- Home
- Government
- Public Library
- Books & More
- Reading Lists
- Notable Books for Adults
Notable Books for Adults
The selections for the 2020 Notable Books list have been announced by the Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association. Since 1944 the Notable Books Council has annually selected a list of very good, very readable and at times very important fiction, nonfiction and poetry books for the adult reader. Books may be selected for their significant contribution to the expansion of knowledge or for the pleasure they can provide to adult readers. Titles were selected from books published in 2019. Titles available at your Library may be requested through the title link to the library's catalog.
Fiction
- Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
- The Water Dancer: A Novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Innocents: A Novel by Michael Crummey
- Dominicana: A Novel by Angie Cruz
- Everything Inside: Stories by Edwidge Danticat
- Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
- Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
- The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
- Lost Children Archive: A Novel by Valeria Luiselli
- Lanny: A Novel by Max Porter
- Normal People: A Novel by Sally Rooney
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel by Ocean Vuong
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Non-Fiction
- Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life by Louise Aronson
- Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
- Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
- A Good Provider is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century by Jason DeParle
- Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Themselves by Frans De Waal
- Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham
- Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
- Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
- Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl
- The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
- The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation by Brenda Wineapple
Poetry
- The Tradition by Jericho Brown
- Deaf Republic: Poems by Ilya Kaminsky