Australia’s Top 100 Books for 2026 – as voted by thousands of readers

Feeling booked and busy right now? That’s a tell-tale sign that Silly Season is fast approaching. But if you’d rather be ‘booked’ in a different way, the summer holidays are the perfect time to get stuck into your reading pile.

To help you build your stack, ABC Radio National has just dropped its Top 100 Australian Books for 2026. Thousands of readers cast their votes in the nationwide poll, with the final rankings featuring everything from beloved classics to modern favourites across fiction, memoir, history, cookbooks and even picture books.

After tallying the votes, Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet was officially crowned Australia’s favourite book. First published in 1991, this sprawling epic follows two working-class families sharing a house in post-war Perth over two decades.

Cloudstreet was the top pick in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania. It landed just ahead of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, which claimed second place in the Top 100 poll for the second year running and was the ACT and South Australia’s #1 pick for 2026. Last year’s winner, Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton, came in third place and was the favourite in its home state of Queensland.

Two Australian authors each scored four entries in the Top 100 poll: Tim Winton with Cloudstreet (#1), Breath (#33), Dirt Music (#41) and Juice (#88); and Helen Garner with Monkey Grip (#31), Joe Cinque's Consolation (#38), This House of Grief (#72) and The Spare Room (#94).

Three iconic cookbooks also made the cut this year: The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book (#22), Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion (#56) and RecipeTin Eats: Dinner by Nagi Maehashi (#96).

Children’s books also make up a meaty chunk of the Top 100 with 14 titles, including classics like Possum Magic (#11), The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot & Cuddlepie (#42) and Are We There Yet? (#62). You can check out the top 100 below.

The Top 100 Australian Books of 2026:

1. Cloudstreet, Tim Winton
2. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
3. Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton
4. Burial Rites, Hannah Kent
5. A Fortunate Life, A.B. Facey
6. Tomorrow, When the War Began, John Marsden
7. The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams
8. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
9. The Secret River, Kate Grenville
10. The Dry, Jane Harper
11. Possum Magic, Mem Fox and Julie Vivas
12. Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe
13. Looking for Alibrandi, Melina Marchetta
14. Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks
15. The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas
16. Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy
17. Storm Boy, Colin Thiele
18. My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin
19. Magic Beach, Alison Lester
20. Wifedom, Anna Funder
21. My Place, Sally Morgan
22. The Australian Women's Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, Maryanne Blacker and Pamela Clark
23. Stasiland, Anna Funder
24. The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay
25. Seven Little Australians, Ethel Turner
26. Picnic at Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsay
27. The Harp in the South, Ruth Park
28. Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth
29. The Happiest Refugee, Anh Do
30. My Brother Jack, George Johnston
31. Monkey Grip, Helen Garner
32. Animalia, Graeme Base
33. Breath, Tim Winton
34. The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion
35. Lola in the Mirror, Trent Dalton
36. Limberlost, Robbie Arnott
37. I Can Jump Puddles, Alan Marshall
38. Joe Cinque's Consolation, Helen Garner
39. Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty
40. Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey
41. Dirt Music, Tim Winton
42. The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot & Cuddlepie, May Gibbs
43. People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
44. True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey
45. All That I Am, Anna Funder
46. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough
47. Playing Beatie Bow, Ruth Park
48. Where is the Green Sheep?, Mem Fox and Judy Horacek
49. The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer
50. Mao's Last Dancer, Li Cunxin
51. The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman
52. Horse, Geraldine Brooks
53. Stone Yard Devotional, Charlotte Wood
54. Schindler's Ark, Thomas Keneally
55. The Magic Pudding, Norman Lindsay
56. The Cook's Companion, Stephanie Alexander
57. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Holly Ringland
58. The Yield, Tara June Winch
59. The Happiest Man on Earth, Eddie Jaku
60. The Man From Snowy River, Banjo Paterson
61. Too Much Lip, Melissa Lucashenko
62. Are We There Yet?, Alison Lester
63. Question 7, Richard Flanagan
64. Damned Whores and God's Police, Anne Summers
65. Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, Shankari Chandran
66. Carpentaria, Alexis Wright
67. Voss, Patrick White
68. Unreliable Memoirs, Clive James
69. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
70. Diary of a Wombat, Jackie French and Bruce Whatley
71. The Tree of Man, Patrick White
72. This House of Grief, Helen Garner
73. Scrublands, Chris Hammer
74. The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes
75. The Bookbinder of Jericho, Pip Williams
76. The Natural Way of Things, Charlotte Wood
77. The Broken Shore, Peter Temple
78. Power Without Glory, Frank Hardy
79. Johnno, David Malouf
80. For the Term of His Natural Life, Marcus Clarke
81. We of the Never-Never, Mrs Aeneas Gunn
82. Eucalyptus, Murray Bail
83. Wombat Stew, Marcia K Vaughan and Pamela Lofts
84. Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
85. The Dressmaker, Rosalie Ham
86. The Lost Man, Jane Harper
87. The Trauma Cleaner, Sarah Krasnostein
88. Juice, Tim Winton
89. Edenglassie, Melissa Lucashenko
90. Puberty Blues, Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey
91. Where the Forest Meets the Sea, Jeannie Baker
92. The Tall Man, Chloe Hooper
93. The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead
94. The Spare Room, Helen Garner
95. The Museum of Modern Love, Heather Rose
96. RecipeTin Eats: Dinner, Nagi Maehashi
97. Devotion, Hannah Kent
98. The Arrival, Shaun Tan
99. The 13-Storey Treehouse, Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton
100. Round the Twist, Paul Jennings

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