Is it lyrical prose that drips off the page like honey? A story that twists your heart and turns your brain inside out? Or perhaps it’s a voice—a narrative voice so precise, so bold—that it cuts through the static of everything else you’ve read that year. Literary excellence isn’t just about style. It’s about daring. Depth. Disruption.

Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed a surge of boundary-pushing fiction. Data from report indicates that from 2015 to 2024, the number of user-rated novels with over 4.5 stars and more than 10,000 reviews increased by 72%, reflecting a growing appetite for richly crafted stories. Below, we explore eight novels that don’t just entertain—they redefine what literature can do.

1. “The Overstory” by Richard Powers (2018)

A novel that grows like a forest—literally. Powers brings trees to the foreground as main characters, weaving multiple human stories around them. It’s not subtle, nor should it be. This Pulitzer-winning work redefines environmental fiction with poetic ambition and scientific complexity.

Literary excellence tip: Sometimes, telling the story around the subject is more powerful than naming it outright.

2. “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo (2019)

Polyphonic, vibrant, unapologetically queer and feminist. This Booker Prize-winning novel interweaves twelve characters—Black British women—across generations. Evaristo removes punctuation rules as easily as she dismantles expectations. It’s a dance of language, rhythm, and raw human truth.

Bonus: Want to find a hidden gem among novels? You can’t do without a reading app like FictionMe platform. FictionMe has thousands of free novels, both popular and lesser-known, from authors all over the world. The perfect place to find novels that can take a worthy place in your personal rating.

3. “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

This is not a comfortable book. It’s brutal, relentless, emotionally exhaustive—and that’s the point. Yanagihara constructs a devastating portrait of trauma and friendship, stretching across decades. Some call it manipulative. Others, genius. It’s both.

Top novels of the last years often divide readers. That tension is a hallmark of bold literature.

4. “Trust” by Hernan Diaz (2022)

Meta-fiction. Wealth. Power. A story told four times, through four lenses, with reality slipping between the cracks. Diaz dismantles the myth of the self-made man with elegance and a scalpel. Longlisted for the Booker and Pulitzer winner in 2023, it’s already being taught in modern fiction seminars.

Literary excellence tip: Let form follow function. If your story is about illusion, write it like a hall of mirrors.

5. “Sharks in the Time of Saviors” by Kawai Strong Washburn (2020)

Magic realism swims through Hawaiian mythology and modern poverty in this debut. The prose is lush and deeply rooted in place—smelling of salt air, sorrow, and ancestral weight. It’s about displacement and return. Loss and myth. And family, always family.

Indigenous storytelling is increasingly shaping the top novels of the last years, offering perspectives long excluded from the mainstream literary canon.

6. “The Candy House” by Jennifer Egan (2022)

A companion to A Visit from the Goon Squad, this novel explores memory, identity, and digital consciousness. Egan doesn’t just write stories—she engineers literary machinery. Chapter formats change. Narrative styles pivot. And the story? Hypnotic.

Read this one slowly. Or not. Reread. Reconsider. Great novels bend under pressure and snap back into new shapes.

7. “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin (2022)

Video games, friendship, ambition, love—but not romance. Zevin crafts a story that captures creative obsession across decades. It’s nostalgic and fresh, sentimental yet cerebral. A New York Times bestseller that doesn’t try too hard to be literary, yet somehow is.

Over 1 million copies sold worldwide as of 2024. Commercial success and literary excellence are not mutually exclusive.

8. “How High We Go in the Dark” by Sequoia Nagamatsu (2022)

Set in a world reeling from a plague (eerily prescient), this book moves through loosely connected stories—each bizarre, heart-wrenching, beautiful. From a theme park for euthanasia to cosmic funerals, it asks what it means to grieve collectively.

Speculative fiction has become a powerful vehicle for moral clarity in uncertain times. This novel proves it.

The Shape of Excellence: Not a Straight Line

There’s no single formula to writing a great novel, just as there’s no one way to read one. Some books need space. Others punch you in the gut. And some… they whisper for years.

Want to read novels for free? Start with open-access literary magazines. Many emerging authors who go on to write award-winning novels publish short stories in The Paris Review, Granta, or Electric Literature. Also, most municipal libraries offer digital loans that cost you exactly zero.

Literary excellence tip: Track emerging trends by following major literary prize longlists. The Booker, National Book Award, Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Pulitzer are good starting points.

Final Thought: We’re in a Golden Age (Seriously)

Despite hand-wringing over attention spans and screen addictions, people are still reading. According to Pew Research, 75% of U.S. adults reported reading a book in 2023—most in print. And fiction? Alive and thriving. In fact, sales of literary fiction rose 8% year over year, bucking the myth that nobody reads “serious” books anymore.

So if you’re looking to write one, read one, or just lose yourself in something profound—start here. The future of literature isn’t coming. It’s already on the shelf.