Top Titles at Public Libraries

Here are the top twenty titles US public library patrons looked for in May 2026.

May brought a lot of change to the list, including nine new releases, along with another round of the screen-to-shelf dynamic we explored in From Screen to Shelf: How Movies and TV Shows Drive Library Patron Interest.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke climbed to #1. Burke’s debut novel, about a tradwife influencer who wakes up in 1855, was an April “Good Morning America Book Club” pick.
Three titles released on May 5 land in our top ten: Kathryn Stockett’s The Calamity Club (#4), her first novel since 2009’s The Help; Carley Fortune’s Our Perfect Storm (#7), an instant New York Times bestseller; and Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say (#9), a standalone that steps outside her Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge worlds.
Matt Dinniman’s “Dungeon Crawler Carl” has become a library staple. The “LitRPG” series imagines aliens turning the planet into a brutal, multi-level dungeon. Survivors—among them Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s foul-mouthed cat, Princess Donut—must crawl through it while the galaxy watches as reality entertainment. The first book, Dungeon Crawler Carl, stands at #14, and the new, eighth book, A Parade of Horribles, is at #19.
Some of fiction’s biggest names debuted strong. James Patterson’s 26 Beauties (#10) is his twenty-sixth Women’s Murder Club thriller. Michael Connelly’s Ironwood (#15) is a second Catalina Island novel. Freida McFadden’s The Divorce (#17) is already a bestseller despite arriving late in the month. And Susan and James Patterson’s The Mother-Daughter Book Club sits at #18.
Screen adaptations reshaped the list in both directions. As we predicted last month, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt rose (from #11 to #6) along with the debut of a Netflix adaptation, starring Sally Field and Lewis Pullman. Alfred Molina, who played Doctor Octopus in two Spider-Man movies, voices Marcellus the octopus. Elle Kennedy’s The Deal debuted at #8, a decade after publication, as Prime Video’s Off Campus—adapting her BookTok-popular hockey romance—began streaming May 13. And Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary fell from #1 to #5 as the Ryan Gosling film receded from theaters.
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans slipped to #3, its first month outside the top two since it arrived.