Adam Johnson Books in Order

This debut collection follows outsiders, dreamers, and damaged strivers across strange American landscapes, from police rooftops to failed moonshots. The stories are funny, sad, and a little off-kilter, always circling loneliness and the need for connection.

Anthropologist Hank Hannah digs up an ancient burial site and accidentally helps unleash a plague that sends the world backward. The novel mixes campus satire, apocalypse, and dark humor as Hank tries to save the person he loves.

The 2011 installment of this annual anthology gathers short stories, essays, journalism, comics, and oddities chosen by Eggers and a committee of high school readers. It serves as a snapshot of that year's most surprising, funny, or moving pieces that fell outside standard school assignments.

This volume continues the series' mission by collecting standout writing from magazines, zines, blogs, and more published in 2012. The mix of fiction and nonfiction is curated with young readers in mind, but offers plenty of smart, offbeat work for adults as well.

Pak Jun Do grows up inside North Korea's brutal machinery and keeps being pushed into more dangerous roles. As propaganda, fear, and private desire collide, he must decide what he can risk for love, identity, and survival.

Gathered for 2013, these selections range from short stories and memoir to investigative pieces and graphic work. Eggers and his student board highlight writing that feels urgent, inventive, or just too strange and wonderful to leave unread.

Here the Nonrequired Reading series showcases a fresh batch of stories, essays, and comics that reward curiosity. The 2014 edition leans into variety and surprise, offering everything from quiet personal pieces to big reported features in one generous collection.

In six stories, Adam Johnson moves from digital grief to hurricane wreckage to North Korean defection, showing how politics and technology press on private lives. The collection is sharp, humane, and full of people trying to hold on under pressure.

In the 2015 volume, Eggers and his teenage editors continue to champion work that falls between categories. The book is ideal for browsing, with each piece chosen for its ability to grab a reader who might think they are not into that kind of writing.

This edition threads together voices from many backgrounds, bringing together fiction, reportage, and humor that spoke to 2016. It is designed less as a best of canon and more as a yearbook of the pieces that made readers sit up and pay attention.

By 2017 the series has a long tradition, and this volume continues it with another eclectic mix shaped by young volunteer readers. The anthology offers short, memorable works that can be read between classes, on buses, or late at night when you want just one more story.

In the 2018 collection, Eggers and company assemble writing that reflects a tumultuous year, from sharp political commentary to intimate fiction. The pieces are arranged to keep you turning pages, shifting tone and form so the book never feels predictable.

The final volume under this title gathers an array of stories, essays, and experiments that close out the series on a high note. As in earlier years, the selections show how much vivid, surprising work is being published outside standard classroom anthologies.

Set in the South Pacific a thousand years ago, this epic follows young Kōrero after a stranger offers her starving island a path to Tonga. Sea voyage, royal feud, and oral legend combine in a high-stakes story of survival and power.