The 50 most anticipated books of 2020

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EW's 2020 reading must-list

It wasn't easy narrowing down next year's list of buzzy titles to just 50, so trust that this is going to be a great reading year. Here are the books we're most excited for, from major novels to fascinating memoirs to a Jim Carrey book we're struggling to explain. And click the release dates on each slide to make all the pre-orders your heart desires.

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Long Bright River by Liz Moore

Moore's confident Philadelphia-set police procedural — set to flood bookstores with a huge print run and press campaign behind it — lives up to the hype, evolving from its genre-heavy introduction into a compelling portrayal of two siblings on different sides of the law. (Jan. 7)

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Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey

This provocative debut, consisting almost entirely of conversations between women, is threaded by an unnamed narrator meditating on desire, transformation, and yearning over 20 years of her life. (Jan. 7)

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The Better Liar by Tanen Jones

A woman conscripts a stranger to impersonate her dead sister; what could go wrong? Jones’ sensational debut has the bones of a thriller but reads like literary fiction: lean, shrewd, and gratifyingly real. (Jan. 14)

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Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas

The latest dark comedy from the Seed collectors author immerses readers in an English boarding school, where the daughter of a Russian oligarch has arrived and quickly notices that the thinner the woman, the more special the treatment they receive. And things get weirder from there. (Jan. 14)

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Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

Greenwell's long-awaited follow-up to What Belongs to You expands on the world of his lauded debut, following a queer American teacher in Sofia, Bulgaria preparing to leave his time abroad, as he reflects on the various intimate, haunting encounters — sexual and otherwise — that have characterized his time away. (Jan. 14)

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Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

Author Rebecca Solnit calls Wiener's memoir, about a young woman thrust into the world of Big Tech at a time of reckless and deceptive growth, "like Joan Didion at a startup." We're sold. (Jan. 14)

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American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

Described as a modern-day Grapes of Wrath, Cummins' sweeping new novel tells the story of Lydia and Luca, a mother and son forced to flee their middle-class lives in Mexico for the uncertainty of the United States. (Jan. 21)

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Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

The award-winning poet turns to memoir with the devastating account of his family's immigration to the U.S., from terrifying encounters with ICE offers to his father's ultimate deportation. (Jan. 28)

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Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

This formally innovative new work from Yu, an acclaimed novelist as well as a writer on hit shows including Westworld, investigates Asian-American identity and Hollywood conventions through a witty, heartfelt lens. (Jan. 28)

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All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace

Tomi Adeyemi is but one big name in the YA fantasy space to rave about this epic debut, "set in a kingdom where danger lurks beneath the sea, mermaids seek vengeance with song, and magic is a choice." The acquisition of this title was seriously competitive. (Feb. 4)

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The Big Goodbye by Sam Wasson

The biographer behind Fosse and Improv Nation has another compelling Hollywood story to tell, this one surrounding the making of Chinatown and the legends behind Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski, and more. (Feb. 4)

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The Resisters by Gish Jen

It's been a decade since we've had a Gish Jen novel, but The Resisters promises to be worth the wait. It's a typically inventive effort from the award-winning author, set in a realistic near-future America wherein a baseball prodigy is recruited to play in the Olympics. Ann Patchett says the book "should be required reading." (Feb. 4)

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Seduction by Clement Knox

A fascinating history of desire and attraction, Knox's dig into the archives runs from Enlightenment all the way to the present-day, and will reframe much of the way you think about this topic. (Feb. 4)

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Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

The "Dear Prudence" columnist and expert culture commentator returns with his sharpest, wittiest collection yet, a survey of pop culture ranging from scathing to plain weird. (Feb. 11)

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Weather by Jenny Offill

Love is already pouring in for the new book by literary darling Offill, a slim volume that nevertheless captures a country in crisis, through the lens of a struggling family and its librarian matriarch. (Feb. 11)

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Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Realities of race and sexuality threaten the peace of a tight college-town community over a late-summer weekend, when introverted Wallace, alienated from his white and seemingly straight peers, has a series of complex confrontations. (Feb. 18)

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Soot by Dan Vyleta

Set in the early 20th century, EW called Vyleta's 2016 novel Smoke a "sprawling, ambitious novel, a Dickensian tale tinged with fantasy." Now he returns with a sequel that only builds on what came before it. (Feb. 25)

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Anna K by Jenny Lee

Anna K: A Love Story by Jenny Lee CR: Flatiron — Flatiron

This red-hot retelling of Anna Karenina -- described as a mashup of Gossip Girl and Crazy Rich Asians -- landed a TV deal way back in January, with its adaptation now confirmed at HBO Max. (March 3)

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Deacon King Kong by James McBride

Just as Showtime's star-studded The Good Lord Bird adaptation hits the screen, McBride returns with an improbably hilarious tapestry of late '60s Brooklyn, and an eclectic group of individuals that bore witness to a fatal shooting. (March 3)

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The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

The reliably excellent, National Book Award-winning author goes especially personal with her latest, taking the action back to 1953 in a novel based on the life of her grandfather, a night watchman who carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C. (March 3)

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These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card

Our choice for the big, generations-spanning family novel on this list, Card's ghostly, surprising debut considers the bonds of blood, the weight of secrets, and the scars of trauma. (March 3)

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Writers & Lovers by Lily King

Euphoria breakout author Lily King returns with a portrait of the artist as a young woman, in which the determination to live a creative life bristles against experiences of grief, loneliness, and romance. (March 3)

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Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman

A simple premise — a wife and mother starts, for lack of a better term, wearing her dog — gives way to an affecting, funny study of a slowly unraveling woman vying to course-correct. (March 3)

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The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

Mantel's Booker Prize-winning, stunningly evocative Wolf Hall trilogy wraps with what we can only imagine is an epic finale. The finale begins in May 1536, tracing the final years of Thomas Cromwell in the wake of Anne Boleyn's death. (March 10)

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My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Perhaps the most anticipated first novel of the year, Russell's riveting, timeline-shifting saga of the relationship between a high-school student and her teacher, and its #MeToo-tinged fallout, is sure to spark conversation (and debate). (March 10)

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New Waves by Kevin Nguyen

Nguyen's debut provides a clever glimpse into the world of New York tech, as a high-level programmer and a low-level customer service rep band together for revenge against the company taking them for granted. But when tragedy strikes, everything changes. (March 10)

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The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

The first novel from Jemisin since she made history at the Hugo Awards with the ending to her decade-defining Broken Earth trilogy? Set in an alternate-version New York and kicking off a new series? Yeah, we're there. (March 24)

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The Everlasting by Katy Simpson-Smith

A tricky, ambitious examination of love in Rome that weaves between four centuries and follows four characters, asking big questions while finding grace in small lives. (March 24)

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The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

It's another haunting, elegiac novel from the Station 11 author, this time following a brother and a sister wading through loss and shock as two major events -- an International Ponzi scheme collapse, and a mysterious disappearance at sea -- hurtle them in heartbreaking but gorgeous directions. (March 24)

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Wow, No Thank You, by Samantha Irby

Samantha Irby may be spending more time in LA, but she's still the same old "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person." (Her words, not ours.) This much is clear in her riotous new book of bad dates, worse food experiences, and general befuddlement at the world. (March 31)

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Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

The groundbreaking Dominican-American author of In the Time of Butterflies hasn't published an adult novel in well over a decade. Safe to call this exploration of the relationship between a recently widowed writer and the undocumented (and pregnant) teenager who shows up on her doorstep anticipated. (April 7)

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Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth

The stylish but grounded adult debut from Veronica Roth, best-known for her mega-selling Divergent books, follows five adults wrestling with how to move on from teenage fame -- and the defunct prophecy that they were to take down an all-important, evil entity. (April 7)

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Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore

Wetmore's gritty take on violence, gender, and class in a Texas oil town circa 1976 has Elizabeth Gilbert asking, "How can a writer burst out of the gate with this much firepower and skill?" Lots of noise being made about this one. (April 7)

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Perfect Tunes by Emily Gould

Friendship author Emily Gould basks readers in New York City in the early days of the new millennium, darting between the lives of a gifted songwriter and, 15 years later, her daughter, searching for answers about the father she never knew. (April 14)

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The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels

Sickels' searing story about a young gay man in '80s New York, who leaves behind the city that promised freedom for the home that he was desperate to escape, is based on the lesser-known history of the AIDS epidemic, a moving meditation on the encroaching inevitability of death. Have tissues handy for this one. (April 14)

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Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

One of the most exciting writers of contemporary fiction — her last book, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, was EW's no. 1 of the year — has another trick up her sleeve in the form of Death in Her Hands, which takes an elderly widow on a suspenseful, metaphysical ride. (April 21)

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Warhol by Blake Gopnik

Pitched as the definitive biography, this tome runs nearly 1,000 pages and promises no shortage of celeb and art-world intrigue. We'll get to know the man behind all that glitz and iconography, too. (April 21)

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The Book of V by Anna Solomon

Fans of The Hours will surely be drawn to this kaleidoscopic piece that moves between three centuries in its focus on three women's experiences with sex and power, all of which eventually converge in the present-day. (May 5)

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Memoirs and Misinformation by Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon

Jim Carrey is the main character in Jim Carrey's debut novel, of which Jim Carrey says, "None of this is real and all of it is true." What to make of that? We're not sure, but can't wait to find out. (May 5)

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Stray by Stephanie Danler

Danler's Sweetbitter ignited the kind of word-of-mouth frenzy usually reserved for buzzy memoirs. So now that the author is out with a memoir. Well, expect it to be a must-have for any summertime tote. (May 5)

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Antkind by Charlie Kaufman

Rest assured, the debut novel from the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind Being John Malkovich and Anomalisa sounds plenty strange. It centers on a failed film critic named B. Rosenberg who stumbles upon what may be the greatest artistic achievement in human history: a 3-month-long film, complete with scheduled sleeping, eating, and bathroom breaks, that took its reclusive auteur 90 years to complete. (May 12)

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

We don't know anything about the Hunger Games prequel either! Except, okay, we're going 64 years into the past, beginning on the reaping of the 10th Hunger Games, and... yeah, we're eagerly guessing right along with you. (May 19)

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A Burning by Megha Majumdar

Majumdar's panoramic portrait of contemporary India depicts three characters' attempts to move on and move up, whether to financial security or political power or global fame, in the wake of catastrophe. (June 2)

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The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayétu Moore

The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayetu Moore — Graywolf

Last, she wrote one of 2018's most acclaimed debut novels in She Would Be King. Now, Moore returns with an aching memoir juxtaposing her family's harrowing escape from Liberia with her wistful return to her birthplace as an adult. (June 2)

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I Hold a Wolf by the Years by Laura van den Berg

We were huge fans of van den Berg's spooky, surreal novel The Third Hotel, and her short fiction never ceases to wow. Except much trippy greatness to come from her new collection. (June 9)

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The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

The name alone signals a literary event. And praise has already come in around the world for Ferrante's latest, set in a divided Naples. (June 9)

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The Taste of Sugar by Marisel Vera

A transporting historical novel of endless war and young love, in which a couple circa 1898 is lured from Puerto Rico to Hawaii -- promised riches that do not await them. (June 16)

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How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

Mbue builds on the power of her sensation Behold the Dreamers with this passionately rendered novel about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company. (June 16)

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Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon

The new teen rom-com from Solomon, pitting two overachieving rivals against one another, takes place over 24 swoony, steamy hours. (June 16)

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Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

One of the best debut novels of the past decade, Homegoing introduced Gyasi as a major novelist. We expect what's next, a lyrical depiction of a Ghanian family living in Alabama, to cement this. (Sept. 15)