See Which Titles Are National Book Award Finalists

Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See follows Marie-Laure, a Parisian girl, and Werner, an orphan who finds himself at an academy for Hitler Youth. The pair's stories intertwine in occupied France as they both try to survive World War II.

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine moves back and forth between Beirut and San Francisco to tell the story of 72-year-old Aaliya.

In Lila: A Novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson revisits the characters from Gilead and Home to tell the story and backstory of Lila, the wife of a minister.

Emily St. John Mandel's book Station Eleven follows a group of actors who travel through the Great Lakes performing in the wake of an apocalyptic plague.

Redeployment by Phil Klay is a collection of short stories about an American billionaire, a marine, and more.

The story of two teens' lives in the Summer of 1964 plays out in Revolution by Deborah Wiles, the second part of the Sixties trilogy.

In Brown Girl Dreaming, author Jacqueline Woodson writes about growing up in the North and in the South, using poetry to write about her experience with racism and the civil rights movement.

Noggin by John Corey Whaley follows the story of Travis Coates, a boy whose head was preserved after he died at age 16, and five years later, his head is attached to a new body, and he has to learn how to live a new, unfamiliar life.

Eliot Schrefer's Threatened follows the adventure of a young orphan and an Egyptian researcher as they explore the jungle to study chimpanzees.

Steve Sheinkin's book The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Munity, and the Fight For Civil Rights explores the aftermath of a1944 explosion at a California naval facility, which left 50 African American men convicted of mutiny.