Here are our reading groups’ favorite fiction books of 2020 based on our survey results.
THE BOOK WOMAN OF TROUBLESOME CREEK
Kim Michele Richardson
The folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt’s Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome’s got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy’s not only a book woman, however; she’s also the last of her kind, her skin a shade…
THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT
Chris Bohjalian
From the author of The Guest Room, a powerful story about the ways an entire life can change in one night: A flight attendant wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with a dead man— and no idea what happened. Set amid the captivating world of those…
CIRCE
Madeline Miller
The #1 New York Times Best Seller The daring, dazzling and highly anticipated follow-up to The Song of Achilles, which brilliantly reimagines the life of Circe, formidable sorceress of The Odyssey. In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But…
THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM
Marie Benedict
She possessed a stunning beauty. She also possessed a stunning mind. Could the world handle both? Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich’s plans while at her husband’s…
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, who’s headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans—a family with new money and a secretly troubled teenage daughter—raze the house…
THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR
Ellen Marie Wiseman
With vivid writing and immediately absorbing characters, Ellen Marie Wiseman weaves a powerful tale of upheaval, resilience and hope amidst the tragic 1918 influenza – the pandemic that went on to infect one-third of the world’s population… In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be…
NORMAL PEOPLE
Sally Rooney
At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows…
THE RED ADDRESS BOOK
Sofia Lundberg
Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman living alone in her Stockholm apartment. She has few visitors, but her weekly Skype calls with Jenny—her American grandniece, and her only relative—give her great joy and remind her of her own youth. When Doris was a girl, she was given an address book by…
THE GUEST BOOK
Sarah Blake
The thought-provoking new novel by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Blake. A lifetime of secrets. A history untold. No. It is a simple word, uttered on a summer porch in 1936. And it will haunt Kitty Milton for the rest of her life. Kitty and her husband, Ogden, are…
WASHINGTON BLACK
Esi Edugyan
Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a…
MIDNIGHT AT THE BLACKBIRD CAFE
Heather Webber
Nestled in the mountain shadows of Alabama lies the little town of Wicklow. It is here that Anna Kate has returned to bury her beloved Granny Zee, owner of the Blackbird Café. It was supposed to be a quick trip to close the café and settle her grandmother’s estate, but…