Is there a better time to stay in and catch up on all the reading you meant to get to this year?
Amazon has released its Best Books of the Year list for 2020, keying at times on titles that capture the feeling of the world we’re living in while also looking for reads that help us escape.
At the top of the list is Brittany K. Barnett’s “A Knock at Midnight” as the top pick. The lawyer’s memoir is the true story of Barnett’s journey navigating the criminal justice system, while also chronicling the crimes, families and jail time of three of her clients.
Amazon’s editor’s read thousands of books each year to generate reviews and create best-of lists each month. The monthly lists culminate in the year-end list, which includes an overall Top 100 books. Best-of lists are also broken out in assorted genres including literature and fiction, mystery and thriller, children’s books, cookbooks, food and wine and young adult.
“It’s been a year, and the editorial team set out to create a list that reflected what we’ve collectively been experiencing, hearing and seeing in 2020, and also the books that gave us a welcome respite from the anxieties of the world,” Sarah Gelman, editorial director for Amazon Books, said in a news release. “Our number one book practically chose itself,” she said of “Midnight,” calling it “timely and powerful.”
Amazon’s top book of 2019 was Margaret Atwood’s “The Testaments.”
Here are the top 10 picks of 2020 as described by the Amazon editorial team:
- A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom by Brittany K. Barnett: At times, Barnett’s memoir reads like page-turning crime fiction; at others, a galvanizing and redemptive portrait of a lawyer trying to defend Black lives that were never protected in the first place. Urgent, necessary, hopeful — and a knockout read.
- Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy: Teeming with adventure, darkness, love, and loss, Migrations is a novel that’s impossible to put down as you learn about the life of Franny Stone—a sharp, flawed, and determined woman who will stop at nothing to regain what she’s lost.
- Blacktop Wasteland: A Novel by S.A. Cosby: A pedal to the metal thriller about a retired getaway driver, caught between the rock of poverty and the hard place of Southern racism, who gambles on one last heist to get him ahead. Toggling between high-stakes action, and quiet—even tender—family scenes, this is Southern noir with heart.
- Group by Christie Tate: Tate was a summer intern at a law firm and top of her class, and yet her memoir opens with her sitting in her car alone, wishing someone would shoot her. Written with the gift of hindsight, Group is an honest, heart-breaking and hilarious look at reaching rock bottom and climbing your way back to life.
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett: Ideal for book clubs, The Vanishing Half examines sisterhood, personal identity, starting fresh, and what it means to be Black (and white) in America. Bennett is known for creating taut family dramas, and like her brilliant debut, The Mothers, this novel shows just how strong the bonds of sisters are, even at their weakest.
- Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie: Set in post WWII Japan, this sweeping story about a love child left with her scandalized, and brutal, grandparents will have you rooting for its resilient heroine, Nori, who must summon the courage to assert her own identity and live life on her own terms. This is a debut you don’t want to miss.
- Caste by Isabel Wilkerson: Ten years after her award-winning The Warmth of Other Suns, Wilkerson argues that our entire social structure is built upon an unrecognized caste system. White people—whether their ancestors were slave owners or abolitionists—have been able to live and thrive under these set assumptions of inequality. This is a mind-expanding book.
- The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré: In this rousing tale of courage and pluck, a 14-year-old Nigerian girl is sold into servitude by her father when her mother — a proponent of education — passes away. You will root for Adunni as she endeavors to escape her sorry — and often harrowing — lot, and applaud the kind strangers who buoy her efforts, and her spirits.
- Memorial by Bryan Washington: Memorial unfolds with depth, humor, and telling detail. Mike is a Japanese-American chef. His partner, Benson, is a Black daycare teacher. When Mike leaves Houston to visit his ailing father in Osaka, his mother comes to live with Benson. You will laugh, cry, and ask yourself: What makes a family?
- Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker: A medical mystery story — with twists and reveals to rival any thriller — that shows how an all-American family was ravaged as an elusive, centuries-old mental illness caught and kept them in its crosshairs for decades.
