The Best Books of Fall 2020 For Those Long, Chilly Nights
The Best Books of Fall 2020 For Those Long, Chilly Nights
Six staggering months into the coronavirus pandemic, you’ve likely binged every television show on your interminable list, constructed every jigsaw puzzle you own, and maybe even baked bread. What’s left to do, you ask? The answer, of course, is to read. What better way to fill up the long, cold nights than with a blanket and a book?
From living legends to literary newcomers, heavily reported nonfiction to fantastical fiction, luckily this season in publishing has something for everyone. Our favorite books of fall are formally adventurous, taking shape not just as novels, stories, and books of nonfiction, but as lyric arrangements and anthologies. They speak to these fractured times, examining weighty ideas about race, class, gender, and privilege, yet they also whisk us away to fantastical worlds, where houses contain oceans and spurned women transform into mythical monsters. Whether you’re looking to grow your mind, escape your reality, or all of the above, our favorite books of fall are what you need.
Just Us: An American Conversation , by Claudia Rankine
Graywolf Press
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$27.60
The visionary writer of Citizen returns with Just Us, a lyric arrangement of poems, essays, and images asking how a historically divided nation might come together to dismantle white supremacy. In a far-ranging imagined conversation, a chorus of disparate voices engage in a call and response discussion, with each encounter rooted in a different corner of American life. In Citizen, Rankine redefined how we think about and understand race; in Just Us, she redefines how we might converse about race across divisions, making for a meditative, powerful rumination on the life-changing importance of hard conversations, even in the absence of answers.
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song , by Kevin Young
Library of America
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$41.40
In this landmark volume, clocking in at a whopping 1170 pages, one of our most talented contemporary poets presents the most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published. Beginning in 1770 and culminating in the artistic outpouring emerging through the Black Lives Matter movement, Young spotlights 250 important poets, each situated in an incisive historical and literary framework. Young also takes care to spotlight poetic movements and writing collectives, tracing the influence of creatives on the development of other creatives. Together, these 250 voices, old and new, celebrated and neglected, form a dazzling symphony of talent across generations, making for a breathtaking, expansive canon.
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments , by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
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$23.00
In her sensational debut book of nonfiction, Nezhukumatathil, an award-winning poet, turns her attention to the natural world, with a lyrical and imagistic look at the minor daily miracles of life on Earth, visible to anyone who stops to bear witness. In thirty bewitching essays, Nezhukumatathil spotlights natural astonishments raining from monsoon season in India to clusters of fireflies in western New York, each one a microcosm of joy and amazement. With her ecstatic prose and her rapturous powers of insight, Nezhukumatathil proves herself a worthy spiritual successor to the likes of Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard, setting the bar high for a new generation of nature writers.
When No One Is Watching , by Alyssa Cole
William Morrow & Company
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$15.63
This high-octane thriller hits right where it hurts, taking aim at gentrification and racism as conjoined forces of literary horror. In Cole’s Brooklyn setting, we meet Sydney, a Brooklyn-born and raised Black woman fresh off a divorce, who returns to the family brownstone to care for her ailing mother. Sydney is shocked by the gentrification rocking her former neighborhood, where she meets Theo, a white transplant who becomes her unwanted accomplice in researching the neighborhood’s Black history. As Sydney’s Black neighbors go missing in record numbers, with white gentrifiers moving in as if they’ve always owned these streets, Sydney and Theo soon uncover a shocking plot against longtime residents. Expect major palm sweat as the novel barrels toward its chilling and eye-opening conclusion.
Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation , by Anne Helen Petersen
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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$23.92
In this razor-sharp book of cultural criticism expanded from her viral BuzzFeed article, journalist and academic Anne Helen Petersen explores the forces that have left a much-maligned generation feeling disempowered and dispossessed, from the gig economy to the monetization of hobbies to the identity-bending influence of social media. With blistering prose and all-too vivid reporting, Petersen lays bare the burnout and despair of millennials, while also charting a path to a world where members of her generation can feel as if the boot has been removed from their necks.
Red Pill , by Hari Kunzru
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$25.71
A master of weaving political life and postmodern anxiety into fiction, Kunzru, the acclaimed author of White Tears, returns to form with Red Pill, a dazzling novel about an American writer abroad who falls down the rabbit hole of alt-right message boards and government conspiracies. Rarely has our contemporary animus been so nakedly illuminated on the page, with Kunzru spinning a dizzying allegory from the puzzling, paranoid mind of a narrator set adrift in unreality.
Piranesi , by Susanna Clarke
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$24.84
In her long-awaited sophomore outing, arriving thirteen years after her showstopping bestseller Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Clarke returns with this high-concept fantasy about a fantastical house and the sheltered man who inhabits it. In this labyrinthine home, infinite rooms are lined with thousands of statues, while a series of corridors contain a tempestuous ocean. Piranesi, the inhabitant of the dreamlike House, is visited twice per week by The Other, a man who calls on Piranesi to assist with his research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. Piranesi believes the House to be the world, where only fifteen people have ever existed, but when the simplicity of his monastic life is disrupted by a dark truth, the fallout is catastrophic. Spellbinding, strange, and unforgettably original, Piranesi is well worth the thirteen-year wait.
Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: War Through the Lives of Women , by Christina Lamb
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$17.47
Award-winning war correspondent Christina Lamb gives voice to the voiceless in this harrowing testimony from women in war zones, where rape is weaponized as a tool of humiliation, oppression, and ethnic cleansing. From historical tragedies, like the enslavement of “comfort women” in World War II-era Japan, to modern disasters, like the Yazidi women held captive as sex slaves by the Islamic State, Lamb takes an incisive, unsparing look at the trauma wrought by war on vulnerable women. Expect to fear fury and despair at what these women have survived, tempered by a hopeful call to action from Lamb, who posits a path forward to justice.
Jack , by Marilynne Robinson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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$24.84
In the fourth installment of her towering Gilead cycle, Robinson returns as ever to the enchanting town of Gilead, Iowa, her playground for soulful contemplation of the American spirit. In this volume, Robinson introduces Jack, the prodigal son of the local minister, and Della, the schoolteacher and preacher’s daughter who captures his heart. Their interracial love is star-crossed, yet Robinson traces it to its bitter end, exploring how love, even when it’s painful, conveys salvation to both the faithful and the faithless. In Gilead, Robinson wrote, “This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.” So too does Jack, another sublime, rapturous entry into a breathtaking series.
Leave the World Behind , by Rumaan Alam
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$25.75
In Alam’s outstanding third novel, a white family’s getaway to a rented Hamptons home is disrupted by the midnight arrival of an older Black couple, who claim to own the home and ask to stay the night, as New York City has become shrouded in total darkness during an ominous blackout. With an apocalypse looming outside their walls, together the two families must endure an uncomfortable dark night of the soul, wrestling with their suspicions of one another while forming fragile bonds. Riveting and claustrophobic, Leave the World Behind invites us to sit with our discomfort and reflect on our own rushed judgments, delivering a dazzling and dark examination of family, race, class, and what matters most when the impossible becomes possible.
The Cold Millions , by Jess Walter
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$26.67
In his first novel since 2012’s sensational Beautiful Ruins, Walter puts forth his most ambitious work yet, solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds. Set in the early twentieth century, The Cold Millions follows Gig and Rye Dolan, two orphaned brothers who hop freight trains through the American West in search of a living wage. Their travels take them to Spokane, Washington, where they find themselves swept up in the burgeoning labor rights movement and the free speech riots that rocked Spokane. It’s often said that a novel contains the world; Walter brings new meaning to this phrase, peopling The Cold Millions with vaudeville stars, hobos, suffragists, tycoons, union agitators, policemen, and dozens of other vibrant characters. Warm and deeply humane, this transporting novel is a staggering achievement from a landmark writer.
Magic Lessons , by Alice Hoffman
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$25.75
In this long-awaited prequel to Practical Magic, her unforgettable cult classic, Hoffman turns the clock back to Salem circa the 1600s, where the Owens family bloodline begins with Maria Owens, a vivacious young woman with extraordinary gifts. Raised in rural England by an adoptive mother, who schools her in the “Unnamed Arts,” Maria finds her way to the Caribbean, where she falls for a man who later abandons her. Heartbroken and furious, she follows him across the known and unknown worlds to Salem, where she levies the curse that will haunt her family for centuries to come. Vivid and enchanting, with a can’t-miss-it foray into the Salem Witch Trials, Magic Lessons is another sublime entry in an arresting series.
The Nightworkers , by Brian Selfon
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$24.84
Selfon’s literary crime debut introduces an unforgettable protagonist: Shecky Keenan, the well-meaning head of a Brooklyn family crime syndicate composed of money launderers and small-time criminals. All Shecky wants is to live a relatively quiet life with his beloved niece and nephew, but when a runner goes missing with a quarter of a million dollars of dirty money, threats soon pour in from all sides. Electric, surprising, and tightly plotted, The Nightworkers establishes Selfon as a compelling writer to watch.
Memorial , by Bryan Washington
Riverhead Books
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$24.84
The acclaimed author of Lot returns with another dazzling foray into literary Houston, where he turns his lens to two complicated men: Benson, a Black daycare teacher, and Mike, a Japanese-American chef. Benson and Mike’s years-long live-in relationship is on the rocks, with each one of them too apathetic to rekindle their romance or to end it. Their companionable stasis is turned upside down when Mike receives news that his estranged father is dying in Japan just as his mother arrives on their doorstep, forcing Benson and Mitsuko to become unlikely roommates in Mike’s absence. With crackling dialogue and gimlet-eyed humor, Washington paints a vivid, poignant portrait of how love, romantic and familial, is weathered and ultimately deepened by time.
Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land , by N. Scott Momaday
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$16.54
In Earth Keeper, Momaday, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a legendary voice in American letters, delivers a dazzling celebration of the landscape that formed his people. A member of the Kiowa tribe, Momaday was raised on Native American reservations throughout the Southwest, where, he writes, “The sky was so deep that it had no end, and the air was run through with sparkling light.” In this “spiritual autobiography,” constructed in glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance. At once a celebration and a warning, Earth Keeper is an impassioned defense of all that our endangered planet stands to lose.
To Be a Man , by Nicole Krauss
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$24.83
From a contemporary master comes an astounding collection of ten globetrotting stories, each one a powerful dissection of the thorny connections between men and women. With fathers, husbands, sons, and all manner of men coming into view, Krauss sagely explores the many seasons of life and relationships, from new love to growing old. Each story is masterfully crafted and deeply contemplative, barreling toward a shimmering, inevitable conclusion, proving once again that Krauss is one of our most formidable talents in fiction.
The Harpy , by Megan Hunter
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$23.92
Lucy seemingly has it all: a loving marriage, two darling young sons, and an idyllic domestic life. But when she receives a devastating phone call from a man who informs her that his wife slept with her husband, Jake, a fantastical mutation begins within her shattered soul. Lucy and Jake agree to stay together and mend their marriage, on one condition: to even the score, Lucy will be permitted to hurt Jake three times. With the psychosexual game of crime and punishment afoot, Lucy’s rage and betrayal simmer to a boiling point, transforming her into a creature she doesn’t recognize. With shades of Carmen Maria Machado and Karen Russell, Hunter turns in an unforgettable magical realist story of power, revenge, and transformation.
The Arrest , by Jonathan Lethem
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$25.75
From one of our finest novelists comes an ambitious new work of speculative fiction, set in a ravaged world where, in an event referred to as “The Arrest,” all electronics and appliances have spontaneously broken down. Sandy Duplessis, formerly a Hollywood script doctor, now assists the butcher and delivers groceries in rural Maine, where he reflects often on the high-flying years he spent working with Hollywood power broker Peter Todbaum. Sandy’s fragile peace is interrupted when Todbaum crashes into town behind the wheel of a nuclear-powered supervehicle, which he drove across the United States for suspect reasons, leaving a trail of destruction and dishonesty in his wake. In Sandy’s madcap adventure to stop his onetime partner, Lethem sends up our cultural obsession with post-apocalyptic stories, making for a wry, spirited novel that will linger in your imagination for years to come.
The Office of Historical Corrections , by Danielle Evans
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$24.84
In the ten years since Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, readers have waited anxiously for Danielle Evans’ next outing; at last, The Office of Historical Corrections is here, and it exceeds all expectations. In seven sly, haunting stories, Evans reflects our madcap world back at us, delivering a dazzling dissection of our twisted attitudes about race, culture, history, and truth. In one memorable story, a white college student is desperate to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate bikini goes viral; in another, a historian works to uncover the truth of a long-past racist tragedy. Incisive, nuanced, and deliciously complex, each of these stories proves that Evans is a bravura talent.
Nights When Nothing Happened , by Simon Han
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$23.92
In this dazzling debut, Han lays the scene in Dallas, where Liang and Patty Cheng, recent immigrants from China, have at last built a stable enough life to send for their two young children, who were living temporarily with grandparents in China. When a pattern of troubling behavior emerges in their daughter Annabel, from dangerous sleepwalking to lashing out violently at school, the community turns against the family, resulting in grave consequences. In this subtle but deeply felt story, Han elegantly takes aim at suburban racism, generational trauma, and the secrets we keep from one another in order to stay afloat.
From living legends to literary newcomers, heavily reported nonfiction to fantastical fiction, this season in books has something for everyone.