10 Books We Can't Wait To Read In 2020

Weather by Jenny Offill

February 11, $32

Offill’s new book takes on the terrors of the Trump era. Told in a series of anxiety-driven, impressionistic snippets, it follows Lizzie, a librarian in middle America, as she grapples with calamities both pandemic (climate change, the migrant crisis) and personal (caring for her troubled family members). Offill’s last novel, the brilliant Dept. of Speculation, painted a crisp, hyper-focused portrait of a floundering marriage; here, it’s not just a relationship in trouble but a whole nation.

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

March 10, $39

We were getting worried that the third book in Mantel’s epic Wolf Hall trilogy would never come, but after eight excruciating years, it’s finally here. Mantel’s saga, focusing on the Machiavellian, morally ambiguous Thomas Cromwell and his exploits in Henry VIII’s court, picks up after Anne Boleyn’s decapitation and on the cusp of Cromwell’s abrupt downfall from Henry’s favour. For historical fiction fans, it’s the biggest book event of the decade.

New Waves by Kevin Nguyen

March 10, $36

In 2019, heists don’t take place at banks or casinos. Like everything else, they’ve migrated online. Nguyen’s debut novel follows two disgruntled young employees at a tech startup who plot to take vengeance on their overlords by stealing the company’s database. Shocker: Things don’t go as planned. Nguyen, a Twitter star who understands the intricacies of online life as well as anyone, adapts the classic suspense thriller into a biting investigation of millennial discontent, the information economy, and the double lives we lead behind our devices.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

March 24, $35

Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel became a literary sensation in 2014, when she published her post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven—the book ended up on the New York Times bestseller list and is currently being adapted into an HBO series. In her follow-up, she leaves the world of sci-fi for a noirish tale of late-capitalist greed centred around three characters: a shipping executive, a New York moneyman, and a bartender at the titular hotel, who disappears one day from a cargo ship off the African coast.

The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

April 7, $22

Calgary artist Vivek Shraya is a modern-day Renaissance woman: She’s dabbled in visual art, performance, film, and memoir. Her second novel is about the dynamic between an indie musician and the internet influencer who covers one of her songs—and the subtweet that inevitably destroys their transactional relationship. This a piercing portrait of how internet fame, race, and commerce warp the way we create art in the digital age.

Talking to Strangers by Marianne Boucher

April 7, $25

When Boucher was a teenager in 1980, she found a group of friends who seemed to save her from the superficial life she felt she was living. You know how the story goes: It turns out her new clique was a dangerous cult in thrall to a charismatic, abusive leader. In her beautifully illustrated, totally terrifying graphic memoir, Boucher describes how the cult brainwashed her, exploited her, and convinced her to give up her school, her friends, and even her family in service to their goals of world domination.

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

June 19, $39

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet documented the love-loathe dynamic between an upwardly mobile young woman in 1950s Naples and her enigmatic best friend. For her first book in five years, Ferrante returns to her favourite subjects—Naples, girlhood, and gendered oppression—to tell the story of Giovanna and her troubled relationship with the deceptive adults around her.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

July 14, $33

Ghana’s Gyasi swung big for her glorious first novel: Homegoing, published at the wildly precocious age of 26, spanned 250 years, seven generations, and two continents, following the descendants of two Asante sisters in the 18th-century Gold Coast. Her new novel is much more intimate—zooming in on a family of Ghanaian immigrants in Alabama—but just as ambitious, touching on issues like addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the irreconcilable promises of faith and science.

This Is Not the End of Me: Lessons From a Dying Man by Dakshana Bascaramurty

August 18, $25

Bascaramurty met the Halifax photographer Layton Reid when she hired him to shoot her wedding. Then, when Reid was 33, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma, a disease that quickly spread to his brain. Bascaramurty’s book is inspired by years of conversations with Reid before his death in 2017, as he works on creating a legacy for his infant son. This kind of subject could easily tip into schmaltz, but Bascaramurty is a long-time reporter for the Globe and Mail, so expect a sharp, journalistic look at how we confront death and what we leave behind.