. If you aren’t, stop by, browse, pick up a title from a favorite author or a new-to-you author, and settle in. Maybe if, along with those individual acts of advocacy we chose to engage in, we all just spend a little more time sitting and reading books, we can help make the world a better place.
drawbacks, the novel is a masterful illustration of the ferocity of love, morality, survival and hope in the middle of a disaster.
The book was published in October 2025. It was longlisted for the National Book Award and was Oprah’s Book Club pick. I enjoyed the writing style, and I do believe that Majumdar is becoming a stronger writer. I found this book more engaging than A Burning, her debut. Neither of Majumdar’s books are in the Coffman library. However, both books are available in print, digital and audio formats at the Roseville library. |
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