My 5 Most Anticipated Books of 2020

First, I would like to wish a Merry Christmas to all my followers and may the New Year bring happiness and only the best to you and your families! Here is the list of my 5 most anticipated books of 2020. I wanted to draw attention to a diverse range of books, so I am presenting a literary thriller, a fantasy, a family saga, a contemporary novel and a non-fiction book.  

I. The Truants by Kate Weinberg (Release Date: 28 January 2020)

This book is supposed to have similarities with both Agatha Christie and Donna Tartt’s works, so it immediately shot to my list of anticipated books. I first spotted The Truants on Rachel’s site Pace, Amore, Libri, and this debut thriller is “set in an English [sic] university, [following] a group of friends as they become entangled under the influence of a mesmerizing professor” (Goodreads). The description hints at Tartt’s The Secret History, and I hope there will be more instances of originality in the book and maybe something unexpected even. I do not really want to see a second If We Were Villains [2017], which, in my opinion, strayed too closely to Tartt’s novel. Maybe that is what I will get, but the mention of Agatha Christie keeps me hopeful. 

II. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Release Date: 15 September 2020)

Words cannot describe my excitement for this book. I am a huge fan of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell [2004], which I recommend to everyone, and Piranesi is a novel coming after the 15 years’ wait. I think it is unrelated to Jonathan Strange’s story and the summary is as following: “Piranesi has always lived in the House. It has hundreds if not thousands of rooms and corridors, imprisoning an ocean. A watery labyrinth. Once in a while he sees his friend, The Other, who needs Piranesi for his scientific research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. Piranesi records his findings in his journal. Then messages begin to appear; all is not what it seems. A terrible truth unravels as evidence emerges of another person and perhaps even another world outside the House’s walls” (Bloomsbury). 

III. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (Release Date: 14 July 2020)

This book is by the author of Homegoing [2016]. Gyasi’s second book Transcendent Kingdom is about an immigrant family from Ghana living in Alabama and tells of “Gifty, a PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford University…who studies reward-seeking behaviour in mice and the neural circuits of depression. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive” (Blackwell’s).

IV. Summer by Ali Smith (Release Date: 2 July 2020)

Scottish author Ali Smith will conclude her Seasonal Quartet with her book Summer, to be published in Summer 2020. Ali Smith previously published her books Autumn [2017], Winter [2018] and Spring [2019]. Few things are known about Summer yet, but Waterstones says that Smith’s new book “continues the interplay between the recent past and modern day society that marked her preceding works as so resonant and insightful“, and that it is “one of 2020’s absolute must-reads”. It definitely does sound promising and will be a great book to read over the summer.

V. The Women with Silver Wings by Katherine Sharp Landdeck (Release Date: 21 April 2020)

This is a non-fiction book about “the American forgotten veterans”. It is a fact that “more than 1,100 female pilots served during WWII, and 38 of them did not survive the war“. Although these women were not allowed to fly in combat, “the Women Airforce Service Pilots were instrumental in training pilots and ferrying bombers and supplies across the country“. The Women with Silver Wings tells their story, and looks like it will be an important and inspirational read.