Year-End Lists

Literary Hub: Our 65 Favorite Books of 2020

[see also 38 Favorite Books of 2024 • Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022 • Our 48 Favorite Books of 2021 • The 20 Best Novels of the 2010s • The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the 2010s • Favorite Books of 2018]

• Suppose a Sentence
  Brian Dillon
• Postcolonial Love Poem
  Natalie Diaz
• How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
  Jerald Walker
• The Historians
  Eavan Boland
• Follow Me To Ground
  Sue Rainsford
• Three Rings

  A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate
  Daniel Mendelsohn
• Theory of the Gimmick

  Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form
  Sianne Ngai
• Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

  Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
  Zora Neale Hurston
• Red Comet

  The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
  Heather Clark
• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• Leave the World Behind
  Rumaan Alam
• Out of Mesopotamia
  Salar Abdoh
• Vesper Flights
  Helen Macdonald
• Mill Town

  Reckoning with What Remains
  Kerri Arsenault
• We Ride Upon Sticks
  Quan Barry
• The Book of Unconformities

  Speculations on Lost Time
  Hugh Raffles
• The Lightness
  Emily Temple
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• Luster
  Raven Leilani
• How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
  Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert, editors
• Notes on a Silencing
  Lacy Crawford
• The Dead Are Arising

  The Life of Malcolm X
  Les Payne and Tamara Payne
• Hurricane Season
  Fernanda Melchor
• Trouble the Saints
  Alaya Dawn Johnson
• My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
  Jenn Shapland
• Animal Spirit
  Francesca Marciano
• Parakeet
  Marie-Helene Bertino
• In Memory Of

  Designing Contemporary Memorials
  Spencer Bailey
• Barn 8
  Deb Olin Unferth
• Wilmington's Lie

  The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
  David Zucchino
• The Constant Rabbit
  Jasper Fforde
• African American Poetry

  250 Years of Struggle & Song
  Kevin Young (editor)
• When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through
  Joy Harjo (editor)
• I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
  Laura van den Berg
• Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel
  Julian K. Jarboe
• The Nature of Desert Nature

  Meditations on the Nature of Deserts
  Gary Paul Nabhan (editor)
• The Cactus League
  Emily Nemens
• Death in Mud Lick

  A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic
  Eric Eyre
• These Women
  Ivy Pochoda
• What Happens at Night
  Peter Cameron
• She Come By It Natural

  Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
  Sarah Smarsh
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• A Burning
  Megha Majumdar
• A Certain Clarity
  Lawrence Joseph
• Weather
  Jenny Offill
• The Unseen
  Roy Jacobsen
• The Ministry for the Future
  Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Law of Lines
  Hye-young Pyun
• The Nancy Reagan Collection
  Maxe Crandall
• The Harpy
  Megan Hunter
• You Will Never Be Forgotten
  Mary South
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold
  C Pam Zhang
• When No One Is Watching
  Alyssa Cole
• How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs

  The Syrian Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance
  Elizabeth F. Thompson
• The Death of Vivek Oji
  Akwaeke Emezi
• The Park
  John Freeman
• What Can a Body Do?

  How We Meet the Built World
  Sara Hendren
• Quotients
  Tracy O'Neill
• These Violent Delights
  Micah Nemerever
• Crystal Clear

  Reflections on Extraordinary Talismans for Everyday Life
  Jaya Saxena
• Cleanness
  Garth Greenwell
• World of Wonders

  In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
  Aimee Nezhukumatathil
• Earthlings
  Sayaka Murata
• Tales of Two Planets

  Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World
  John Freeman (editor)