2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

Adults

In Five Years

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers.

She is nothing like her lifelong best friend—the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.

Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Glass Hotel

From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate eventsthe exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Dear Mrs. Bird

Emmeline Lake and her best friend Bunty are doing their bit for the war effort and trying to stay cheerful, despite the German planes making their nightly raids. Emmy dreams of becoming a Lady War Correspondent, and when she spots a job advertisement in the newspaper she seizes her chance; but after a rather unfortunate misunderstanding, she finds herself typing letters for the formidable Henrietta Bird, renowned advice columnist of Woman’s Friend magazine.

How Quickly She Disappears

In this compelling debut, Fleischmann uses remote locations and a barely remembered time as a frame for a story centered on obsession. In 1941, Elizabeth Pfautz still dreams of her identical twin sister, Jacqueline, who disappeared 20 years earlier from their hometown in Pennsylvania when the girls were 11 years old. Now Elizabeth endures a marriage gone sour in isolated Tanacross, Alaska, where her husband, John, teaches for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and she homeschools their precocious daughter, Margaret.

You Were There Too

Mia Graydon's life looks picket-fence perfect; she has the house, the husband, and dreams of starting a family. Their relocation to small-town Pennsylvania comes with the usual challenges--finding a new job, new friends, new furniture--but the move is nothing the couple can't handle. That is, until Mia finally meets the stranger she has been dreaming about for a decade. And here's the catch: He's been dreaming of her, too. Now Mia must navigate the tangled web that fate has spun her and, with the help ofthe man of her dreams, go in search of answers.

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won't get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class.