“What are the best All Genres books released in 2020?” We looked at 951 of the top All Genres books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

The top 32 books, all appearing on 6 or more “Best All Genres” book lists, are ranked below by how many times they appear. The remaining 900+ titles, as well as the sources we used, are in alphabetical order on the bottom of the page.

Our other Best Of 2020 Articles:

• The Best Art, Photography, And Coffee Table Books
• The Best AudioBooks
• The Best Biography And Memoir Books
• The Best Graphic Novels And Comics
• The Best Cookbooks
• The Best Fiction Books
• The Best Books (All Categories)
• The Best History Books
• The Best Kids, Children, and Youth Books
• The Best Mystery, Horror, and Thriller Books
• The Best Nonfiction Books
• The Best Poetry Books
• The Best Science And Nature Books
• The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Books
• The Best Young Adult Books

Previous Years: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015

All titles have been added to a Bookshop list as well!

Happy Scrolling!

Top 32 Best All Genres Books From 2020

32.) Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot written byMikki Kendall

Lists It Appears On:

• Chicago Tribune
• Time
• Book Riot
• NYPL
• NPR
• Insider

“If Hood Feminism is a searing indictment of mainstream feminism, it is also an invitation. . . . Kendall] offers guidance for how we can all do better.”–NPR.org “A rousing call to action for today’s feminists. It should be required reading for everyone.”–Gabrielle Union, author of We’re Going to

31.) Interior Chinatown written byCharles Yu

Lists It Appears On:

• Read It Forward
• Time
• Chicago Public Library
• Washington Independent Review Of Books
• NYPL
• NPR

2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST! One of the funniest books of the year … a delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire. –The Washington Post From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, a

30.) Just Us written byClaudia Rankine

Lists It Appears On:

• Time
• Riff Raff PVD
• Oprah
• NY Times
• NYPL
• NPR

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen changed the conversation–Just Us urges all of us into it As everyday white supremacy becomes increasingly vocalized with no clear answers at hand, how best might we approach one another? Claudia Rankine, without telling us what to do, urges us to begin the discussions that

29.) Such a Fun Age written byKiley Reid

Lists It Appears On:

• Read It Forward
• The Irish Times
• Worldly Gentleman
• NPR
• Insider
• Parade

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A REESE’S BOOK CLUB x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK PICK “The most provocative page-turner of the year.” –Entertainment Weekly “A great way to kick off 2020.” –Washington Post “I urge you to read Such a Fun Age.” –NPR A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhila

28.) The Mirror & the Light written byHilary Mantel

Lists It Appears On:

• Time
• NY Times
• Chicago Public Library
• The Telegraph
• The Irish Times
• NPR

The brilliant #1 New York Times bestseller With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs t

27.) The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz written byErik Larson

Lists It Appears On:

• Worldly Gentleman
• NYPL
• Read It Forward
• Time
• NY Times
• NPR

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz–an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis One of Chicago Tribune’s Best Books of the Year So

26.) Uncanny Valley written byAnna Wiener

Lists It Appears On:

• Make Use Of
• NY Times
• Teen Vogue
• NPR
• Parade
• New York Times

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A definitive document of a world in transition: I won’t be alone in returning to it for clarity and consolation for many years to come.” –Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a January 2020

25.) Weather written byJenny Offill

Lists It Appears On:

• Book Riot
• Time
• The Telegraph
• NYPL
• NPR
• Parade

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER From the beloved author of the nationwide best seller Dept. of Speculation–one of the New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of the Year–a “darkly funny and urgent” (NPR) tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis Lizzie Benson slid into her job a

24.) Wow, No Thank You. written bySamantha Irby

Lists It Appears On:

• Chicago Tribune
• Insider
• New York Times
• Book Riot
• Time
• NPR

*AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* “Stay-up-all-night, miss-your-subway-stop, spit-out-your-beverage funny…. irresistible as a snack tray, as intimately pleasurable as an Irish goodbye.” –Jia Tolentino From Samantha Irby, beloved author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, a rip-roaring,

23.) Writers & Lovers written byLily King

Lists It Appears On:

• Washington Post
• East City Book Shop
• NY Times
• Chicago Public Library
• NYPL
• NPR

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman. Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the

22.) A Promised Land written byBarack Obama

Lists It Appears On:

• Barnes & Noble
• Read It Forward
• NY Times
• The Irish Times
• NPR
• New York Times
• Worldly Gentleman

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making–from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his

21.) How Much of These Hills Is Gold written byC Pam Zhang

Lists It Appears On:

• Book Riot
• Read It Forward
• Richland Library
• NY Times
• NYPL
• NPR
• Parade

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE 2020 CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 HONOREE A GOOP Book Club Pick “A fully immersive epic drama packed with narrative riches and exquisitely crafted prose.” –San Francisco Chronicle

20.) Intimations written byZadie Smith

Lists It Appears On:

• Time
• Oprah
• Teen Vogue
• NYPL
• The Irish Times
• NPR
• Insider

“Smith does more than illuminate what we’re going through right now. She offers a model of how to think ourselves through a fraught historical moment without getting hysterical or sanctimonious, without losing our compassion or our appreciation for what’s good in other people. She teaches us how to

19.) Memorial written byBryan Washington

Lists It Appears On:

• Read It Forward
• Time
• Amazon
• East City Book Shop
• NY Times
• NYPL
• NPR

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! “Truly unlike anything I’ve read before. Bryan Washington’s take on love, family, and responsibility is as complicated and true as life itself. I can’t stop thinking about it.” –Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House “Made me think about the nature of love, a

18.) Mexican Gothic written bySilvia Moreno-Garcia

Lists It Appears On:

• Amazon
• Book Riot
• East City Book Shop
• Quill & Quire
• Chicago Public Library
• Worldly Gentleman
• NPR

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – “It’s Lovecraft meets the Brontës in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird.”–The Guardian IN DEVELOPMENT AS A HULU ORIGINAL LIMITED SERIES PRODUCED BY KELLY RIPA AND MARK CONSUELOS An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic ari

17.) Real Life written byBrandon Taylor

Lists It Appears On:

• Book Riot
• Read It Forward
• Financial Times
• NY Times
• The Telegraph
• NYPL
• NPR

A FINALIST FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE “A blistering coming of age story” –O: The Oprah Magazine A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice. Almost everything about Wallace is at odds wi

16.) Shuggie Bain written byDouglas Stuart

Lists It Appears On:

• Time
• NY Times
• The Telegraph
• Chicago Public Library
• Washington Independent Review Of Books
• NYPL
• NPR

NATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDShuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands

15.) The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue written byV.E. Schwab

Lists It Appears On:

• Amazon
• East City Book Shop
• Popsugar
• Oprah
• NYPL
• Worldly Gentleman
• NPR

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER THE WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER #1 Indie Next Pick and #1 LibraryReads Pick – October 2020 Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, NPR, Slate, and Oprah Magazine A “Best Of” Book From: CNN *Amazon Editors *

14.) The City We Became written byN.K. Jemisin

Lists It Appears On:

• Book Riot
• Popsugar
• Time
• East City Book Shop
• Chicago Public Library
• NYPL
• Worldly Gentleman
• NPR

“A glorious fantasy.”–Neil Gaiman Three-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts her most incredible novel yet, a story of culture, identity, magic, and myths in contemporary New York City. In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes h

13.) The Glass Hotel written byEmily St. John Mandel

Lists It Appears On:

• Make Use Of
• Read It Forward
• Time
• East City Book Shop
• NYPL
• NPR
• Insider
• Parade

LONGLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE The Glass Hotel may be the perfect novel for your survival bunker. –Ron Charles, The Washington Post A New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Bustle, Buzzfeed, GoodReads, Houston Chronicle, Writer’s Digest, Medium, Washington Independent Review of Books, The

12.) Vesper Flights written byHelen Macdonald

Lists It Appears On:

• Washington Post
• Make Use Of
• Time
• The Telegraph
• Chicago Public Library
• The Globe and Mail
• NYPL
• NPR

Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves. In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nost

11.) Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family written byRobert Kolker

Lists It Appears On:

• Worldly Gentleman
• Chicago Public Library
• Evening Standard
• Time
• Amazon
• Washington Post
• NY Times
• NYPL
• NPR

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 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. Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dre

10.) Luster written byRaven Leilani

Lists It Appears On:

• Chatelaine
• Time
• Amazon
• East City Book Shop
• NY Times
• Oprah
• NYPL
• Chicago Public Library
• NPR

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER So delicious that it feels illicit . . . Raven Leilani’s first novel reads like summer: sentences like ice that crackle or melt into a languorous drip; plot suddenly, wildly flying

9.) Memorial Drive written byNatasha Trethewey

Lists It Appears On:

• Time
• East City Book Shop
• Washington Post
• NY Times
• Chicago Public Library
• NYPL
• NPR
• Chicago Tribune
• New York Times

An Instant New York Times BestsellerA chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy At age nineteen, Natasha

8.) The Lying Life of Adults written byElena Ferrante

Lists It Appears On:

• Time
• Evening Standard
• Financial Times 2
• Oprah
• NYPL
• The Telegraph
• The Irish Times
• NPR
• New York Times

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER. Soon to be a NETFLIX Original Series. A POWERFUL NEW NOVEL set in a divided Naples by ELENA FERRANTE, the New York Times best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter. “There’s no doubt [the publication of The Lying Life of

7.) Transcendent Kingdom written byYaa Gyasi

Lists It Appears On:

• Washington Post
• Read It Forward
• East City Book Shop
• Warwick Library
• Teen Vogue
• Chicago Public Library
• Worldly Gentleman
• Brittle Papper
• NPR

A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER Yaa Gyasi’s stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at

6.) Homeland Elegies written byAyad Akhtar

Lists It Appears On:

• Washington Post
• Publishers Weekly
• Time
• NY Times
• Oprah
• Chicago Public Library
• NYPL
• Worldly Gentleman
• NPR
• New York Times

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

5.) A Burning written byMegha Majumdar

Lists It Appears On:

• Richland Library
• Read It Forward
• Time
• Amazon
• East City Book Shop
• NY Times
• Teen Vogue
• Chicago Public Library
• NYPL
• Now Toronto
• NPR

A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise–to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies–and find their lives entangled in the wake of a ca

4.) Deacon King Kong written byJames McBride

Lists It Appears On:

• Richland Library
• Read It Forward
• Time
• Amazon
• East City Book Shop
• NY Times
• Oprah
• Chicago Public Library
• Washington Independent Review Of Books
• NYPL
• Worldly Gentleman
• NPR
• Parade

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, comes one of the most celebrated novels of the year. In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportc

3.) Hamnet written byMaggie O’Farrell

Lists It Appears On:

• Washington Post
• Richland Library
• Barnes & Noble
• Financial Times
• Financial Times 2
• NY Times
• The Telegraph
• Chicago Public Library
• The Irish Times
• Washington Independent Review Of Books
• NYPL
• NPR
• Worldly Gentleman

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young, alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on in this national best seller and winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. “All too timely … [An] exceptiona

2.) Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents written byIsabel Wilkerson

Lists It Appears On:

• Chicago Tribune
• Worldly Gentleman
• Chicago Public Library
• Barnes & Noble
• Time
• Read It Forward
• Amazon
• Washington Post
• Chatelaine
• Publishers Weekly
• NY Times
• Oprah
• NYPL
• NPR
• Insider
• New York Times

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK – LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD – “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”–Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The W

1.) The Vanishing Half written byBrit Bennett

Lists It Appears On:

• Worldly Gentleman
• Richland Library
• Barnes & Noble
• Book Riot
• Make Use Of
• Popsugar
• Read It Forward
• Time
• Amazon
• NY Times
• Teen Vogue
• The Telegraph
• Chicago Public Library
• NYPL
• NPR
• Insider

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” –Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal “A

The 900+ Additional Best All Genres Books Released In 2020