new york times review of books 2020

The New York Times Names Their 10 Best of 2020

Kelly Jensen

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She's the editor/author of (DON'T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen .

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The editors of The New York Times Book Review have named their top ten books of 2020.

• A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
• Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
• Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro
• Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
• War by Margaret MacMillan

The first five titles on the list showcase the best in fiction — all which might be categorized under the broad label “literary” (though arguably, Deacon King Kong lies closely within mystery and crime fiction) — while the second five titles are all nonfiction, including a memoir, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, an insider’s story of life inside Silicon Valley, and two histories.

Forty percent of the choices are by authors of color.

Amazon released their best books of 2020 last week, and among their top 20 are three on the New York Times list: The Vanishing Half , Hidden Valley Road , and Deacon King Kong .

To read more about why these were the New York Times selections for 2020, dig into the editors’ commentary on their site. Readers who have access can also enjoy the New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of 2020 .

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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 .

The funniest New Yorker cartoons , as chosen by our Instagram followers.

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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By The New Yorker

By Richard Brody

• Entertainment

The Best Books of 2020 So Far

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

T he best books of the year so far explore themes of power, perseverance and hope through creative storytelling and glittering prose. Journalist Robert Kolker reports on the strife of an American couple in the 1970s, overwhelmed by their sons’ schizophrenia diagnoses. Poet Cathy Park Hong establishes herself as an energetic and necessary voice in the dialogue surrounding racism in the U.S. in her nonfiction debut. And Jenny Offill takes a clever approach to tackling the anxieties that are synonymous with life in the 21st century. These 10 books, from a biting collection of comedic essays to the final novel in a beloved trilogy , represent authors at the peak of their craft. Here, alphabetically by author, the best books of 2020 so far.

The Night Watchman , Louise Erdrich

Though she’s written more than 20 books for adults, Louise Erdrich ’s latest work is perhaps her most personal. Drawing on her Chippewa heritage, the National Book Award winner constructs a portrait of a community fighting for survival in The Night Watchman . The titular character, based on her maternal grandfather, leads the effort against proposed legislation that threatens the rights to his tribe’s land. Erdrich describes the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota in rich detail and illustrates the lengths that some will go to protect the ones they care for.

Buy Now: The Night Watchman on Bookshop | Amazon

Cleanness , Garth Greenwell

The second book from Garth Greenwell appears to feature the same unnamed narrator from his first — a gay American teacher living in the capital of Bulgaria. In nine interlinked stories, Greenwell dissects the expatriate’s relationships with his students, his sexuality and the city of Sofia in an aching examination of intimacy and power. As the narrator reflects on his time abroad before he returns home, Greenwell asks potent questions about how and why we long for love.

Buy Now: Cleanness on Bookshop | Amazon

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning , Cathy Park Hong

Blending cultural criticism with personal stories, poet Cathy Park Hong analyzes the impact of racism against Asian Americans in her debut nonfiction collection. Her voice is urgent and raw as she unpacks what it’s like to experience prejudice that doesn’t fit into the exact mold of oppression faced by other minorities in the U.S. From reflecting on her childhood in California to her evolving attitude towards the English language, Hong is brutally self-aware and embraces her anger as she captures how she’s struggled to make sense of her identity.

Buy Now: Minor Feelings on Bookshop | Amazon

Wow, No Thank You ., Samantha Irby

Reading Samantha Irby is a welcome relief from what’s going on in the world, even though she’s picking apart every single aspect of it. “Over the last couple years I have had to learn to live in a house, and that is one of the hardest and most boring things I’ve ever had to do,” she writes in an essay that lists off hilarious questions related to maintaining a home. In another, she mines our obsession with skin care and declares: “I don’t drink water and my blood type is pizza.” Her collection is riddled with punchy lines as she contemplates everything from trying to make new friends in adulthood to working in a television writers’ room for the first time. Wow, No Thank You. is signature Irby — honest, dry and the kind of funny that truly induces laughter.

Buy Now: Wow, No Thank You. on Bookshop | Amazon

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family , Robert Kolker

“Even if just one child has schizophrenia, everything about the internal logic of that family changes,” journalist Rober Kolker writes in his bestselling book, which traces the plight of a Colorado-based family devastated by the mental disorder. By the mid-1970s, six of the 12 Galvin children had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Kolker traces the family’s suffering in Hidden Valley Road , which focuses on how the Galvins were studied to help better understand the disease. Though so much of the story is rooted in tragedy — abuse, violence, death — Kolker’s voice remains empathetic as he balances breaking down the science behind schizophrenia and describing the gutting details of one family’s unthinkable circumstances.

Buy Now: Hidden Valley Road on Bookshop | Amazon

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz , Erik Larson

The latest book from Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City , is an engrossing account of Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In gripping and propulsive terms, Larson depicts the horrors of Hitler’s bombing campaign, which killed tens of thousands of Britons. Though the end of World War II is no mystery, The Splendid and the Vile reads like a thriller, demanding attention with pages that illuminate the strength of leadership in times of grave crisis and uncertainty.

Buy Now: The Splendid and the Vile on Bookshop | Amazon

The Mirror & the Light , Hilary Mantel

One of the most anticipated novels of the year — Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to her celebrated Wolf Hall trilogy — lived up to expectations and then some. Beginning in the wake of Anne Boleyn’s death, The Mirror & the Light captures the final years of 16th-century English lawyer Thomas Cromwell, scheming aide to King Henry VIII. The Booker Prize winner masterfully completes her years-long character study of Cromwell, again fusing history and fiction to create a mesmerizing narrative centered on a man whose obsession with power leads him to his brutal, and inevitable, end.

Buy Now: The Mirror and the Light on Bookshop | Amazon

Deacon King Kong , James McBride

It’s September 1969 in the projects of Brooklyn when a church deacon shoots an ear off a local drug dealer in front of the whole neighborhood. The seemingly random act of violence is just the start of James McBride’s humorous, electric and heartfelt book — his first novel since the 2013 National Book Award winner The Good Lord Bird . From the white neighbors to the Latinx and African American witnesses of the crime, McBride introduces a diverse cast of characters to deliver nuanced commentary on race and class in New York City. McBride’s voice is rhythmic and compassionate as he asks how communities come together and support each other in the face of adversity.

Buy Now: Deacon King Kong on Bookshop | Amazon

Weather , Jenny Offill

It would be an understatement to declare that Weather , a story fixated on a woman’s anxieties regarding both the mundanities of life and the end of the world, feels prescient. Lizzie Benson, the narrator of Jenny Offill’s kaleidoscopic third novel, is increasingly worried about everything from her young son’s experience at a new school to the impact of climate change on the planet. The absorbing power of Offill’s spare but striking prose grounds the book’s frenetic structure, culminating in an unnerving look at a world where a constant flow of disquieting information can’t be escaped.

Buy Now: Weather on Bookshop | Amazon

Run Me to Earth , Paul Yoon

In Run Me to Earth , three orphaned teenagers linked by grief live in a bombed-out hospital in 1960s Laos, where they assist a doctor and transport supplies to those in need. The coming-of-age premise leads to something much larger as Paul Yoon propels his young characters into adulthood, where they’re haunted by the pain of their shared past. Yoon seamlessly connects his characters’ storylines over time and across continents, all the while highlighting the subtle yet piercing tensions that accompany life after childhood trauma.

Buy Now: Run Me to Earth on Bookshop | Amazon

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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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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

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4 New Horror Books Spiked With Dread and Profound Unease

Our columnist reviews this month’s haunting new releases.

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By Gabino Iglesias

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic and professor. He is the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson award-winning author of “The Devil Takes You Home.”

Simone St. James is known for brilliantly mixing thriller elements with supernatural mayhem, and MURDER ROAD (Berkley, 342 pp., $29) , her most recent novel, offers readers plenty of both.

During the summer of 1995, April and Eddie are on their way to a resort for their honeymoon when a wrong turn sends them down a dark road in the middle of the night. The newlyweds pick up a hitchhiker, and then realize the young woman is bleeding. April and Eddie take the woman to a hospital, but she dies.

The couple soon learn the hitchhiker is just one of many who’ve met their demise on Atticus Line. The road, according to locals, is haunted by a ghost known as the Lost Girl, “a stupid legend,” who has allegedly been killing people for decades. Under pressure because of the unsolved murders, the police unsuccessfully try to pin the killing on the couple, and after they are cleared of any wrongdoing, April and Eddie stick around and try to get to the bottom of things. But the newlyweds have their own dark past, and as it catches up to them, so does the darkness that haunts Atticus Line.

Fast, chilling, entertaining, unexpectedly touching, and with two broken, memorable characters at its core, this might be St. James’s best novel yet.

Argentina’s new wave of horror fiction is quickly finding an international audience, and in the process, has introduced the world to literary giants like Mariana Enríquez and Samanta Schweblin. Now, Marina Yuszczuk joins that list of Argentine horror stars with THIRST (Dutton, 241 pp., $28) .

The book, which is translated by Heather Cleary, is a unique vampire novel full of eroticism and feminist rage. The story takes place in two different periods. First we follow a female vampire escaping persecution, making her way across Europe over the centuries and finally landing in Buenos Aires, where she experiences the city’s early days as well as the yellow fever pandemics of the late 1800s. Eventually, she’s forced to go into hiding in a cemetery. The second part of the book follows a divorced mother who’s dealing with her own mother’s declining health and who receives a strange old photo from an ailing woman that links her to the vampire.

This gripping tale is full of queer representation and lush, lyrical passages, all while exploring death with an air of nihilism. “We’re all standing at death’s door,” Yuszczuk writes. “Someone has to be next in line.” Vampires are making a comeback, and Yuszczuk is spearheading their revival with this bloody novel.

In addition to scaring readers, the tales in THROUGH THE NIGHT LIKE A SNAKE: Latin American Horror Stories (Two Lines Press/Calico, 228 pp., paperback, $16.95) are meant to elicit a profound sense of unease, and they pull it off with flying colors.

The anthology collects 10 stories from some of Latin America’s best purveyors of what the editor Sarah Coolidge calls “narrativa de lo inusual” — narrative of the unusual. In Mariana Enriquez’s “That Summer in the Dark,” translated by Megan McDowell, two young friends become obsessed with serial killers and then must confront the reality of a murderer in their own building. Maximiliano Barrientos’s “The Third Transformation,” translated by Tim Gutteridge, is a superb body horror nightmare full of mystery and also breathing meat flowers with teeth. Julián Isaza’s “Visitor,” translated by Joel Streicker, is the funniest story in the collection, and perhaps the one with the greatest twist. It follows an elderly woman who rescues an alien and develops a symbiotic relationship with it that leads to murder.

These stories — relentlessly unsettling as they are — serve as a fantastic introduction to a growing movement that’s bound to enrich, and help diversify, speculative fiction for years to come.

STITCHES (Viz Media, 112 pp., $18) combines the art of Junji Ito, perhaps the world’s most renowned mangaka, with the brief, punchy short stories of Hirokatsu Kihara, translated by Jocelyne Allen, to craft a delectable collection of illustrated scary stories.

Nine very short tales (more horrific morsels than full stories) make up this book, and they all share some cohesive elements: They open with a blunt opening line like “This happened when M was in elementary school,” followed by a supernatural event and then a surprising twist.

Ito and Kihara fully embrace horror in these tiny tales. In “Face,” a woman sprouts a small face on the back of her neck that must be removed by a priest. “Library” is about the ghost of a young girl who haunts a school library. “The Play” tells of a special staging of “Pinocchio” in which an otherworldly presence insists on participating. “Folk Dance” and “The Kimono” are opposite sides of the same coin: In the former, a photographer fails to capture an image of a dancing specter; in the latter, a friendly, playful ghost shows up in a family picture.

Ito, whose classics like “Uzumaki” and “Tomie” are horror staples, is a master at creating creepy details and expressive faces that help carry Kihara’s succinct terrors. Together, the two masters create their own brand of dark magic.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

Stephen King, who has dominated horror fiction for decades , published his first novel, “Carrie,” in 1974. Margaret Atwood explains the book’s enduring appeal .

The actress Rebel Wilson, known for roles in the “Pitch Perfect” movies, gets vulnerable about her weight loss, sexuality and money  in her new memoir.

“City in Ruins” is the third novel in Don Winslow’s Danny Ryan trilogy and, he says, his last book. He’s retiring in part to invest more time into political activism .

​​Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation,” is “wildly optimistic” about Gen Z. Here’s why .

Do you want to be a better reader?   Here’s some helpful advice to show you how to get the most out of your literary endeavor .

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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