The 10 Books You Need To Read In 2020, According To Goodreads

If you love holding a good page-turner in your hands and not being able to put it down, American Dirt is the book you need to read in 2020. Set in Acapulco, Mexico in the midst of a drug cartel takeover, a bookstore owner's fateful meeting with the city's newest cartel's leader and the release of her journalist husband's subsequent tell-all article about the same man leads to a dramatic tale of sacrifice.

Release date: Jan. 21, 2020

Inspired by the life of Louise Erdrich's grandfather, a night watchman in a rural North Dakota factory near a reservation, The Night Watchman tells the harrowing story of the fight for Native American rights in the 1950s. The story follows the lives of a group of people living on the Chippewa Turtle Reservation as they fight to maintain their identity, and captures their desires and ambitions as they grapple with government regulations and changing legislation that serves to infringe on their way of life.

Release date: March 3, 2020

Nearly two decades after a naive teenager engages in a torrid affair with her 42-year-old teacher, allegations of sexual abuse from a current student prompt an internal re-examination of what Vanessa Wye experienced with her self-proclaimed first love. Redefining culturally acceptable behaviors and zooming in on shifting perspectives surrounding acceptable relationships has been a focal point of the Me Too era, and My Dark Vanessa shines an acute light on the tumultuous war within the minds of victims with this deeply intimate fictionalized story.

Release Date: March 10, 2020

A modern exploration of race, community, and class, A Good Neighborhood tells the story of two neighboring families from vastly different backgrounds whose teenagers fall for one another. The blossoming romance between a single mother's biracial son and a local businessman's secretly troubled daughter that puts the families at odds is told from multiple points of view throughout this captivating novel.

Release Date: March 10, 2020

This work of literary fiction by Emily St. John Mandel follows up her smash hit Station Eleven with an eerie tale of a remote island hotel, a Ponzi scheme, a young woman who mysteriously vanishes from a containership, and the greed, entitlement, and ghostly encounters that abound within the character's lives. While The Glass Hotel jumps around in time and setting, it leaves no stone unturned in terms of piecing together all that has unfolded.

Release Date: March 24, 2020

If you've ever wondered what parts of your childhood you've carried with you into adulthood and how they play into your relationships with adult family members, the characters in All Adults Here may help provide some insight into the very characteristics that make up a family's dynamic. When the book's main character uncovers a repressed memory from her childrearing days, she is forced to re-examine her parenting skills and what impact she made on her now adult children and their adult lives.

Release Date: May 5, 2020

Transcendent Kingdom follows a family of Ghanian immigrants living in Alabama experiencing immense difficulties stemming from depression and addiction. When the main character, Gifty, sets out to study neuroscience at Stanford in order to better understand the suffering of her family members, she must grapple with her evangelical upbringing and childhood faith.

Release Date: Sept. 15, 2020

In the midst of the Philadelphia opioid crisis, two sisters find themselves on opposite ends of the struggle — police officer Mickey patrols the same streets her addict sister Kacey is using in. When Kacey goes missing and a string of murders begins in Mickey's district, Mickey's quest to find the murderer and her sister drudges up memories from her childhood. This suspense-filled story examines family ties, loyalty, and addiction in a moving page-turner.

Release Date: Jan. 7, 2020

The first book of a new series by New York Times best-selling author N.K. Jemisin, five New Yorkers must work together to defend their city in The City We Became. These defenders are the heart and soul of the city — the five Burroughs personified — that is being ravaged by evil forces lurking in the shadows threatening to destroy New York as they know it. This mythical story is a love letter to the city that never sleeps and explores the multi-faced characteristics that New York what it is.

Release Date: March 24, 2020

The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes is the long-awaited Hunger Games novel that fans (myself included) have been waiting for. Taking place 64 years before the events of the original trilogy, the novel begins in the world of Panem on the morning of the reaping for the 10th Hunger Games. Because of the timeline, heroine Katniss Everdeen is unlikely to make an appearance, but readers will surely experience the same gripping throes of drama and intensity that Suzanne Collins brings to each of her books.

Release Date: May 19, 2020