The finalists for the 2026 Minnesota Book Awards were chosen by a group of 27 judges from around the state.
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"A young boy learns the Cherokee lesson of gadugi from his grandmother and how working together and helping each other makes the whole community stronger"--
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Book
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E Cou
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Dear Acorn (Love, Oak) : letter poems to friends
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"Told through letters, these poems reveal the everyday conversations between 'big' and 'little' objects in our ecosystem, revealing how different perspectives also have common threads that connect each"--
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Book
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E Sid
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Revolutions are made of love : the story of James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs
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A collection of poems introducing the lives and ideas of James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs, revolutionary activists who worked together to build a better future for all.
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Book
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JB Bog
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"Spend Saturday morning at the barbershop in this upbeat celebration of the spaces and places that bring communities together"--
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Book
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E Jon
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New & Best List
Gentlemen of the woods : manhood, myth, and the American lumberjack
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The folk hero Paul Bunyan stands astride the story of the upper Midwest-- a manly symbol of the labor that cleared the vast north woods for the march of industrialization while somehow also maintaining an aura of pristine nature. This conception receives a long overdue and thoroughly revealing correction in Gentlemen of the Woods, a cultural history of the life and lore of the real lumberjack and his true place in American history.
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Book
Call Number:
634.98092 Bro
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It's their world : teens, screens, and the science of adolescence
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"This book helps caregivers connect the dots between the emerging science of adolescence and the latest research on screen time and well-being. Rather than chasing trending topics or ominous news headlines, this book is a warm, affirming, and evidence-based guide to what teenagers need from parents as their digital worlds expand"--
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Book
Call Number:
649.1 Wal
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Sea of grass : the conquest, ruin, and redemption of nature on the American prairie
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"The North American prairie is an ecological marvel. One cubic yard of prairie sod contains so many organisms that it rivals the tropical rainforest for biological diversity. And like the rainforest, it showcases nature's prodigious talent for symbiosis. The lush carpet of grasses feeds a huge population of grazing animals and is home to some of the nation's most iconic creatures--bison, elk, wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and bald eagles. These creatures return the favor by spreading nitrogen and seeds across the prairie in their manure, and the grazers in turn feed prairie predators, and when they die, they return their store of organic matter to the living soil. When European settlers encountered the prairie nearly 200 years ago, rather than recognizing a natural wonder they saw a daunting landscape of root-tangled soil. But with the development of the steel plow, artificial drainage, and nitrogen fertilizers, in mere decades they converted the prairie into some of the richest farmland on Earth--a transformation unprecedented in human history. American farmers fed the industrial revolution and made North America a breadbasket for the world, but their progress came at a terrible cost: the forced dislocation of indigenous peoples, pollution of the continent's rivers, and the catastrophic loss of wildlife. Today, as these trends build toward an environmental crisis, industrial agriculture has resumed its assault on the prairie, plowing up the remaining grasslands at the rate of one million acres a year. Farmers have an opportunity to protect this extraordinary landscape, but trying new ideas can mean ruin in a business with razor-thin margins and will require help from Washington, D.C., and from consumers who care about the land that feeds them. Veteran journalists and Midwesterners Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty follow the history of humanity's relationship with this incredible land, offering a deep, compassionate analysis of the difficult decisions as well as opportunities facing agricultural and Indigenous communities. Sea of Grass is a vivid portrait of one of the world's most miraculous and significant ecosystems, making clear why the future of this region is of essential concern far beyond the heartland"--
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Book
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577.44 Hag
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A few nights before Halloween, as Cork O’Connor gloomily ruminates on his upcoming birthday, he receives a call from his son, Stephen, who is working for a nonprofit dedicated to securing freedom for unjustly incarcerated inmates. Stephen tells his father that decades ago, as the newly elected sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork was responsible for sending an Ojibwe man named Axel Boshey to prison for a brutal murder that Stephen is certain he did not commit.
Cork feels compelled to reinvestigate the crime, but that is easier said than done. Not only is it a closed case but Axel Boshey is, inexplicably, refusing to help. The deeper Cork digs, the clearer it becomes that there are those in Tamarack County who are willing once again to commit murder to keep him from finding the truth.
At the same time, Cork’s seven-year-old grandson has his own theory about the the Windigo, that mythic cannibal ogre, has come to Tamarack County…and it won’t leave until it has sated its hunger for human blood.
Cork feels compelled to reinvestigate the crime, but that is easier said than done. Not only is it a closed case but Axel Boshey is, inexplicably, refusing to help. The deeper Cork digs, the clearer it becomes that there are those in Tamarack County who are willing once again to commit murder to keep him from finding the truth.
At the same time, Cork’s seven-year-old grandson has his own theory about the the Windigo, that mythic cannibal ogre, has come to Tamarack County…and it won’t leave until it has sated its hunger for human blood.
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Large Print
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LP FIC Kru
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"1970s Minnesota. It's spring in the Red River Valley and Cash Blackbear is doing summer field work for Bud Borgerud, a local farmer-until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property's rented farmhouse. The only possible witness to the murder is the young daughter of a Native field laborer who was renting the house. The girl, Shawnee, is too terrified to speak about what she's witnessed, and her parents seem to have vanished. In the wake of the murder, Cash can't deny her intuitive abilities: she is suspicious of the dead man's grieving widow, who offers to take in Shawnee temporarily. While Cash scours the county and White Earth reservation trying to find the missing mother before the Shawnee is placed in the care of a social worker-the same woman who placed Cash in foster care a decade earlier-another body turns up.Concerned about the girl's fate, and with the help of local Sheriff Wheaton, Cash races against the clock to figure out the truth of what happened in the farmhouse."--
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Ren
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"Dinah Kendall's role in the U.S. Capitol for the Office of Strategic Services is far from the thrilling espionage career she dreamed of. Instead of covert missions, she crafts rumors aimed at undermining Axis morale while trying to live up to the expectations of her demanding mother, Lillian. As Dinah navigates her duties, she uncovers something startling: Her mother was once a codebreaker, breaking military ciphers during the Great War alongside some of the nation's most brilliant minds. The deeper Dinah dives into Lillian's journal, the more the secrets of the past come to light--including the steep cost of high-stakes codebreaking" --Provided by publisher.
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Book
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FIC Gre
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"Hana Babic is a quiet middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared. Thirty years before, Hana was someone else: Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia--until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend--the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head. Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana's care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora--and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too" --
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Esk
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Beard : a memoir of a marriage
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"Through the retelling of a marriage that ended twenty years ago, a writer reckons with the bodily and spiritual impact of the "beard" trope as it manifests in literature, popular culture, and her own romantic history"-- Provided by publisher.
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Book
Call Number:
306.840866 Lun
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What doesn't kill me makes me weirder and harder to relate to : a memoir
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"What's it like to be in the public spotlight when it just might get you killed? For Mary Lucia, becoming a wildly popular rock DJ meant connecting with a multitude of fans through a shared love of music and deep cuts. But for one listener, that connection became a dangerous obsession, catapulting Lucia into the terrifying three-year nightmare that she chronicles in this raw, wry, and profoundly courageous memoir. With electrifying wit and anger, Lucia shares her experience of navigating constant terror while life absurdly goes on: interview rock stars, curate a radio show song list, judge high school battles of the band, kick a drug addiction cold turkey . . . all while fearing what might be waiting in her mailbox or who might be waiting on her front step or at her back door. Lucia was no stranger to inappropriate or weird contact from fans, but things turned sinister when ten pounds of raw meat were delivered to her at work, followed by a steady stream of ominous letters, cards, packages, and messages. When the letters included threats to her dogs' safety, she tried to get help, but without a name and return address on these communications there was nothing she could do. As the stalker's actions escalated, Lucia felt more and more isolated. Police responding to her 911 calls were insensitive and dismissive, and even her friends implied that being stalked was just a hazard of her high-profile job and her high-energy personality. No one seemed to take seriously the danger she faced. Inseparable from this ordeal is the story of how Mary Lucia became the notorious radio malcontent known by so many avid listeners. From the good, bad, and weird of growing up in her eccentric family to drugs, death, and dogs, Lucia finally shares her life on her own terms in What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To. Applying her signature dark humor to her own traumatic experiences, Lucia's memoir is idiosyncratic, bold, and--ironically--relatable." --
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Book
Call Number:
791.44092 Luc
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Set in 1963, thirteen-year-old Zenobia and her siblings spend the summer with their grandparents where they fight against the targeted demolition of the neighborhood for a new highway.
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Book
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YA FIC Sto
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"Growing up a farm girl, Peggy’s life has never been particularly exciting. But a lot changes in 1941. Her friend Joe starts acting strange around her. The Quaker hostel nearby reopens to house Jewish refugees from Europe, including a handsome boy named Gunther and a troubled professor of nothing. And her cousin and best friend, Delia, is diagnosed with leukemia—and doesn’t even know it"--
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Book
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J FIC Bou
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Daisy has been working on invisibilizing herself--ever since living with her mother's violent ex-boyfriend, and now to avoid the school bullies who are targeting her. She keeps a low profile, eating lunch with the librarian instead of in the Lunchroom of Terror and secretly counting whenever she's anxious. But things are looking up. A new boy has befriended her and seems able to stand up to the bullies, and the stray cat she's been feeding is starting to almost trust her. Maybe she can finally focus on futurizing rather than invisibilizing.
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Book
Call Number:
J FIC McG
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Enmity and empathy : Japanese Americans in Minnesota during World War II
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The forced eviction and confinement of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor in 1941 was one of the worst civil rights violations of the twentieth century, and the repercussions were numerous. The effect in Minnesota was dramatic: only fifty-one Japanese American people lived in the state in 1940, but by war's end there were several thousand. Drawing on personal interviews, archival sources, and historical literature, scholar and professor Ka Wong explores the courageous struggles of trailblazers who left the incarceration camps and rebuilt their lives in the North Star State, overcoming hostility and hardship along the way. Despite the enmity ignited by war hysteria, bonds of empathy developed between the resettlers and allies who advocated for them personally and professionally. This volume illustrates the multiple ways in which Japanese American people transformed both wartime Minnesota and their own lives, including narratives of college students pursuing higher education, young men and women training at the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage and then Fort Snelling, the US Cadet Nurse Corps serving in Rochester hospitals, and entrepreneurial families and individuals in the Twin Cities and beyond.
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Book
Call Number:
940.530899 Won
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Her place in the woods : the life of Helen Hoover
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"Her Place in the Woods is the first complete biography of Helen Hoover (1910-1984), whose beloved writings on life in the wilderness of northern Minnesota's Gunflint Lake were published in popular magazines and several bestselling books. David Hakensen shares her unlikely history of leaving a corporate career in Chicago for a small cabin without electricity or running water, detailing the challenges she and her husband faced as they settled into the rhythms of their remote homestead. Her Place in the Woods captures both Hoover's awakening to the power and fragility of the natural world and the efforts and talents of an extraordinary woman defining herself as a writer"-- Provided by publisher.
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Book
Call Number:
B Hoo
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The war at home : Minnesota during the Great War, 1914-1920
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Americans went to war in 1917 literally against Germany but also against each other. The controversial decision to send an army to France came during a contentious time when farmers and workers challenged the wealthy, African Americans struggled against Jim Crow, women campaigned for suffrage, and millions crusaded against alcohol. In The War at Home, historian Greg Gaut focuses on the lives of individual Minnesotans to tell the dramatic story of this period, when the North Star State experienced bitter polarization, nativism, flagrant disregard for democratic norms, and intense, sometimes violent, confrontations. The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety ruled the state with an iron hand during the war. Led by John F. McGee, the commission pursued a "loyalty" campaign against trade unions, the Nonpartisan League, the Socialist Party, and the Industrial Workers of the World. McGee's most prominent adversary was Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., whom the Nonpartisan League nominated to challenge the governor in the fiercely contested 1918 primary. Although Minnesota's home front experience was the product of a particular confluence of events and personalities, it raises issues about how democracy can give way to authoritarianism when economic inequality, anti-immigrant nationalism, and racism hold sway.
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Book
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940.3109776 Gau
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"In the prairie town of Andwhen, Minnesota, members of a small congregation don't know if they've been blessed or cursed when the ashes administered during an Ash Wednesday service won't wash off. This event leads Basil, a "gentle giant" of a teen, to make a secret vow to save his family through prayer and fasting. His family is in a difficult place, stricken by a recent farming accident and his mother's decade-long confinement to a state mental hospital. Basil keeps his struggles secret from his two friends, Lukas and Morgan (who self-identify as "a gay, a goth, and a giant"). When the trio discovers what may be the centuries-old remains of a Viking explorer in a local meadow, the find brings its own complications, as folk history clashes with the agendas of online racists. Meanwhile, Basil's unrelenting commitment to fasting unravels his sense of reality, putting himself and his family in danger. Ashes to Ashes moves between characters and perspectives, exploring the stories we tell about family, community, and our larger histories, blending elements of Norse saga with a fine-grained examination of rural Midwestern life at the start of the pandemic" --
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Book
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FIC Mal
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When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes without a trace, her family is left shattered, struggling to navigate the darkness of grief and unanswered questions. As their search turns to despair, Laurel's older sister, Nadine, begins experiencing nightmares that blur the line between dream and reality, and she becomes convinced that Laurel's disappearance could be connected to other family tragedies. Guided by her elders, Nadine sets out to uncover whether laying the ghosts to rest is the key to finding her sister and healing her fractured family.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Fau
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The many mothers of Dolores Moore
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In the span of a year, Dolores Moore has become a thirty-five-year-old orphan. After the funeral of the last living member of her family, Dorrie has never felt more lost and alone. That is, except for a Greek chorus of deceased relatives whose voices follow her around giving unsolicited advice and opinions. And they're only amplifying Dorrie's doubts about keeping the deathbed promise she made to return to her birthplace in Colombia. Fresh off a breakup with her long-term boyfriend, laid off from her job as a cartographer, and facing a daunting inheritance of her mothers' aging Minneapolis Victorian and two orange tabbies, how can she possibly leave the country now? But when an old flame offers to housesit, the chorus agrees that there's no room for excuses. Armed with only a scrap of a handdrawn map, Dorrie sets off to find out where--and who--she came from.
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Book
Call Number:
FIC Faj
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Theo's whole world has flipped upside down, quite literally, since the death of his best friend. And in this Flip Side, Theo is devastatingly alone--that is, except for a shape-shifting presence that threatens and taunts him with the worst things he himself has been thinking. He seems doomed to remain in this awful isolation, until some hope arrives in the form of a snarky girl named Emma who has been struggling in the Flip Side for much longer than Theo. Together, they'll battle the creatures that haunt them, search for answers, and maybe, just maybe, find a way out.
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Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Wal
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"In the town of Avan Island, there was a group home called Sister's Place. It housed girls no one cared about, girls who had nothing and no one but each other. Over the course of six months, eight girls from the home seemingly disappeared, never to return. But one girl did. Nev is the girl who returned. The girl who survived. She's done her best to leave what happened in the forest on Avan Island behind her, but now, five years later, the men in charge of Sister's Place, the men who brushed the missing girls off as "runaways," are turning up dead. And Nev realizes that confronting the town that was all too happy to forget her may be her only chance to get answers about what happened to her sisters. As Nev is pulled deeper into Avan's secrets -- and as more bodies pile up -- she must unravel the mysteries locked in her own mind as she hunts down a killer who is willing to do anything to make sure the past stays buried" --
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Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Roa
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When the guns fall silent on April 19, 1775, Whitley Endicott is elbows deep in blood. Haunted by the ghosts of those who died for the cause, the young surgeon is determined to save lives and free the spirits of the dead. The only obstacle: she isn't a man. Men's clothes conceal her gender but can't hide her skills, which earn her a place of trust at Fort Ticonderoga as the American Revolution unfolds. Officers and soldiers alike recognize her innate sense of honor, entrusting her with their lives--and their secrets. When her twin brother and best friend confide in her, Whitley seeks to protect them from any who would do them harm. American ambition marches the fledgling army into Canada as winter descends, and Whitley strives to keep the soldiers alive despite supply shortages, starvation, and smallpox. Worried her smallest mistake might betray her true identity or endanger those she loves, Whitley must ask herself, who is worthy of trust?
Format:
Book
Call Number:
YA FIC Mak