| Autobiography/Biography | | Hardcover | Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, Judith Thurman | | Paperback | Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Time, James R. Mellow |
|
| Children's Fiction | | Hardcover | Homesick: My Own Story, Jean Fritz | | Paperback | A Place Apart, Paula Fox | | Marked by Fire, Joyce Carol Thomas |
|
| Children's Books, Nonfiction | Chimney Sweeps, James Cross Giblin |
| Children's Picture Books | | Hardcover | Miss Rumphius, Barbara Cooney | | Doctor De Soto, William Steig | | Paperback | A House Is a House for Me, Mary Ann Hoberman; Betty Fraser, illustrator |
|
| Fiction |
 Alice Walker Archive Photos |
Hardcover | The Color Purple, Alice Walker | | Paperback | Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty |
|
| First Novel | The Women of Brewster Place, Gloria Naylor |
| General Nonfiction | China: Alive in the Bitter Sea, Fox Butterfield |
| | Paperback | National Defense, James Fallows |
|
| History | | Hardcover | Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression, Alan Brinkley | | Paperback | Utopian Thought in the Western World, Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel |
|
| Original Paperback | The Red Magician, Lisa Goldstein |
| Poetry | Selected Poems, Galway Kinnell |
| Country Music: Selected Early Poems, Charles Wright |
| Science | | Hardcover | “Subtle Is the Lord…”: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, Abraham Pais | | Paperback | The Mathematical Experience, Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh |
|
| Translation | Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, Richard Howard |
