Nevada County Reads

February, March and April 2026

Nevada County Reads is designed to deepen engagement in literature through reading and discussion. Everyone in the community can participate: read a book, share perspectives, attend a program, engage on social media and build a stronger Nevada County together. Developed in 2005, Nevada County Reads is presented in partnership with the Nevada County Superintendent of Schools and is funded in part by the Friends of the Nevada County Libraries.

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Daniel Mason’s North Woods is a spellbinding novel that follows a single house deep in the forests of New England across centuries of human and natural history. From Puritan settlers to artists, lovers, fugitives, and ghosts, each inhabitant leaves traces that intertwine with the evolving landscape. With exquisite prose and a naturalist’s sensibility, Mason reveals how memory, love, and loss persist within the living world. North Woods is both an ecological epic and a haunting meditation on time, reminding readers that every place holds the echoes of all who have passed through it.

North Woods was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2023; winner of the PEN Oakland / Josephine Miles Award in 2024; included on The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post “Top Ten Books of the Year” lists; recognized as a National Bestseller; long listed for the International Dublin Literary Award; finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Pick up a free copy of North Woods beginning February 6th at any Nevada County Library location!

Save the Date: Author Event with Daniel Mason

Saturday, April 11th | 6 pm
Free and open to the public
Sierra College, Nevada County Campus Multipurpose Center
50 Sierra College Drive | Grass Valley, CA 95945

About the Author

Daniel Mason is an award-winning novelist, psychiatrist, and professor at Stanford University whose writing illuminates the intricate connections between humanity, history, and the natural world.

His debut novel, The Piano Tuner (2002), became an international bestseller and has been translated into more than two dozen languages. He is also the author of A Far Country (2007), The Winter Soldier (2018), and the widely acclaimed North Woods (2023)—a centuries-spanning exploration of the American landscape through the lens of a single New England homestead and the lives, ghosts, and ecosystems that inhabit it.

Mason’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, and Zoetrope: All-Story, and has earned him numerous accolades including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and recognition from the Pulitzer Prize committee.

As a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, he teaches and writes about the intersections of medicine, narrative, and the human imagination. Nevada County Library is honored to welcome Daniel Mason as the featured author for Nevada County Reads 2026, celebrating North Woods and the profound storytelling that reveals our shared connection to place, memory, and the living world.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Annihilation is a captivating work of speculative fiction that blends elements of science fiction with environmental and psychological exploration. In the novel, an all-female expedition embarks on a journey into Area X, a mysterious landscape where nature and perception are transformed in unexpected ways. Through immersive and thought-provoking prose, VanderMeer invites readers to explore themes of change, identity, and the complex relationship between humanity and the natural world. Annihilation won both the Nebula and Shirley Jackson award for Best Novel in 2014. Pick up an honor copy of this year's Nevada County Reads book at any Nevada County Library location, while supplies last.

The Round House is a winner in the National Book Award for fiction. One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.

Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

“Every bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so . . . a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.”—David Cole, The New York Review of Books

“Searing, moving . . . Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be America’s Mandela.”—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

“You don’t have to read too long to start cheering for this man. . . . The message of this book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful.”—Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

San Piedro, a small island in the Pacific Northwest, is home to salmon fishermen and strawberry farmers. It is also home to many Japanese-Americans. Snow Falling on Cedars opens in Judge Lew Fielding's courtroom as the trial of one of these Japanese-Americans, Kabuo Miyamoto, who is on trial for killing fellow fisherman Carl Heine, Jr., commences.

First-novelist Guterson presents a multilayered courtroom drama set in the aftermath of the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. -- Publishers Weekly

"Haunting. . . . A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper." -- Los Angeles Times

Nevada County Reads

February, March and April 2026

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Save the Date: Author Event with Daniel Mason

About the Author