The Best Books of 2020 (So Far) By ELLE.com . The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff is just about the most uplifting, life-affirming novel I can think of right now. When Max relocates from the cool reserve of Germany to the sweaty American south, he brings along a host of supernatural secrets. Sutcliff used a wheelchair, and her heroes come with impairments that make their victories all the more epic. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Carlos Lozada, literary critic for the Washington Post, has read more than 150. Author of Grief Is the Thing With Feathers and Lanny. But as he’s embraced by his new football teammates, his red dirt Alabama surroundings, steeped in the past and unwaveringly Christian, make him question everything—from his faith and sexuality to the very nature of his desire. My littlest child is learning to read so we are enjoying them together. In this brilliant book, McNeil charts roving personal histories of the internet, tracing the path from forums and Friendster to today’s caustic cesspool. We're already almost three-quarters of the way through 2020, but fortunately, the publishing industry has been keeping pace with the passage of time, with a slew of the year’s most anticipated titles already out, and many more on the way. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is very modern somehow, of the moment certainly. Fortunately, various applications now give us the opportunity to read to each other, no matter how distant we are. Whether you’re looking for solutions or just looking to feel seen, Can’t Even is a can’t-miss. Either way, he has a point: Wolff’s first Trump book was slapdash as well as sensational, selling millions but deserving the tough treatment Lozada metes out. She returns unendingly to the memory of her daughter Lucy, who took her own life at 27, and to the bottomless grief of losing a child to suicide. How Stella Got Her Groove Back grows up in the author’s latest title, a story about what it takes to pursue joy after unexpected loss. At Freddie’s is not as beautiful, sophisticated or profound as Fitzgerald’s later novels but it has never failed to make me laugh. Author of English Passengers, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings and forthcoming novel, Pilgrims (Atlantic, June). The Stars.—a gripping exploration of race and familial mourning—is also now stocked on shelves. When lifelong Brooklynite Sydney Green undertakes a deep dive into the history of her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, she finds that the forces behind the recent “revitalization” of her area may be even more sinister than she suspected. In her latest collection, the writer—now approaching 40 and living a Pinterest-ified version of the American dream in a small Midwestern town—turns her addictively bummed-out wit to topics like “lesbian bed death” and the difficulty of making adult friendships. Playing on Ferrante’s favorite themes of beauty versus ugliness and class mobility, The Lying Life of Adults tells the story of a rich and rebellious teenager’s coming of age in a divided Naples. Author of The Kindness and A Theatre for Dreamers. The best fiction and nonfiction of the year covers everything from teenage sexuality to Big Tech, while also telling deeply human stories of identity, romance, and family. —Madison Vain, Not many rock memoirs begin on the grounds of an infamous American cult, but that’s just one of the things about the Airborne Toxic Event frontman’s personal tome that separates it from the droves. Through zippy prose and deep reporting, Dougherty, a former housing reporter for The Wall Street Journal, explains why housing has become unaffordable and how we can solve the problem--that is, if we want to. Rarely has our contemporary animus been so nakedly illuminated on the page, with Kunzru spinning a dizzying allegory from the puzzling, paranoid mind of a narrator set adrift in unreality.