Embrace and enjoy the new normal with these newly released biographies, novels, and self-improvement books.
Books are one of the best ways to embrace the unknown and rethink the future. During the pandemic, we spend at home more time than ever – a perfect chance to read the books that may help adjust to the new normal.
After you read all the books from your to-read collection, you may want to check out what new titles are going to win the hearts of book readers in 2020.
Some of us are making their summer book lists, and while not everyone will be able to enjoy reading on a sunny beach full of happy people, there are many books that are worth adding to your wishlist.
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Besides the best new fiction releases, we have put together the most interesting nonfiction books. Starting from history books, such as a biography of Winston Churchill (The Splendid and the Vile), to an insightful analysis of William Shakespeare’s works and their influence on today’s America, to books that help better understand our emotions and motivation, you will have a chance to pick up something that’s most suitable to fit your current need to learn and improve.
The list of the best fiction of the year includes the titles you already know, such as the new novel by Stephen King. You will, however, also find here perfect summer reads from your favorite authors, naming only Sue Monk Kidd, Dean Koontz, or Jennifer Weiner.
This list is intended to help you make an informed decision before you click a book link. Each book on the list comes also with info about Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading eligibility. Where possible, we provide direct links to Kindle, print, and audiobook editions on Amazon.
Kindle books and Audible audiobooks can be read and listened to not only on Kindle e-readers or Fire tablets, but also any iOS and Android device. It’s just a matter of downloading a free Kindle app.
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Essential books to read – 2020 list
Best fiction books
Devoted
Dean Koontz
From Dean Koontz, the master of suspense, comes an epic thriller about a terrifying killer and the singular compassion it will take to defeat him.
Woody Bookman hasn’t spoken a word in his eleven years of life. Not when his father died in a freak accident. Not when his mother, Megan, tells him she loves him. For Megan, keeping her boy safe and happy is what matters.
But Woody believes a monstrous evil was behind his father’s death and now threatens him and his mother. And he’s not alone in his thoughts. An ally unknown to him is listening.
Release date: March 31, 2020
Category: Horror suspense
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Prime Reading: No
The End of October
Lawrence Wright
At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe.
In this riveting medical thriller from the Pulitzer Prize winner, an unlikely but appealing character Henry Parsons races to find the origins and cure of a mysterious new killer virus as it brings the world to its knees.
As packed with suspense as it is with the fascinating history of viral diseases, Lawrence Wright has given us a full-tilt, electrifying, one-of-a-kind thriller.
Release date: April 28, 2020
Category: Historical thrillers
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
The Book of Longings
Sue Monk Kidd
In the first century, women were not allowed to have a voice. And especially not a rebellious one.
But Ana refuses to be shushed. As a curious seeker with a sharp intellect and a gift for writing, she defies all expectations placed on her and engages in secret scholarly pursuits. Born into a wealthy family with ties to Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee, her parents want her to marry an elderly widower she finds repugnant. But Ana is slowly finding herself falling in love with another – the eighteen-year-old kind-hearted Jesus.
Grounded in scrupulous historical research, The Book of Longings imagines life as the wife of Jesus. And, perhaps most importantly, it is an extraordinary tale of a woman who refuses to play the subservient role the society dictates her.
Release date: April 21, 2020
Category: Women’s religious fiction
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
In Five Years
Rebecca Serle
Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers. She is nothing like her lifelong best friend – the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.
But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight – but it is one hour she cannot shake.
Release date: March 10, 2020
Category: Women’s fiction
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
If It Bleeds
Stephen King
Novellas are, without doubt, Stephen King’s forte. In the course of his remarkable career, many have been made into films now considered iconic – including “The Body” (Stand By Me) and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (Shawshank Redemption). And now, he returns with a new, extraordinary short fiction collection.
And while not much is yet known about the book, one thing’s for sure: Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the titular If It Bleeds will have you on the edge of your seat.
Release date: April 21, 2020
Category: Horror suspense
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
American Dirt
Jeanine Cummins
The No. 1 New York Times bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club Pick is a literary achievement filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page.
Forced to flee a drug-cartel in Acapulco, Lydia Quixano Pérez and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. As they join the countless people trying to cross the US-Mexico border Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
Already being hailed as “a Grapes of Wrath for our times,” Jeanine Cummins’s novel is an extraordinary exploration into the hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope.
Release date: January 21, 2020
Category: Psychological fiction
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Big Summer
Jennifer Weiner
Six years have passed after Daphne’s nasty falling-out with Drue has left the two not speaking to each other. Finally out of Drue’s shadow, Daphne has managed to build a life that she loves – including a growing career as a plus-size Instagram influencer with thousands of followers.
So when her high school frenemy marches back into her life as blonde, skinny, and successful as ever, asking her to be her maid-of-honor, Daphne is understandably speechless.
Jennifer Weiner returns with a stunning novel about the complexities of friendship, self-acceptance, and the pitfalls of living out loud and online. Genuine, relatable, and incredibly well-written, Big Summer is the perfect beach read.
Release date: May 5, 2020
Category: Women’s literary fiction
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
All Adults Here
Emma Straub
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers comes a warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family – as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes.
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier.
Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
Release date: May 4, 2020
Category: Literary fiction
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
A Good Neighborhood
Therese Anne Fowler
In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier.
All is well until the Whitmans – a family with new money and a secretly troubled teenage daughter – raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace.
A Good Neighborhood asks big questions about life in America today. What does it mean to be a good neighbor? How do we live alongside each other when we don’t see eye to eye?
Release date: March 10, 2020
Category: Contemporary literary fiction
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Pretty Things
Janelle Brown
Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A.
Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead, she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales.
Nina’s and Vanessa’s paths collide on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.
Release date: April 21, 2020
Category: Women’s crime fiction
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Untamed
Glennon Doyle
In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, the activist, speaker, bestselling author, and “patron saint of female empowerment” explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us.
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live.
And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest instincts.
Release date: March 10, 2020
Category: Biographies & memoirs
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Best nonfiction books
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
Erik Larson
In his new book, the author of The Devil in the White City shows how Churchill taught the British people the art of being fearless.
Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports, Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family.
The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
Release date: February 25, 2020
Category: World War II history
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life
Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein
With half of the world’s population currently under lockdown, most of us have to get used to working from home, where it is easy for things to become completely disorganized.
It can take moments for an avalanche of cluttered desks, nowhere-to-be-found papers, disappearing files, unread emails and unanswered calls to come falling down on us. And this book has just the way to fix it.
Filled with practical stories and strategies based on world-renowned, cutting-edge research, Joy at Work is guaranteed to help you overcome all these challenges. And, perhaps most importantly, it will make you appreciate the happiness that comes with a tidy desk and a decluttered mind.
Release date: April 7, 2020
Category: Motivational management & leadership
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
James Shapiro
For over two centuries, Americans have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines, including such issues as manifest destiny, race, gender, immigration, and free speech.
In a narrative arching across the centuries, from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned.
Deeply researched, and timely Shakespeare in a Divided America shows that by better understanding Shakespeare’s role in American life we might begin to mend our bitterly divided land.
Release date: March 10, 2020
Category: Shakespearean literature
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown
Anne Glenconner
Ever since her childhood, Anne has been at the heart of the royal circle. As a silent witness to some of the most important moments in royal history, she was the Maid of Honor at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, the lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, and her closest confidante.
Now, Anne offers a peek inside the fascinating lives of British aristocrats in a witty, candid, and incredibly poignant personal story – as seen on Netflix’s The Crown.
This beautifully honest read will transport you to the sometimes amusing, sometimes appalling exclusive world of the eccentric upper class in Great Britain.
Release date: March 24, 2020
Category: Biographies & memoirs
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World
Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
What does the future look like when something so vital to a peaceful, healthy, and productive society is fading away?
In The Future of Feeling, Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips shares her own personal stories as well as those of doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers, journalists, and scientists about moving innovation and technology forward without succumbing to isolation.
This book is for anyone interested in how our brains work, how they’re subtly being rewired to work differently, and what that ultimately means for us as humans.
Release date: February 1, 2020
Category: Computers & technology
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Prime Reading: No
Apropos of Nothing
Woody Allen
In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. We learn about his demons, mistakes, successes, and those he loved and worked with.
With his unique storytelling charm, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition. He recounts his departure into movie making, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long career as a writer and director.
This is a deeply honest and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.
Release date: March 23, 2020
Category: Biographies & memoirs
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
The Women with Silver Wings
Katherine Sharp Landdeck
When America’s was taken aback by the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Cornelia Fort was among the first to volunteer to aid war effort. She became one of the 1,900 women from across the nation to train for the US Army Air Force – and to prove that female aviators are just as competent as men.
In this highly engrossing read, historian Kate Landdeck introduces us to the lives of determined young women of the Women Airforce Service Pilots as they proudly serve their country. Incredibly well-researched and just as beautifully written, The Women with Silver Wings is a tale in which, at long last, the daring female heroes gain the recognition they deserve.
Release date: April 21, 2020
Category: Women in history
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
Anne Case and Angus Deaton
The book by economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. They tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy.
Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism is a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America’s working class.
Release date: March 17, 2020
Category: Psychology
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity
Toby Ord
With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes – those from which we could never come back.
Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pathogens and artificial intelligence. If we do not act fast to reach a place of safety, it will soon be too late.
Drawing on over a decade of research, The Precipice explores the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time.
Release date: March 24, 2020
Category: Politics & social sciences
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Unknown Valor: A Story of Family, Courage, and Sacrifice from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima
Martha MacCallum
In honor of the 75th Anniversary of one of the most critical battles of World War II, the popular Fox News anchor pays tribute to the heroic men who sacrificed everything at Iwo Jima to defeat the Armed Forces of Emperor Hirohito – among them, a member of her own family, Harry Gray.
Meticulously researched, heart-wrenching, and illuminating, Unknown Valor reveals the sacrifices of ordinary Marines who saved the world from tyranny and left indelible marks on those back home who loved them. Their stories, told through letters and recollections, form the larger history of what American military leaders rightly saw as an eventual showdown in the Pacific with Japan.
Release date: February 25, 2020
Category: History
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life
Jim Kwik
For over 25 years, Jim Kwik has worked closely with successful men and women who are at the top in their fields as actors, athletes, CEOs, and business leaders.
In this groundbreaking book, he reveals the science-based practices and field-tested tips to accelerate self-learning, communication, memory, focus, recall, and speed reading, to create fast, hard results.
Limitless will help you learn how to harness your mindset, ignite your motivation, and master the methods – all you need to make your powers truly limitless.
Release date: April 7, 2020
Category: Business education & reference
Kindle Unlimited: No
Prime Reading: No
Keep exploring. Here are other popular lists:
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