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The Best of 2020

December 26, 2020

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Jupiter and Saturn appear about one-tenth of a degree apart during what was called the Great Conjunction, Mt. Tamalpais, Larkspur, California, December 21, 2020

It has been an anxious, painful, and demanding year—from the global pandemic that continues to threaten the health and wellbeing of millions, while the most basic stimulus relief is further delayed, to a national confrontation with our country’s history of racialized inequality, and the most divisive and high-stakes US election in modern times.

As Covid-19 spread in New York City in March, and we at The New York Review of Books began, like millions of others, to work remotely, we asked a range of writers across the world to contribute to our pandemic journal , from March through mid-May. We published entries from Tokyo , Japan, Rome , Italy, Niamey , Niger, New Orleans , Louisiana, Bogotá , Colombia, and elsewhere; including contributions about reading amid uncertainty , from a pediatric doctor in Texas , the virus at Rikers , intimacy and social distancing , and the chasm between those working from home and those without any work, support, acknowledgment.

This fall, in collaboration with our magazine colleagues, we published a series of entries leading up to the presidential election , with Hari Kunzru on our siloed disinformation age , Bill McKibben on what Biden must do about the climate crisis , Astra Taylor on why voting is integral but never enough , and Wallace Shawn’s reflections on developments since his birth .

Below, our own Best of 2020 showcases more excellent work we published online during this harrowing year. As grateful as we are to our contributors, we thank you, our readers, for making this work possible, as we look forward to continuing it in 2021.

In chronological order:

Daniel Drake: The Slog Comes in on Little Cat Feet

Tamsin Shaw: William Barr: The Carl Schmitt of Our Time

Jenny Uglow: David Bomberg’s ‘Desire to Emancipate’

Anastasia Edel: A Winter’s Night at the Bolshoi, 1985

E. Tammy Kim: Moms 4 Housing: Redefining the Right to a Home in Oakland

Matt Seaton: The Righteous Mayor of Vibraye

Vivian Gornick: What Endures of the Romance of American Communism

Jiwei Xiao: Fearing For My Mother in Wuhan, Facing a New Sinophobia in the US

Asad Hussein: Chasing the Mirage: From Nairobi to New York City

Etgar Keret: Eating Olives at the End of the World

Maeve Higgins: The Essential Workers America Treats as Disposable

Nicole R. Fleetwood: Creation in Confinement: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration

April Zhu: A Lost ‘Little Africa’: How China, Too, Blames Foreigners for the Virus

Vincent Bevins: How ‘Jakarta’ Became the Codeword for US-Backed Mass Killing

Gary Younge: What Black America Means to Europe

Joyce Johnson: My Abortion War Story

Annette Gordon-Reed: The Problem of Police Powers for People Living While Black

Willa Glickman: New York’s Rising Tides: Climate Inequality and Sandy’s Legacy

Amna A. Akbar: How Defund and Disband Became the Demands

Mohamed Abdulkadir Ali: An African’s Education in Being Black in America

Sarah Churchwell: American Fascism: It Has Happened Here (with earlier weigh-ins on the issue by Samuel Moyn and Peter Gordon )

Krithika Varagur’s three-part series on policing in Minneapolis (parts 2 , and 3 )

Rebecca Haw Allensworth: Licensed to Pill

Jay Neugeboren: Dickens in Brooklyn

Seema Jilani: Broken Glass, Blood, and Anguish: Beirut After the Blast

Danny Lyon: My Friend John Lewis

Christopher Benfey: Missed Steps

Adam Shatz: The Stanley Crouch I Knew

Elizabeth Tsurkov: The Syrian Mercenaries Fighting Foreign Wars for Russia and Turkey

Sławomir Sierakowski: The Women’s March of Belarus

Susannah Jacob: The West Wing We Knew

Jay Rosen: America’s Press and the Asymmetric War for Truth

Jehad al-Saftawi: The Gaza I Grew Up In

Shirley Elizabeth Thompson: Georgia On My Mind

Menaka Guruswamy: In Modi’s India, the ‘Love Jihad’ Myth Is Made Law

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Locus Online

The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field

The New York Times Best Books of 2020

• The Death of Jesus , J.M. Coetzee (Viking)
• The Death of Vivek Oji , Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead)
• Red Pill , Hari Kunzru (Knopf)
• A Children’s Bible , Lydia Millet (Norton)
• Tokyo Ueno Station , Yu Miri, translated by Morgan Giles (Riverhead)
• Earthlings , Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove)
• Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 , Cho Nam-Joo, translated by Jamie Chang (Liveright)
• Little Eyes , Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Riverhead)
• Sharks in the Time of Saviors , Kawai Strong Washburn (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)
• Memorial , Bryan Washington (Riverhead)
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold , C Pam Zhang (Riverhead)

A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (Norton) is also among their ten best books of the year . For more information, see  The New York Times  website .

©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.

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The link for A Children’s Bible shows the wrong book on Amazon.

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The Ultimate Best Books of 2020 List

Reading all the lists so you don't have to since 2017.

This year has been “unprecedented” and “unusual” and “an outlier” and “anomalous” and “freakish” and “extraordinary” in many ways. The Covid-19 pandemic has upended our way of life, our topics of conversation, and our entire world. However, some things will always be the same. What I mean to say is: Nothing can stop listicle season.

Yet again, I have scoured he internet to find out which books were recommended most on the “best of the year” lists, consulting 2020 roundups published by everyone from Literary Hub (that would be us) to Apartment Therapy. I read a total 41 lists, which recommended a whopping 952 different books. But a few were mentioned repeatedly, and you will find those ranked below, by order of frequency of inclusion. Does this mean these books are The Best? Only as much as any popularity contest ever does, I suppose. But if you’re looking to add some books to your holiday reading list, you could do a lot worse.

Here are the results:

Brit Bennett,  The Vanishing Half  

Rumaan Alam,  Leave the World Behind

Yaa Gyasi,  Transcendent Kingdom

Raven Leilani,  Luster James McBride,  Deacon King Kong

Maggie O’Farrell,  Hamnet Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Bryan Washington,  Memorial

Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies Megha Majumdar, A Burning Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & The Light Jenny Offill, Weather

Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections Garth Greenwell, Cleanness Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain Natasha Trethewey, Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became Lydia Millet, A Children’s Bible Barack Obama, A Promised Land Claudia Rankine, Just Us: An American Conversation Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir C Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills is Gold

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi Samantha Irby, Wow, No Thank You: Essays Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age

Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings Lily King, Writers & Lovers Brandon Taylor, Real Life Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown

Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic Les Payne and Tamara Payne, The Dead are Arising V. E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Karla Corejo Villavinencio, The Undocumented Americans Jess Walter, The Cold Millions

S.A. Cosby, Blacktop Wasteland Emily Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines Anne Enright, Actress Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile Marilynne Robinson, Jack Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors Kevin Young, ed., African-American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song

Alyssa Cole, When No One is Watching Diane Cook, The New Wilderness Lacy Crawford, Notes on a Silencing Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians Peace Adzo Medie, His Only Wife David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue Wayétu Moore, The Dragons, The Giant, The Women: A Memoir Aimee Nezhukumatathil, illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa Curtis Sittenfeld, Rodham Danez Smith, Homie: Poems Zadie Smith, Intimations: Six Essays Adrian Tomine, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

Full list of lists surveyed:

TIME’ s 100 Must Read Books of 2020 ;  Vanity Fair ‘ s 15 Best Books of 2020 ; The New York Times Book Review’ s 100 Notable Books of 2020 ; Vulture’s 10 Best Books of 2020 ; Literary Hub’s 65 Favorite Books of the Year ;  Esquire’ s Best Books to Elevate Your Reading List in 2020 ;  Los Angeles Time’ s 10 Best Books of 2020 ; Slate’s Best Books of 2020 (Laura Miller); Slate’s Best Books of 2020 (Dan Kois); Refinery29’s The Best Books of 2020, So Far ; The Washington Post’ s 50 notable works of nonfiction in 2020 ; The Washington Post’ s 50 notable works of fiction in 2020 ; The New York Times’ Critics’ Top Books of 2020 ; The Chicago Public Library’s Best Books of 2020 ; Book Riot’s Best Books of 2020 ; BuzzFeed’s Best Books We Read in 2020 ; Publishers Weekly’ s Best Books of 2020 ; Library Journal’ s Best Books 2020 ;  O, The Oprah Magazine ‘ s 20 Best Books of 2020 ; Chicago Tribune’ s 10 Best Books of 2020 ;  EW’ s 10 Best Books of 2020 ;  Teen Vogue’ s Best Books of 2020 You Should Be Reading Right Now ; Apartment Therapy’s Must-Read Books of 2020 ; Amazon’s Top 100 Books of 2020 ; Barnes & Noble’s 10 Best Books of 2020 ;  Real Simple’ s Best Books of 2020 (So Far) ; Kirkus Reviews’s Best of 2020 ( Fiction and Nonfiction ); Marie Claire’ s The 2020 Books You Should Add to Your Reading List ; Town and Country’ s Best Books of 2020 ; Parade’ s 40 Best Books of 2020 ; The New York Public Library’s Best Books of the Year ;  The Wall Street Journal’ s 10 Best Books of 2020 ;  USA TODAY’ s Best Books of 2020 ;  People’ s Top 10 Books of 2020 ;  The Guardian’ s Best Books of 2020 ; The Undefeated’s 25 Can’t-Miss Books of 2020 ; Men’s Health’ s 14 Best New Books of 2020 ; BBC’s Best Books of the year 2020 ; and The Telegraph’s 50 Best Books of 2020 ; and The Independent’ s 20 Best Books of 2020 .

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The New York Times Fiction Bestseller List 2020

Go beyond just the current list of New York Times Fiction Best Sellers to discover every bestselling book listed on the NYT Bestseller List in 2020.

Since 1931, The New York Times has been publishing a weekly list of bestselling books. Since then, becoming a New York Times bestseller has become a dream for virtually every writer.

When I first started reading adult fiction, one of the first places I went for book recommendations was the New York Times Fiction Best Sellers. I wanted to know what books were the most widely read, and start with those.

However, scrolling through the list week by week on The New York Times website is rather annoying. I just wanted all the bestselling fiction books gathered together in one place.

When I couldn’t find it, I decided to create it.

Here are all the New York Times fiction bestsellers from 2020. Instead of just the current best seller list , which you can find all over the place, I’ve compiled a list of every book that has appeared on the New York Times Fiction Best Sellers list in 2020 for Hardcover Fiction. 

Note: The week count in this list stops on the last week of 2020. Visit the 2021 Bestseller List if you want to find out which books kept ranking into the next year.

Since this is a bit of a sprawling post, feel free to jump to the section that most interests you or take your time scrolling through the complete list of New York Times fiction best sellers.

Quick Links

• #1 Fiction Best Sellers of 2020
• Heavyweights (10+ Weeks)
• Fan Favorites (5+ Weeks)
• Honorable Mention (2+ Weeks)
• One Hit Wonders

#1 New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2020

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

For years, Kya Clark has survived alone in the marshes of the North Carolina coast. Dubbed “The Marsh Girl” by the locals, she was abandoned by her family and has been raised by nature itself. Now, as she comes of age, she begins to yearn for something more than her loneliness – maybe even a connection with the locals. ( 119 Weeks ) Read more →

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

In Mexico, bookstore owner Lydia is charmed to meet Javier, a man who shares her taste in books, only to find he is the local drug lord. When her husband exposes Javier’s secrets, the wrath of the cartel falls upon her family. Lydia and her son Luca must flee from his wrath – all the way to American soil. ( 34 Weeks ) Read more →

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Growing up in a small black community in the Deep South, the Vignes sisters run away at age sixteen. Though identical twins, their lives end in completely different paths. One returns to live in their hometown while the other secretly passes as white. Bennett explores more than race, as she contemplates how the past affects future generations when their daughters’ lives intersect. ( 28 Weeks ) Read more →

If It Bleeds by Stephen King

A collection of four novellas. In “If It Bleeds,” a standalone sequel to The Outsider , a bomb at a middle school prompts an investigation into the lead reporter by Holly Gibney. Other stories include “Mr. Harriagan’s Phone,” “The Life of Chuck,” and “Rat.” ( 18 Weeks ) Read More →

Camino Winds by John Grisham

With Hurricane Leo approaching, bookstore owner Bruce Cable decides to ride out the storm. In the aftermath, his author friend Nelson Kerr is found dead. Did Nelson die in the storm? Or did someone use the hurricane to cover a murder? ( 17 Weeks ) Read More →

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

After a failed bank robbery, a banker robber on the run accidentally ends up with a room full of hostages at an open house. After letting all of the hostages go, the police storm the apartment, only to find it empty. Now the police must interview the dysfunctional group to figure out what exactly happened. Backman purposely plays on your assumptions and uses an unusual narration style that gives the story an allegorical feel. ( 14 Weeks ) Read more →

The Return by Nicholas Sparks

After being injured in a bombing in Afghanistan, a Navy doctor settles at his late grandfather’s cabin in North Carolina. While recuperating from his wounds, Trevor Benson never expects to find love, but he can’t fight the attraction he feels to deputy sheriff Natalie Masterson. However, Natalie remains distant, and a sullen teenage girl might be more connected to Trevor’s grandfather’s death than any suspected. (11 Weeks) Read more →

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

At her brother’s bachelor party, Mallory meets Jake McCloud. Thus begins a love affair that lasts for decades, but only for one weekend a year. When Mallory his dying, she leaves instructions for her son to call Jake, who is now the husband of the leading presidential candidate. ( 11 Weeks ) Read more →

The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Thirty years after publishing The Pillars of the Earth , Ken Follett has written a prequel revealing the events that led up to his epic work. At the end of the Dark Ages in England, one man’s determination to make his abbey the center of learning changes the lives of a boatbuilder, a noblewoman, and the monk in unexpected ways. ( 10 Weeks ) Read more →

A Time For Mercy by John Grisham

John Grisham returns you to Clanton, Mississipi, the setting of his debut novel A Time to Kill . After appearing in the novel Sycamore Row , lawyer Jake Brigance is back, this time defending a teenager accused of killing a local deputy. With demand rising for a swift guilty verdict and the death penalty, Brigance realizes the town is against him as he pleads for mercy along with justice. ( 9 Weeks ) Read more →

The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult

When Dawn Edelstein is in a plane crash, her last thoughts are not of her husband, but of a man she hasn’t seen in fifteen years. When she miraculously survives, Dawn has a choice to make. Should she return to her husband and try to work out their marriage? Or should she run away to Egypt to pursue a man and a degree that she left behind? ( 8 Weeks ) Read more →

The Sentinel by Lee Child and Andrew Child

In the 25th Jack Reacher novel, Lee Child teams up with his younger brother Andrew. When Jack Reacher intervenes in an ambush in Tennessee, he meets an unassuming IT manager. Recently fired from his job after a cyberattack, Rusty Rutherford just wants to clear his name. Instead, they stumble upon a much larger conspiracy. (7 Weeks) Read more →

The Order by Daniel Silva

While holidaying in Rome, Gabriel Allon is shocked by the death of his friend Pope Paul VII. When the pope’s secretary insists he was murdered, Gabriel stumbles upon a long-hidden secret – a book containing a lost New Testament story that The Order of St. Helena will do anything to keep hidden. ( 7 Weeks ) Read more →

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel’s third and final book of her Thomas Cromwell series. With Anne Boleyn dead, Thomas Cromwell continues to support King Henry VIII. However, when the Spanish ambassador points out that the King always turns on those closest to him, Cromwell starts to wonder if his turn is next. ( 7 Weeks ) Read more →

Fortune and Glory by Janet Evanovich

The 27th Stephanie Plum novel. After Grandma Mazur’s new husband dies, he leaves her the key to his massive fortune. As Stephanie and her grandma search for the treasure, they realize they aren’t the only ones looking. Stephanie’s old nemesis from Little Havana is hot on the trail. Can Stephanie outwit her? And will she finally decide between Joe Morelli and Ranger? ( 6 Weeks ) Read more →

Blindside by James Patterson and James O. Born

When the Mayor of New York’s daughter goes missing, he strikes a deal with Detective Michael Bennett, whose son is in prison. Bennett’s investigation leads him to a murder connected to a hacking operation, with national security implications. ( 6 weeks ) Read More →

The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly

After a big courtroom win, Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller is pulled over by the police who find the body of a former client in his trunk. Unable to post bail, Haller must defend himself against murder charges from his jail cell while fending off enemies from the inside and out. Haller knows that it’s not enough to get a not guilty verdict. To be free of the charges, he must find out who really did it. ( 5 Weeks )

All the Devils are Here by Louise Penny

The 16th book in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. While in Paris, Gamache investigates the attempted murder of his godfather, billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Now Gamache and his wife use the help of his former second-in-command to uncover secrets buried in the City of Lights. (4  Weeks ) Read more →

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson

After forming a coalition against the enemy invaders, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant face a stalemate in the war. Until a technological advance creates an arms race with terrible consequences. The much-awaited fourth book in the Stormlight Archive is publishing in November. ( 3 Weeks ) Read more →

House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas

Sarah J. Maas kicks off her new Crescent City adult fantasy series with the story of half-Fae half-human Bryce Quinlan intent on avenging the death of her friends. She teams up with Fallen Angel Hunt Athalar for a tale of danger, romance, and magic. ( 3 weeks )  Read more →

Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Ernest Cline returns with a sequel to his science fiction bestseller, Ready Player One . After winning James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts finds another easter egg hidden in Halliday’s vaults – a technological advance leagues ahead of the OASIS. Wade and his friends must solve this new riddle in a plot eerily reminiscent of the first book. And, yes, Wil Wheaton is narrating the audiobook. ( 3 Weeks ) Read more →

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Heavyweights (10+ Weeks on the NYT Bestseller List)

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

One night, famous painter Alicia Berenson shoots her husband in the face 5 times, and then never utters another word again. Now criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber is determined to get the truth from this silent patient while his own life is falling apart. ( 56 Weeks )  Read more →

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

Set during the Great Depression, Englishwoman Alice Wright marries a handsome American and finds herself transplanted to rural Kentucky. To escape her unhappy home life with her withdrawn husband and overbearing father-in-law, Alice agrees to become a traveling librarian, riding around the countryside bringing books to local residents. In her new job, she meets other fierce women and gains lasting friendships. ( 33 Weeks ) Read more →

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Shortly after World War II, a real estate mogul buys The Dutch House, a lavish estate outside of Philadelphia. This purchase changes everything for his children, Danny and Maeve – driving out their mother, and leading to Cyril’s remarriage and their exile from the house by their stepmother. A story of the bond between siblings, The Dutch House warns of the dangers of obsessive nostalgia. ( 32 Weeks ) Read More →

The Institute by Stephen King

In the middle of the night, Luke Ellis’s parents are murdered, and he is kidnapped only to awaken in The Institute. Here live children with the special abilities of telekinesis and telepathy who are tested and used at the hands of the ruthless director Mrs. Sigsby. Children who cooperate are given tokens for the vending machines. Those that don’t are brutally punished. As other children start to disappear to never be seen, Luke realizes his only hope is to escape. ( 22 Weeks )  Read more →

The Guardians by John Grisham

Over two decades ago, a jury convicted Quincy Miller for the murder of his lawyer Keith Russo. However, someone framed Miller, and Cullen Post, the founder of innocence group Guardian Ministries, takes up his case. As Post works to overturn Miller’s conviction, he realizes much more is going on. Powerful people do not want the truth of Russo’s murderer revealed, and they are willing to do anything to keep their secrets. ( 20 Weeks ) Read More →

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

On a remote Irish island, the perfect wedding turns deadly in this thrilling mystery. The high profile wedding between a television star and a magazine publisher is supposed to be the perfect event. Yet once the guests arrive, past conflicts come into play and someone turns up dead. Was it the bride? The best man? The wedding planner? ( 20 Weeks ) Read more →

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Sequel to Atwood’s classic The Handmaid’s Tale , set fifteen years after the events of the first book. Although the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead still rules, it’s power is beginning to slip. Following three women from inside and outside the system, the novel feels much more like the Hulu tv show than the original book. ( 16 Weeks )  Read more → 

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

Sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Olive Kitteridge . Continuing in the same vein as the first book, Olive, Again , shows Olive struggling to understand the various people in her hometown of Crosby, Maine. She interacts with a teenager dealing with the death of a parent, a pregnant young woman, a nurse with a secret crush, and a lawyer struggling with an inheritance. (14 weeks) Read More →

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s first novel follows Hiram, the black son of a white plantation owner. With no memory of his mother after she is sold away, Hiram tries to win the love of his father. After escaping death, Hiram realizes his father will never love him as a son. After a failed attempt to escape, Hiram eventually joins the Underground – where he aims to rescue others with a mysterious power he has developed. (14 weeks) Read More →

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Blogger Alix Chamberlain has built herself a brand empowering women. When she moves to Philadephia, she feels overwhelmed by her two young daughters and comes to rely on her babysitter, Emira Tucker. While watching Alix’s two-year-old, Emira is shocked one day to be stopped by a grocery store clerk, only because she is black. (13 weeks)   Read More →

Blue Moon by Lee Child

Jack Reacher is just minding his business on a Greyhound bus when he makes the mistake of helping an old man. Now he’s caught in the between warring gangs, dodging loan sharks and assassins with the help of a fed-up waitress. (12 weeks) Read More →

A Minute to Midnight by David Baldacci

FBI Agent Atlee Pine and her assistant Carol Blum head back to Atlee’s hometown to investigate Atlee’s twin sister’s long-ago kidnapping Instead, they find bizarre ritualistic murders of a serial killer just getting started. (11 weeks) Read More →

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner

Six years after a fight ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when her ex-best friend Drue Cavanaugh begs Daphne to be her maid-of-honor. No longer a shy side-kick, Daphne is now a confident plus-size influencer and a weekend in Cape Cod is too tempting to pass up. ( 11 Weeks ) Read more →

Fan Favorites (5+ Weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List)

The starless sea by erin morgenstern.

Amazon | Goodreads

(9 weeks) Graduate student Zachary Rawlins stumbles upon a mysterious book full of fantastical tales, only to find himself in the narrative. From there, he follows hints to a secret library, preserved by guardians intent on protecting it.  Read More →

Walk the Wire by David Baldacci

(8 weeks) FBI consultant Amos Decker investigates a gruesome murder in a small North Dakota fracking town.

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

Amazon | Goodreads  

(8 weeks) The coming-of-age story of Edward, the sole survivor of an airplane crash. Now an orphan, Edward must cope with the fact that he survived when so many did not. Read More →

Criss Cross by James Patterson

(8 weeks) Hours after watching the execution of a killer, Alex Cross and John Sampson are called to a copycat murder. Was the wrong man just killed, or is something even more sinister going on?

The invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab

( 8 Weeks ) A Faustian bargain comes with a curse that affects the adventure Addie LaRue has across centuries, for she must live a life where no one can remember her. Read more →

Twisted Twenty-Six by Janet Evanovich

(8 weeks) Grandma Mazur is a widow again. When his business associates turn up demanding a set of Jimmy’s keys, bounty hunter Stephanie Plum rises to the task.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

(8  Weeks ) In 1950s Mexico, a debutante travels to a distant mansion in the mountains where family secrets of a faded mining empire have been kept hidden. Read more →

The Boy From the Woods by Harlan Coben

(7 weeks) Found as a boy in the woods, Wilde has never really integrated into society. With two teenage disappearances in his town, Wilde must discover what happened to them, and to himself, all those years ago. Read More →

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

(7 weeks) Lawyer Dannie Cohan knows exactly where she’ll be in five years – until she has a vision of herself in five years engaged to someone else. She doesn’t think much of it until she later meets the same man.  Read More →

Fair Warning by Michael Connelly

(7  Weeks ) The third book in the Jack McEvoy series. A veteran reporter tracks a killer who uses genetic data to pick his victims only to become a suspect in the case.

The Searcher by Tana French

( 7 Weeks ) After a divorce, a former Chicago police officer resettles in an Irish village where a boy begs for help when his older brother goes missing and no one seems to care. Read more →

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd

(6 weeks) Acclaimed author Sue Monk Kidd imagines a narrative about a fierce, intellectual Jewish woman named Ana who becomes the wife of Jesus.  Read More →

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate

(6 weeks) After the Civil War, freed slaves posted “Lost Friends” advertisements, seeking loved ones who had been sold off. In 1987, searching for a way to connect to her students, teacher Benedetta comes across a book and a story of three women living in 1875.  Read More →

The Summer House by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois

(6 Weeks) Jeremiah Cook, a veteran and former N.Y.P.D. cop, investigates a mass murder near a lake in Georgia.

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

(6 weeks) Fleeing the Spanish Civil War, pregnant widow Roser marries her brother-in-law out of necessity. Starting over in Chile, Roser and Victor find a way to make work a marriage neither one wanted.  Read More →

Near Dark by Brad Thor

(6  Weeks ) The 19th book in the Scot Harvath series. With a bounty on his head, Harvath, America’s top spy, makes an alliance with a Norwegian intelligence operative.

All Adults Here by Emma Straub

(5 weeks) After an accident, Astrid Strick realizes that she wasn’t the best mother. Watching her children struggle to parent, she contemplates the long-term consequences of her failures and whether she can set things right.  Read More →

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

(5 weeks) With the collapse of a Ponzi scheme and the mysterious disappearance of a woman at sea, Mandel combines two seemly unconnected events into a narrative of crisis and survival.  Read More →

Lost by James Patterson and James O. Born

(5 weeks) Detective Tom Moon and his FBI task force investigate a Russian crime syndicate operating in Europe and Miami. But operating in his hometown is risky for Moon when someone close to him is targeted.  

Hideaway by Nora Roberts

( 5 weeks ) After escaping her abductors, child star Caitlyn Sullivan gathers herself in western Ireland and returns to Hollywood hoping to act again only to find love and betrayal.

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

( 5 Weeks ) A nod to “A Room With a View” in which Lucie Tang Churchill is torn between her WASPy billionaire fiancé and a privileged hunk born in Hong Kong. Read more →

The Harbigner II by Jonathan Cahn

(5  Weeks ) Nouriel, Ana Goren and a figure known as “the prophet” return as revelations are unlocked in the sequel to The Harbinger .

1st Case by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts

(5  Weeks ) After getting kicked out of M.I.T., Angela Hoot interns with the F.B.I. and tracks the murderous siblings known as the Poet and the Engineer.

One by One by Ruth ware

(5  Weeks ) An avalanche tests the bonds of coworkers from a London-based tech startup on a corporate retreat in the French Alps. Could one of them be willing to resort to murder to get their way? Read more →

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

(5  Weeks ) A family vacation in an isolated part of Long Island is thrown into confusion when the home’s owners return claiming New York City is having a blackout. Read more →

Honorable Mention (2-4 Weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List)

One Hit Wonders (1 Week on the New York Times Best Seller List)

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Maureen Corrigan's 10 Books That Will Connect You In A Socially Distant Year

Maureen Corrigan

There's an underlying quality of solitude about this pandemic experience. Sealed into our little Zoom boxes, masked when we're in contact with others, many of us feel separated from the world by split-second time delays and a thin layer of lint.

Books break through. They enter directly into our heads, occasionally our hearts. Here are 10 of the books that broke through for me during this tough year.

Leave The World Behind

by Rumaan Alam

Leave The World Behind is an extraordinary, shape-shifting novel that begins, as so many stories do, with a journey: A white family is driving out to an Airbnb in the Hamptons on Long Island for vacation. What begins as a domestic tale soon morphs into a comedy of manners about race, when the Black couple who owns the Airbnb unexpectedly turns up. Slowly, that comedy of manners sours into a vision of global disaster that Alam's characters and readers alike will keep denying. Sound familiar?

Deacon King Kong

by James McBride

McBride is such a buoyant poet of a novelist that he could write a book about paper clips and I'd read it. Fortunately, Deacon King Kong is about so much more: Set in a Brooklyn housing project in the 1960s and focused on the apparently random murder of a neighborhood drug dealer, the novel captures the rough-edged communal life of a vanished New York.

The Cold Millions

by Jess Walter

The Cold Millions was one of two vivid historical novels that carried me away this year. Walter, who's one of my favorite novelists, centers his tale on the free-speech demonstrations that erupted in Spokane, Wa., in 1910 and 1911, and pitted police against transient workers, many of whom identified as Wobblies. The story is reminiscent of sweeping novels by the likes of Herman Wouk and Howard Fast, tellers of big tales about the forgotten foot soldiers of the past.

The Pull of the Stars

by Emma Donoghue

The Pull of the Stars is set in a maternity ward in 1918, in Dublin, a city hollowed out by the Spanish Flu, the first World War and the 1916 Irish Uprising. Donoghue gives us a cityscape of empty schools and cafes, and the ubiquity of masks, here quaintly described as "bluntly pointed ... like the beaks of unfamiliar birds." This is an engrossing and inadvertently topical story about health care workers inside small rooms fighting to preserve life.

Interior Chinatown

by Charles Yu

Yu's novel, which just won the National Book Award , is an inventive satire about racial stereotyping, particularly of Asian Americans. His main character, Willis Wu, lives in a rooming house and has a bit part in a TV cop show, called Black and White . About his career in show business, Willis tells us:

First you have to work your way up. Starting from the bottom, it goes: 5. Background Oriental Male 4. Dead Asian Man [All the way up to the pinnacle:] Kung Fu Guy. Enlarge this image Grove Atlantic Grove Atlantic

But as Yu dramatizes, even "Kung Fu Guy" is outmatched by the crushing perceptions of white society .

Writers & Lovers

by Lily King

Casey Peabody, the 31-year-old main character of Writers & Lovers , aspires to be a novelist. In this story, King captures the chronic low-level panic of taking a leap into the artsy unknown — and the cost of sticking with the same dream for, perhaps, too long.

The Searcher

by Tana French

Mysteries, as always, kept me sane-ish this year and the best one I read was French's stand-alone suspense tale. A Chicago police detective moves to the rural west of Ireland and finds that evil follows wherever he goes. The beautiful and menacing landscape of The Searcher may make you feel better about spending more time indoors.

by Isabel Wilkerson

Caste is, deservedly, one of this year's big books to ruminate over and argue about. Wilkerson's central insight — that possibility in America is largely pre-determined by a racial caste system — is dramatized through what's become her signature style: argumentation through vivid anecdotes and charged metaphors.

We Keep the Dead Close

by Becky Cooper

Check Out NPR's Book Concierge

NPR's Book Concierge returns with 380+ new books handpicked by NPR staff and critics — including recommendations from Maureen Corrigan and Fresh Air staffers Seth Kelley, Kayla Lattimore and Molly Seavy-Nesper. Click to find your next great read. NPR hide caption

NPR's Book Concierge returns with 380+ new books handpicked by NPR staff and critics — including recommendations from Maureen Corrigan and Fresh Air staffers Seth Kelley, Kayla Lattimore and Molly Seavy-Nesper. Click to find your next great read.

Maureen Corrigan Picks The Best Books Of 2018, Including The Novel Of The Year

Maureen Corrigan Picks Books To Close Out A Chaotic 2017

The 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On

Maureen Corrigan's Best Books Of 2015: Short(ish) Books That Pack A Big Punch

Sometimes You Can't Pick Just 10: Maureen Corrigan's Favorite Books Of 2014

Cooper presents a meticulously researched account of the murder of a female grad student that took place at Harvard in 1969 and remained unsolved until two years ago. In Cooper's narrative, the sexism and elitism of academia are the culprits that still remain at large.

Memorial Drive

by Natasha Trethewey

The violent death that poet Trethewey writes about in her harrowing memoir is that of her own mother, who was murdered by her stepfather when Trethewey was 19. Memorial Drive is about memory, race and the "phantom ache" that can't be laid to rest. Of all the books I read this year, this one was emotionally the hardest — and the one that felt most crucial to take in.

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My Favorite Fiction of 2020

By Katy Waldman

Speak the words “top-ten list” and another word, “ gimmick ,” floats to mind. Gratitude, the kind that one feels for a book that resides temporarily in one’s body, is an awfully personal feeling to try to pass off as a public judgment. Add a pandemic and the act gets even trickier. I’ve wondered how art might best meet this moment: with gentleness or rudeness, distraction or challenge. I’ve thought, too, about what I’ve asked of literature recently. Sometimes, when the world is dumb, it’s mental stimulation that I’m hungry for, or, when the world is ugly, beauty, or, when it’s exhausting, refreshment. As consumers of fiction, we have needs both diverse and inconstant; meanwhile, the “best of” lists gallop on, kicking up clouds of strained comparisons. This year’s pronouncements arrive shadowed by melancholy and, even more than usual, a vague illegitimacy.

For instance, I am writing this list from the kitchen table of a woman who says that, in 2020, she could abide only cozy mysteries or escapist fantasies. But I’ve found that, for me, literature’s draws finally exist independently of plagues or coups. What’s changed for many of us is perhaps our relationship to other types of fictions, which don’t necessarily come from novels. Narratives of American innocence, competence, and fellowship have eroded in the time of Trump’s Presidency, COVID -19 , and the George Floyd protests. Letting go of these stories might cause one to crave tidy whodunnits, or it might simply make one stubborn, intolerant of pretense. Having found myself in the second category (stubborn), I regret to announce that I will not be declaring the ten best fiction books of the year. Such lists are malarkey. I’d be delighted to boss you around—I assume that’s why you’re here, to receive direction or fight—but please just think of the titles below as ten worthwhile books, milestones of a sort, published in this Very Weird Year. And then read them.

“ The Glass Hotel ,” by Emily St. John Mandel

You should read this book because it is an intensely satisfying novel of ideas, which suggests that our identities are as fragile as our circumstances . Vincent is a bartender whose relationship with a white-collar criminal wafts her into a charmed existence; when her boyfriend’s Ponzi scheme collapses, she signs up to be a cook on a cargo ship. Her ne’er-do-well half brother, Paul, also craves a fresh start. Mandel expertly threads these and other story lines together, focussing on the ease with which a person can slip out of one life and into another; the novel is translucent with ghosts. “We move through this world so lightly,” one woman observes, like a voice from Beyond—she sounds amazed, dismayed, and a little relieved.

“ Leave the World Behind ,” by Rumaan Alam

You should read this book because it makes your skin tingle, like stepping into a deep, dark pool of present-day anxieties . Amanda, an advertising executive, and her professor husband, Clay, take their teen-age son and daughter to an Airbnb in a picturesque recess of Long Island. Their vacation is interrupted when an older couple, Ruth and G. H. Washington, arrive at the door, claiming to be the house’s owners and warning of a power outage in Manhattan. From there, the text veers between two novels: a sharply drawn social satire, replete with love-to-hate bourgeois accents—including the most critically acclaimed grocery list of 2020—and a disaster tale, with the texture of a nightmare. There are spiders and blood; the imagery of repressed horror, when it erupts, is shocking. Still, Alam maintains an arch tone through his omniscient narrator, who describes omens of ecological ruin with the same chilly detachment that he brings to Amanda’s polite racism. (The Washingtons are Black.) Such dryness differentiates Alam from Mandel, whose visions of disaster have a more sorrowful resonance, and yet the two authors are charting similar territory: the place where realism and surrealism meet, and life “as we know it” dissipates into life as we’ve never imagined it could be.

“ Where the Wild Ladies Are ,” by Aoko Matsuda

You should read this book because it pairs the delicate eeriness of traditional Japanese folklore with a kooky, contemporary sensibility . Each of Matsuda’s stories updates an old tale about the ghosts and fox spirits known, in Japan, as yokai . Here, though, the yokai work alongside the living at a mysterious incense company. Matsuda’s agenda is mischievously feminist. She likens women’s potential to an otherworldly force—shape-shifting project managers complain about Japan’s glass ceiling—and her male characters tend to come off looking ridiculous. (“I don’t have any exceptional talents,” one helpfully says.) There is, too, an undertow of late-capitalist weariness: the workday, which makes spectres of the living, does not pause for the dead. The cheerful oddity of these tales reminded me of the writer Sianne Ngai’s theory of the “zany.” Zany art, Ngai suggests, blurs the line between play and labor, arousing feelings of suspicion, attraction, and exhaustion. But Matsuda’s book also possesses a simpler appeal: her yokai say things like “Okay, that’s cool,” and, sometimes, they lose their tempers. Ghosts: they’re just like us!

“ The Office of Historical Corrections ,” by Danielle Evans

You should read this book because it holds all of its component parts in perfect balance . At first, I wasn’t sure which quality of Evans’s collection to highlight. Her slyness, the jokes that only reveal themselves as such three sentences later? Her timeliness, which somehow avoids gimmickry? Evans writes of Internet cancellation and Bad Men who apologize, of racist militias and the contemporary “crisis of truth.” In her stories, there is usually a tragedy just out of the frame, something intimate that wrenches free something historical. (In “Boys Go to Jupiter,” a white college student becomes a lightning rod after her boyfriend posts an image of her wearing a Confederate-flag bikini.) Evans zeroes in on mothers and daughters, and on best friends who are close enough to be sisters; she asks how racism shapes and distorts the experiences of these mostly Black women. (“Do they know I’m human yet?” one protagonist keeps wondering.) She is drawn to frustration and complexity, but her work feels weightless, natural. No other fiction I’ve read this year wears its profundity so lightly.

“ Rest and Be Thankful ,” by Emma Glass

You should read this book because it gives explosive and overdue literary consideration to medical personnel . In Glass’s freaky trance of a novel, Laura is a pediatric nurse in a London hospital. She has trouble saying no to extra shifts and other requests; pile on already-long hours and the emotional stress of caring for sick babies, and she’s unravelling. Glass stokes her first-person writing to a sumptuous tumult. The fragmented prose, so raw that it can seem almost lewd, flirts with the gothic: a hallucination runs up the stairs; “the fingertips barely touch the wood, the blackness is a long dress trailing.” This language can also be deeply moving. Glass makes some missteps: her vision of newborn innocence too often involves “peachy” or “porcelain” babies, and the book, with its unabashed fantasy sequences, sometimes risks melodrama. But I love how unself-conscious Glass is. Like Laura, she makes brave commitments, and gives to them everything she has.

“ Luster ,” by Raven Leilani

You should read this book because the main character is as disgusting as you are . Edie has a low-paying publishing job and a mouse-infested Brooklyn apartment. She licks tuna out of the can and wears her bathing suit under her clothes when she runs out of underwear. She used to paint, and dreams of painting again, but instead she pours herself into aimless, self-hating hedonism. (The self-declared “office slut,” she eventually gets fired.) Soon after “Luster” opens, Edie, who is Black, begins a liaison with Eric, a white man in an open marriage. Later, she moves in with his family, including his adopted daughter, Akila. One might take or leave the supporting cast, but every moment spent with Edie, and her quietly outrageous inner monologue, is riveting: “There are times I interact with kids and recall my abortion fondly,” she muses. Leilani’s run-on sentences, the abundant lyricism of her prose, have raised a few eyebrows . But “Luster” ’s language, now terse, and now ornate and flowing, doesn’t ever feel over the top, just unregulated—like Edie herself. The book, to its credit, has nothing to prove about “Black women”: Edie is neither sanitized nor idealized, but rendered as humanly as the other dysphoric millennials of recent fiction, over whom she reigns, a scummy bohemian queen.

“ Cleanness ,” by Garth Greenwell

You should read this book because it contains the year’s most thrilling sex writing. Sure, Greenwell writes sensually about many things—he’s a stylist’s stylist, whose use of the semicolon has inspired rapturous close readings —but the uncanny presence of his sentences is perhaps best felt in his descriptions of bodies. “Cleanness,” like Greenwell’s previous book, “ What Belongs to You ,” centers on an unnamed narrator who teaches literature in Sofia. (Greenwell himself lived in Bulgaria for several years.) The interlinked stories circle notions of pleasure, violence, and the self. Greenwell is interested in the transformations that might be found in the loss of ego; he pursues the question through sadomasochistic flings, conducted against the crumbling backdrop of a once shining capital. In the book’s middle section, the narrator turns from alienation to joy, describing his relationship with a Portuguese student, R. Though the connection doesn’t last, being with R. feels like “a kind of cleanness,” Greenwell writes, in which one’s essence is not shattered but offered, intact, to the beloved: “Anything I am you have use for is yours.”

“ Interior Chinatown ,” by Charles Yu

You should read this book because its conceit—it is formatted as the script of a television show—transmutes high-concept Surrealism into a poignant study of Asian-American identity . Yu’s novel, which won this year’s National Book Award for fiction , follows Willis Wu, an actor who longs to break free of the roles he’s normally cast in: Disgraced Son, Delivery Guy, Generic Asian Male. Willis’s fantasy is to reach the pinnacle, Kung Fu Guy, but he keeps getting killed off or sidelined; meanwhile, his parents are slipping into poverty. Yu worked on the show “ Westworld ,” and his novel, which feels similarly concerned with artifice and performance, has a TV-ready slickness. Characters can seem flattened, even behind their masks, and there are the squirts of Cheez Whiz that one might expect from writing that includes its own musical cues. (In time, Willis merges with a fictionalized, onscreen version of himself, and the concentrated hokeyness of that story-within-a-story spreads into the rest of the book.) But “Interior Chinatown” also offers an array of televisual pleasures: teasing dialogue and softly lit flashbacks, laced with melancholy, and a willingness to court big emotions. (Too much art these days seems to assume that sentimentality is the most heinous crime a writer can commit, leading to work that at times feels desiccated and minor.) At one point, Yu offers a lovely meditation on fatherhood, glimpsed through the lens of a whimsical kids’ program. The surprising gesture rewrites the rules of the novel, hinting at other lives for Wu to inhabit.

“ Real Life ,” by Brandon Taylor

You should read this book because it is an unhurried, tender, lush revelation . The novel spans a single weekend in the life of Wallace, a Black and gay graduate student in a Midwestern biochemistry lab. Wallace’s father has recently died; someone has also contaminated his experiment, killing his nematodes. Between satirical set pieces in which Wallace tries to tolerate his mostly white friends, Taylor interposes scenes of seduction, intimate conversation, and lyrical flashback. Wallace can seem passive to the point of being effaced, and the delicacy of the book’s language and observation suggests something either precious or unbearable just below the surface. Although “Real Life,” which evokes and appraises the tradition of the campus novel, explicitly critiques the whiteness of academia, Taylor’s focus stays on Wallace, whose reactions to different forms of abuse rarely fit his peers’ expectations. The book thus seems less interested in polemic than in the complications of “real life,” and in how lonely living there can be.

“ Homeland Elegies ,” by Ayad Akhtar

You should read this book because it will atomize any comfortable view of America . Akhtar , a Pulitzer-winning playwright, constructs his new novel as a group of personal essays, loosely about Muslim identity and United States exceptionalism. The New York-born narrator, who shares a name and life story with the author, parses his country’s “ever-tumescent” self-regard and its reckless capitalism; he depicts an Islamic friend’s radicalization and explores the aftermath of writing a play in which the main character asserts that he felt pride when the Twin Towers fell. The narrator’s father, a cardiologist who considers treating Donald Trump in the nineties to have been his great glory, provides an energetic counterpoint to “Ayad” ’s malaise. “Homeland Elegies” burrows into the tension between the longing for élite acceptance and the duty of critique—a tension that “Ayad,” with his glittering career and immigrant parents, experiences keenly. The book springs off Whitman: “My tongue, too, is homegrown,” Akhtar writes. “But these multitudes will not be my own.”

2020 in Review

The top twenty-five New Yorker stories .

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Helen Rosner on the best cookbooks .

Doreen St. Félix selects the best TV shows .

Richard Brody lists his top thirty-six movies .

Ian Crouch recounts the best jokes of the year .

Sheldon Pearce on the albums that helped him navigate a lost plague year.

Sarah Larson picks the best podcasts .

New Yorker writers on the best books they read this year.

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New York Times 10 Best Books of 2020

Hamnet (Hardcover)

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait delivers a luminous portrait of a marriage, a family ravaged by grief, and a boy whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays of all time.

A Children's Bible: A Novel (Hardcover)

Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction One of the New York Times ' Ten Best Books of the Year Named one of the best novels of the year by Time , Washington Post , NPR, Chicago Tribune , Esquire , BBC, and many others National Bestseller

Homeland Elegies: A Novel (Hardcover)

This "profound and provocative" work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Disgraced and American Dervish follows an immigrant father and his son as they search for belonging—in post-Trump America, and with each other ( Kirkus Reviews ). "Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable." —Salman Rushdie ​ A deeply

Deacon King Kong (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel (Hardcover)

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction   Winner of the Gotham Book Prize One of Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of the Year" Oprah's Book Club Pick Named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly and TIME Magazine A Washington Post Notable Novel

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family (Hardcover)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF GQ 's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY • The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir (Hardcover)

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2020.

Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future (Hardcover)

One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • A New York Times Notable Book A timely exploration of what Shakespeare’s plays reveal about our divided land.

War: How Conflict Shaped Us (Hardcover)

Is peace an aberration? The New York Times bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

The Vanishing Half: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel) (Hardcover)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST *  NPR *  PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR  2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST

A Promised Land (Hardcover)

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND PEOPLE

The 10 best books of 2020

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The Year's Best Books

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This was supposed to be a banner year for big literary names — an apocalyptic DeLillo , a gossipy Amis , the grand finale of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy. And yet the brightest, most invigorating work came from outside the aristocracy. Authors from across the spectrum of notoriety and experience turned up with writing that cut particularly deep in this most horribilis of all the anni. Quiet debuts crept out and captured top prizes. Heavy hitters returned after almost a generation away from publishing. Legends in the making pushed themselves into uncharted territory. The lesson here? Trust your gut and not the dazzle of a fancy persona, and you’ll be amply rewarded. Or just read this list of the best books of 2020, in alphabetical order.

10 great books that got lost in the noise of 2020

In a noisy 2020, it was too easy to overlook these 10 literary gems, from Miranda Popkey’s “Topics of Conversation” to Mieko Kawakami’s “Breasts and Eggs.”

Dec. 10, 2020

Deacon King Kong By James McBride Riverhead: 384 pages, $28

Shouldn’t we just get it over with and declare McBride this decade’s Great American Novelist? Following up a radiant hit like “ The Good Lord Bird ” could have proved tricky for a writer with a more limited repertoire, but this one can apparently shift like the wind. “ Deacon King Kong ” bursts with energy in the story of Sportcoat, a church deacon and a drunk, who shoots a drug dealer and accidentally sets off a chain of desperation and absurdity. McBride has a way of inflating reality to comical sizes, the better for us to see every tiny mechanism that holds unjust systems in place.

Leave the World Behind By Rumaan Alam Ecco: 256 pages, $28

Remember that scene in “ Pulp Fiction ” when John Travolta’s character jams a syringe of adrenaline straight into Uma Thurman’s stopped heart? She shoots up and gasps: hhhhhhuuuu! That’s how it feels, approximately every 15 pages, as you pick your way through the artful wreckage Alam has sculpted in “ Leave the World Behind .” A family on a Hamptons vacation is surprised when their Airbnb’s owners show up, relaying news of a blackout across the East Coast. Then cell service disappears and a series of otherworldly events punctuate the story — massive herds of roaming deer, unexplained ailments, a piercing sound in the sky. This isn’t an apocalypse novel (2020 is too complicated for that); it’s a high-RPM meditation on how it feels to experience collapse.

Review: Apocalypse now: A funny, terrifying end-of-the-world novel is as 2020 as it gets

Rumaan Alam’s “Leave the World Behind” starts as satire and becomes the anatomy of “normal” life during global disaster — and a dire warning to us all.

Oct. 2, 2020

Luster By Raven Leilani FSG: 240 pages, $26

In a year when the “Bad Sex Award” was mercifully canceled, it’s time to start thinking about rewarding the rare feat of good sex writing. It’s far too easy to go overboard on the groans and the stickiness, but in this simultaneously horny and contemplative debut, Leilani takes the awkwardness of clanking genitals as a given and runs with it. Edie, a struggling painter and publishing grunt who has slept her way through the office, meets Eric, who is twice her age and in an open marriage. This isn’t some paint-by-numbers plot of romance and rejection; Edie eventually moves in with Eric, his wife and their adopted daughter, and begins to wonder what exactly makes her such a sop for touch, need, desire. Leilani knows how to talk about wanting in ways that make you sweat.

Memorial By Bryan Washington Riverhead: 320 pages, $27

There’s something to be said for quiet writing, sentences that breaststroke forward, making only the softest waves. “Memorial,” Washington’s debut novel, hums along softly like a symphony preparing to perform. It revolves around a couple who are on the verge of disintegration when we meet them: Ben is Black and Mike is Japanese American, and time has opened up a chasm between them and the ways they each relate to the world. While Mike heads to Japan to sit with his dying father, Ben plays host to Mike’s visiting mother; all of them navigate feelings of displacement. Washington is one to watch.

Entertainment & Arts

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Dec. 11, 2020

Memorial Drive By Natasha Trethewey Ecco: 224 pages, $28

This makes the top 10 for my entire reading life. When former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey was 19, her stepfather shot and killed her mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, outside their Atlanta apartment. Trethewey repressed memories of the murder, and the years of bruises and verbal lashings that preceded it, for decades. But this slim, transcendent memoir — covering her childhood as a biracial girl in the Deep South, the tension inside her mother’s house and the gut punch of the killing — gracefully brings the poet closer to something that looks like acceptance. Truly a work of genius.

Piranesi By Susanna Clarke Bloomsbury: 272 pages, $27

Fifteen years after the magnificent “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” reminded readers that fantasy belongs on the mainstream shelf, Clarke is back with a slimmer but equally riveting story about the cost of power. Piranesi lives in a never-ending colonnaded building with an Uffizi Gallery’s worth of statuary lining the walls. He visits the busts and occasionally sees The Other, an enigmatic man and the only other living being he knows. But has he always lived there? Why doesn’t he recall his young life? And what is he to make of his own diary entries, which tell a very strange tale about another world he’s never seen? “Piranesi” is vibrant, original, a true book lover’s novel.

35 years after her mother’s murder, a poet of Black struggle writes a monument

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey always wrote of public pain and private struggle. Her memoir, “Memorial Drive,” lets her mother speak.

July 22, 2020

Shuggie Bain By Douglas Stuart Grove: 448 pages, $27

I admit it: Though this novel was published in February, I only noticed it early this fall when it showed up on shortlists for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award and suddenly its debut author was everywhere. All for very good reason. “Shuggie Bain” is astonishingly good, one of the most moving novels in recent memory. The title character is a young boy in 1980s Glasgow shuttled from one public housing unit to another, starkly alienated from his already fractured family by his suppressed gay identity. Stuart writes so candidly, you’ll practically hear Shuggie’s mother’s beer cans clanking in her handbag, shiver from the chill of a childhood underheated in every way.

Want By Lynn Steger Strong Henry Holt: 224 pages, $26

Things weren’t so great in America before the pandemic, either. Reading Steger Strong’s swirling, incisive “Want” is like being caught in a windstorm of American familial crises: overpriced childcare, overlapping jobs, overreaching men. Elizabeth lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two small children; they’re filing for bankruptcy and constantly on the brink of financial collapse. They’d expected life to be … better than this, and therein lies the cruel slap so masterfully delivered in this novel. “Want” brilliantly exposes the daily exhaustion of generational decline.

Weather By Jenny Offill Knopf: 224 pages, $24

Offill’s fragmentary novels are like stepping-stones: You jump from one isolated phrase or anecdote to the next, sometimes sure-footed but occasionally thrown off balance. In “Weather,” a librarian named Lizzie is weighed down by the torrent of information she keeps encountering about our doomed planet. Slipping into what Offill calls “a kind of twilight knowing,” she confronts the fact that flooded New York streets and barren apple trees aren’t a possibility but a certainty. “Weather” isn’t a comfort or a little packet of wishes for a healthy planet — it’s a meticulously constructed (often hilarious, sometimes disconsolate) lament for our old modes of thinking.

This fall, we need books more than ever. Meet the authors making sense of a wild 2020

Perhaps no other medium has better helped us process 2020. Our fall books special brings you the books and authors who’ve helped make sense of it.

Oct. 9, 2020

Writers & Lovers By Lily King Grove: 320 pages, $27

Some novels are simply beautiful. That’s the word you exhale as you finish them. King’s fifth novel, a year-in-the-life of a waitress and almost-novelist in 1990s Cambridge, Mass., is one of them. Casey cycles around town, folds napkins for the dinner service, lingers awkwardly at literary parties — and parcels out her energy among two smitten men and her manuscript. It’s a traditional story, and it works on every level. There is nothing extraneous in the writing, just quiet dedication to shaping the story of a young woman adrift from herself.

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Asian American Children Are Front and Center in a New Version of a Groundbreaking Work

Erika Lee and Christina Soontornvat’s “Made in Asian America” spotlights young people who defy erasure and make their own history.

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By Paula Yoo

Paula Yoo is the author of the young adult books “From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial That Galvanized the Asian American Movement” and, out in May, “Rising From the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King and a City on Fire.”

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MADE IN ASIAN AMERICA: A History for Young People, by Erika Lee and Christina Soontornvat

I had never seen an Asian person in a book until my first-grade teacher read “The Five Chinese Brothers,” by Claire Huchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese, to our class. At recess, the other children stretched the corners of their eyes, imitating the illustrations. In high school, my social studies textbooks relegated the Chinese laborers who risked their lives to build the transcontinental railroad, and the 120,000 Japanese Americans illegally incarcerated during World War II, to impactless sidebars.

My early experiences of racism and erasure are not unique. Similar stories abound in the powerful “Made in Asian America: A History for Young People,” by the award-winning Chinese American historian Erika Lee and the acclaimed Thai American children’s book author Christina Soontornvat.

Although this is the young person’s adaptation of Lee’s “The Making of Asian America,” the authors neither simplify nor sanitize Asian American history for their audience. In fact, they deepen our history by interweaving personal accounts of young people during pivotal events through the ages, as well as adding coverage of major upheavals that occurred after Lee’s original book was published in 2015.

In the introduction, we meet 17-year-old Christina Huang, who remembers her first-grade classmates taunting her on the school bus, and 12-year-old Bryan Zhao, whose white neighbor spat at him when he was 10, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as 18-year-old Soorya “Rio” Baliga and 17-year-old Russell Fan, who because their schools didn’t teach Asian American history felt they were being told, “You don’t matter.”

Lee and Soontornvat argue that Asian American history is routinely marginalized because, in the bigger picture, the villain is often America itself.

The authors explore four “racist justifications” that have shaped anti-Asian public policy for centuries: “Those people are inferior to us,” “Those people are dangerous,” “There are too many of them” and “This is for their own good.” They trace these justifications across time, from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, for instance, to the exploitation during the early 1900s of South Asian migrant workers from the Punjab region of what is now India and Pakistan, and from Bangladesh.

They also delve into more contemporary injustices, from the 1,600 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, to the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020.

And they make these events relatable. They look at the anti-Asian racism that surged in Michigan in 1982 after massive layoffs in the auto industry through the tragic killing of Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old “all-American kid,” and the destruction of Koreatown during the 1992 Los Angeles uprising through the eyes of a Korean immigrant restaurant owner’s 11-year-old daughter, as media outlets sensationalize tensions between the Korean American and Black communities instead of investigating the systemic racism that exploited both underserved groups.

Lee and Soontornvat also tackle head-on issues that have sometimes been as divisive within the Asian American community as outside it, such as the “model minority” myth, which emerged when the 1965 Immigration Act flipped the script on Asian American stereotypes, replacing “exotic,” “dangerous” and “untrustworthy” with a “pretty picture” depicting “quiet and law-abiding” citizens who “worked hard to achieve their American Dreams.” What made this pretty picture ugly, the authors observe, was that “some used the model minority stereotype as an underhanded way to criticize other minorities, especially African Americans.”

Of course Asian American history is much more than its painful past, as Lee and Soontornvat remind readers by extolling the contributions of politicians, athletes, actors, artists and writers.

They also emphasize solidarity with other marginalized communities: Filipino and Mexican farm laborers striking together for fair wages in 1970; Yuri Kochiyama joining forces with Malcolm X during the civil rights movement; L.G.B.T.Q. activists like Dan Choi, a former Army lieutenant who served in Iraq, protesting the repressive “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that barred openly gay military personnel like himself from serving.

In addition, Lee and Soontornvat share their own stories, as children of immigrants who owned Asian American restaurants. By doing so, they’re modeling an act of defiance: the reclaiming of our erased backgrounds.

This defiance is reinforced at the end, when in 2021 Christina Huang, Bryan Zhao, Rio Baliga and Russell Fan testify before the Senate Education Committee on behalf of a bill requiring that Asian American and Pacific Islander history be taught in New Jersey schools. As a result of expressing their feelings of being “ignored, othered or unseen,” New Jersey joined Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, California, Oregon and Nebraska in mandating A.A.P.I. studies in the K-12 curriculum.

“Made in Asian America” isn’t just about the past. As its subtitle makes clear, it’s about the history being made right now by young people, inspired by the Asian Americans who came before them to ensure that our stories are not only heard, but also remembered.

MADE IN ASIAN AMERICA : A History for Young People | By Erika Lee and Christina Soontornvat | (Ages 8 to 12) | Quill Tree | 320 pp. | $19.99

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The complicated, generous life  of Paul Auster, who died on April 30 , yielded a body of work of staggering scope and variety .

“Real Americans,” a new novel by Rachel Khong , follows three generations of Chinese Americans as they all fight for self-determination in their own way .

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Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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• Seen & Heard

‘New York Times’ Reveals Its Best Books of 2021

BY Michael Schaub • Nov. 29, 2021

The New York Times Book Review unveiled its list of the 10 best books of the year , with titles by Honorée Fannone Jeffers, Patricia Lockwood, and Clint Smith among those making the cut.

Jeffers was honored for her debut novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois , which was a finalist for this year’s Kirkus Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award.

Lockwood made the list for her Booker Prize-finalist No One Is Talking About This , while Imbolo Mbue was honored for her novel How Beautiful We Were . The other two works of fiction selected by the Times were Intimacies by Katie Kitamura and the genre-defying When We Cease To Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West. Kitamura’s novel made the National Book Award fiction longlist, while Labatut’s book was on the prize’s translated literature shortlist.

Smith’s How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America , also longlisted for the National Book Award,was one of the nonfiction books to make the Times list, along with Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth .

Other nonfiction books on the list included Andrea Elliott’s Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City and Tove Ditlevsen’s memoir cycle,  The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency , translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman.

Rounding out the list was Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath . The biography, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, was published in 2020; when asked on Twitter why it was named one of the Times’ notable books of 2021, Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul explained , “We used to make the cut after the Holiday issue and carry the titles over [to the] following year. Moving forward, it’s the full calendar year.”

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.

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The Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far)

Rebecca Joines Schinsky

Rebecca Joines Schinsky is the executive director of product and ecommerce at Riot New Media Group. She co-hosts All the Books! and the Book Riot Podcast. Follow her on Twitter: @rebeccaschinsky .

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Welcome to Today in Books, where we report on literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

The Brag is Coming From Inside the House

Book Riot’s Kelly Jensen has spent the last few years becoming a leading name in book banning coverage, and we couldn’t be prouder to see her named as one of  Library Journal’s 2024 Movers & Shakers.  Subscribe to Kelly’s (free) Literary Activism newsletter to stay up-to-date on book banning efforts and learn about the most effective ways to get involved in your community. Kelly’s work has changed the way I think about the book banning movement and what it’s really about, and I know I speak for all of us here at BR when I say we are deeply grateful for her dedication, intelligence, and ability to get to the heart of an issue. May her efforts continue to succeed.

The Best Books of the Century (So Far)

The New York Times  has taken  a page from NPR’s book  and  aggregated their best books of the last 23 years into a cool interactive tool . Filter by year and/or genre and make your way to a read that’s almost guaranteed to be great. The  NYT ’s end-of-year lists of 10 best books and 100 notable books are consistently varied and interesting, and they’ve informed more than a few of my reading choices over the years. Nice to see them finding creative ways to repurpose content that continues to be relevant and helpful.

What’s the Point?

Why seek a traditional publishing deal when you have the internet and direct access to audience? Does anyone even read anymore? What makes books so special? Author Emma Gannon reflects on these questions and more.

New Legislation Aims to Ban Librarians from Joining the ALA

Yep, you’re reading that right. Louisiana’s House Bill 777 would criminalize libraries and library workers who use taxpayer funds to join the American Library Association. Why?  I’ll let Kelly tell.

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Books | bestselling author to hold book signing in newport news.

New York Times bestselling author Elle Cosimano is holding a conversation and book signing Saturday at Barnes & Noble on Jefferson Avenue.

The book signing, from 1-2 p.m., is promoting her latest novel, “Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice.” The book is the fourth in her Finlay Donovan mystery series, which has more than a half-million copies in print around the world.

The book follows suburban mom Finn from Virginia to Atlantic City “for a getaway weekend that goes dangerously awry,” according to Cosimano’s website, ellecosimano.com .

Cosimano, who moved to the Williamsburg area three years ago, has written 10 books in the past 10 years. In March, Forbes magazine named her in a list of 30 top mystery books. Her books have appeared on The New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.

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