The 50 most anticipated books of 2020

It wasn't easy narrowing down next year's list of buzzy titles to just 50, so trust that this is going to be a great reading year. Here are the books we're most excited for, from major novels to fascinating memoirs to a Jim Carrey book we're struggling to explain. And click the release dates on each slide to make all the pre-orders your heart desires.

Moore's confident Philadelphia-set police procedural — set to flood bookstores with a huge print run and press campaign behind it — lives up to the hype, evolving from its genre-heavy introduction into a compelling portrayal of two siblings on different sides of the law. (Jan. 7)

This provocative debut, consisting almost entirely of conversations between women, is threaded by an unnamed narrator meditating on desire, transformation, and yearning over 20 years of her life. (Jan. 7)

A woman conscripts a stranger to impersonate her dead sister; what could go wrong? Jones’ sensational debut has the bones of a thriller but reads like literary fiction: lean, shrewd, and gratifyingly real. (Jan. 14)

The latest dark comedy from the Seed collectors author immerses readers in an English boarding school, where the daughter of a Russian oligarch has arrived and quickly notices that the thinner the woman, the more special the treatment they receive. And things get weirder from there. (Jan. 14)

Greenwell's long-awaited follow-up to What Belongs to You expands on the world of his lauded debut, following a queer American teacher in Sofia, Bulgaria preparing to leave his time abroad, as he reflects on the various intimate, haunting encounters — sexual and otherwise — that have characterized his time away. (Jan. 14)

Author Rebecca Solnit calls Wiener's memoir, about a young woman thrust into the world of Big Tech at a time of reckless and deceptive growth, "like Joan Didion at a startup." We're sold. (Jan. 14)

Described as a modern-day Grapes of Wrath, Cummins' sweeping new novel tells the story of Lydia and Luca, a mother and son forced to flee their middle-class lives in Mexico for the uncertainty of the United States. (Jan. 21)

The award-winning poet turns to memoir with the devastating account of his family's immigration to the U.S., from terrifying encounters with ICE offers to his father's ultimate deportation. (Jan. 28)

This formally innovative new work from Yu, an acclaimed novelist as well as a writer on hit shows including Westworld, investigates Asian-American identity and Hollywood conventions through a witty, heartfelt lens. (Jan. 28)

Tomi Adeyemi is but one big name in the YA fantasy space to rave about this epic debut, "set in a kingdom where danger lurks beneath the sea, mermaids seek vengeance with song, and magic is a choice." The acquisition of this title was seriously competitive. (Feb. 4)

The biographer behind Fosse and Improv Nation has another compelling Hollywood story to tell, this one surrounding the making of Chinatown and the legends behind Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski, and more. (Feb. 4)

It's been a decade since we've had a Gish Jen novel, but The Resisters promises to be worth the wait. It's a typically inventive effort from the award-winning author, set in a realistic near-future America wherein a baseball prodigy is recruited to play in the Olympics. Ann Patchett says the book "should be required reading." (Feb. 4)

A fascinating history of desire and attraction, Knox's dig into the archives runs from Enlightenment all the way to the present-day, and will reframe much of the way you think about this topic. (Feb. 4)

The "Dear Prudence" columnist and expert culture commentator returns with his sharpest, wittiest collection yet, a survey of pop culture ranging from scathing to plain weird. (Feb. 11)

Love is already pouring in for the new book by literary darling Offill, a slim volume that nevertheless captures a country in crisis, through the lens of a struggling family and its librarian matriarch. (Feb. 11)

Realities of race and sexuality threaten the peace of a tight college-town community over a late-summer weekend, when introverted Wallace, alienated from his white and seemingly straight peers, has a series of complex confrontations. (Feb. 18)

Set in the early 20th century, EW called Vyleta's 2016 novel Smoke a "sprawling, ambitious novel, a Dickensian tale tinged with fantasy." Now he returns with a sequel that only builds on what came before it. (Feb. 25)

This red-hot retelling of Anna Karenina -- described as a mashup of Gossip Girl and Crazy Rich Asians -- landed a TV deal way back in January, with its adaptation now confirmed at HBO Max. (March 3)

Just as Showtime's star-studded The Good Lord Bird adaptation hits the screen, McBride returns with an improbably hilarious tapestry of late '60s Brooklyn, and an eclectic group of individuals that bore witness to a fatal shooting. (March 3)

The reliably excellent, National Book Award-winning author goes especially personal with her latest, taking the action back to 1953 in a novel based on the life of her grandfather, a night watchman who carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C. (March 3)

Our choice for the big, generations-spanning family novel on this list, Card's ghostly, surprising debut considers the bonds of blood, the weight of secrets, and the scars of trauma. (March 3)

Euphoria breakout author Lily King returns with a portrait of the artist as a young woman, in which the determination to live a creative life bristles against experiences of grief, loneliness, and romance. (March 3)

A simple premise — a wife and mother starts, for lack of a better term, wearing her dog — gives way to an affecting, funny study of a slowly unraveling woman vying to course-correct. (March 3)

Mantel's Booker Prize-winning, stunningly evocative Wolf Hall trilogy wraps with what we can only imagine is an epic finale. The finale begins in May 1536, tracing the final years of Thomas Cromwell in the wake of Anne Boleyn's death. (March 10)

Perhaps the most anticipated first novel of the year, Russell's riveting, timeline-shifting saga of the relationship between a high-school student and her teacher, and its #MeToo-tinged fallout, is sure to spark conversation (and debate). (March 10)

Nguyen's debut provides a clever glimpse into the world of New York tech, as a high-level programmer and a low-level customer service rep band together for revenge against the company taking them for granted. But when tragedy strikes, everything changes. (March 10)

The first novel from Jemisin since she made history at the Hugo Awards with the ending to her decade-defining Broken Earth trilogy? Set in an alternate-version New York and kicking off a new series? Yeah, we're there. (March 24)

A tricky, ambitious examination of love in Rome that weaves between four centuries and follows four characters, asking big questions while finding grace in small lives. (March 24)

It's another haunting, elegiac novel from the Station 11 author, this time following a brother and a sister wading through loss and shock as two major events -- an International Ponzi scheme collapse, and a mysterious disappearance at sea -- hurtle them in heartbreaking but gorgeous directions. (March 24)

Samantha Irby may be spending more time in LA, but she's still the same old "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person." (Her words, not ours.) This much is clear in her riotous new book of bad dates, worse food experiences, and general befuddlement at the world. (March 31)

The groundbreaking Dominican-American author of In the Time of Butterflies hasn't published an adult novel in well over a decade. Safe to call this exploration of the relationship between a recently widowed writer and the undocumented (and pregnant) teenager who shows up on her doorstep anticipated. (April 7)

The stylish but grounded adult debut from Veronica Roth, best-known for her mega-selling Divergent books, follows five adults wrestling with how to move on from teenage fame -- and the defunct prophecy that they were to take down an all-important, evil entity. (April 7)

Wetmore's gritty take on violence, gender, and class in a Texas oil town circa 1976 has Elizabeth Gilbert asking, "How can a writer burst out of the gate with this much firepower and skill?" Lots of noise being made about this one. (April 7)

Friendship author Emily Gould basks readers in New York City in the early days of the new millennium, darting between the lives of a gifted songwriter and, 15 years later, her daughter, searching for answers about the father she never knew. (April 14)

Sickels' searing story about a young gay man in '80s New York, who leaves behind the city that promised freedom for the home that he was desperate to escape, is based on the lesser-known history of the AIDS epidemic, a moving meditation on the encroaching inevitability of death. Have tissues handy for this one. (April 14)

One of the most exciting writers of contemporary fiction — her last book, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, was EW's no. 1 of the year — has another trick up her sleeve in the form of Death in Her Hands, which takes an elderly widow on a suspenseful, metaphysical ride. (April 21)

Pitched as the definitive biography, this tome runs nearly 1,000 pages and promises no shortage of celeb and art-world intrigue. We'll get to know the man behind all that glitz and iconography, too. (April 21)

Fans of The Hours will surely be drawn to this kaleidoscopic piece that moves between three centuries in its focus on three women's experiences with sex and power, all of which eventually converge in the present-day. (May 5)

Jim Carrey is the main character in Jim Carrey's debut novel, of which Jim Carrey says, "None of this is real and all of it is true." What to make of that? We're not sure, but can't wait to find out. (May 5)

Danler's Sweetbitter ignited the kind of word-of-mouth frenzy usually reserved for buzzy memoirs. So now that the author is out with a memoir. Well, expect it to be a must-have for any summertime tote. (May 5)

Rest assured, the debut novel from the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind Being John Malkovich and Anomalisa sounds plenty strange. It centers on a failed film critic named B. Rosenberg who stumbles upon what may be the greatest artistic achievement in human history: a 3-month-long film, complete with scheduled sleeping, eating, and bathroom breaks, that took its reclusive auteur 90 years to complete. (May 12)

We don't know anything about the Hunger Games prequel either! Except, okay, we're going 64 years into the past, beginning on the reaping of the 10th Hunger Games, and... yeah, we're eagerly guessing right along with you. (May 19)

Majumdar's panoramic portrait of contemporary India depicts three characters' attempts to move on and move up, whether to financial security or political power or global fame, in the wake of catastrophe. (June 2)

Last, she wrote one of 2018's most acclaimed debut novels in She Would Be King. Now, Moore returns with an aching memoir juxtaposing her family's harrowing escape from Liberia with her wistful return to her birthplace as an adult. (June 2)

We were huge fans of van den Berg's spooky, surreal novel The Third Hotel, and her short fiction never ceases to wow. Except much trippy greatness to come from her new collection. (June 9)

The name alone signals a literary event. And praise has already come in around the world for Ferrante's latest, set in a divided Naples. (June 9)

A transporting historical novel of endless war and young love, in which a couple circa 1898 is lured from Puerto Rico to Hawaii -- promised riches that do not await them. (June 16)

Mbue builds on the power of her sensation Behold the Dreamers with this passionately rendered novel about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company. (June 16)

The new teen rom-com from Solomon, pitting two overachieving rivals against one another, takes place over 24 swoony, steamy hours. (June 16)

One of the best debut novels of the past decade, Homegoing introduced Gyasi as a major novelist. We expect what's next, a lyrical depiction of a Ghanian family living in Alabama, to cement this. (Sept. 15)