Thank you to everyone who shared your book recommendations over the past few weeks! Without further ado, we'd excited to present your top titles of 2020!
You'll see that we have linked to their dedicated page on the Denver Public Library catalog (with a couple exceptions) so you can learn more and place an easy (and free!) hold on these must reads.
Happy Reading!
| Title | Author | Summary |
| A Court of Thorns and Roses (series) | Sarah J. Maas | Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from stories, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin, a High Lord of the faeries. As her feelings toward him transform from hostility to a fiery passion, the threats against the faerie lands grow. Feyre must fight to break an ancient curse or she will lose Tamlin forever. |
| A Discovery of Witches | Deborah Harkness | Witch and Yale historian Diana Bishop discovers an enchanted manuscript, attracting the attention of 1,500-year-old vampire Matthew Clairmont. The orphaned daughter of two powerful witches, Bishop prefers intellect, but relies on magic when her discovery of a palimpsest documenting the origin of supernatural species releases an assortment of undead who threaten, stalk, and harass her. |
| A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara | When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition....Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. |
| A Most Beautiful Thing | Arshay Cooper | Describing the author's life and experiences, this is "the...true story of a group of young men growing up on Chicago's West Side who form the first all-black high school rowing team in the nation, and in doing so not only transform a sport, but their lives |
| A Promised Land | Barack Obama |
In this anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency--a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
|
| Anxious People | Fredrik Backman |
Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage....Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them--the bank robber included--desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next
|
| Artful | Ali Smith |
Presents a meditative collection of writings on the nature of art and storytelling and incorporates tribute elements to iconic writers and artists throughout history.
|
| Black Leopard Red Wolf | Marlon James |
Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy...As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy?...Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?
|
| Caffeine | Michael Pollan |
Pollan takes us on a journey through the history of the drug, which was first discovered in a small part of East Africa and within a century became an addiction affecting most of the human species. Caffeine, it turns out, has changed the course of human history - won and lost wars, changed politics, dominated economies.
|
| Children of Blood and Bone | Tomi Adeyemi |
Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.
|
| Dear Girls | Ali Wong |
Wong's sharp insights and humor are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she's learned from her career in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal single life in New York (e.g., the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting humiliations. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong's letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and gross) for all
|
| Doughnut Economics | Kate Raworth |
Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike. That's why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. |
| Disappearing Earth | Julia Phillips |
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls--sisters, eight and eleven--go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing.... We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty--densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska--and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.
|
| Earthcore | Scott Sigler |
Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered... EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure. But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting... and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.
|
| Everything I Never Told You | Celeste Ng |
"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet." So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.
|
| Furia | Yamile Saied Mendez | Seventeen-year-old Camila Hassan, a rising soccer star in Rosario, Argentina, dreams of playing professionally, in defiance of her fathers' wishes and at the risk of her budding romance with Diego. |
| Homegoing | Yaa Gyasi | Stretching from the tribal wars of Ghana to slavery and Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the north to the Great Migration to the streets of 20th century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi's has written a modern masterpiece, a novel that moves through histories and geographies and--with outstanding economy and force--captures the troubled spirit of our own nation |
| How to Change Your Mind | Michael Pollan | When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin... are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. |
| Infinite | Jeremy Robinson | The Galahad, a faster-than-light spacecraft, carries fifty scientists and engineers on a mission to prepare Kepler 452b, Earth's nearest habitable neighbor at 1400 light years away. With Earth no longer habitable and the Mars colony slowly failing, they are humanity's best hope. After ten years in a failed cryogenic bed--body asleep, mind awake--William Chanokh's torture comes to an end as the fog clears, the hatch opens, and his friend and fellow hacker, Tom, greets him...by stabbing a screwdriver into his heart. This is the first time William dies. It is not the last. |
| Lily and the Octopus |
Steven Rowley | We can tell you that this is a story about that special someone: the one you trust, the one you can't live without. For Ted Flask, that someone special is his aging companion Lily, who happens to be a dog. Lily and the Octopus reminds us how it feels to love fiercely, how difficult it can be to let go, and how the fight for those we love is the greatest fight of all. |
| Mexican Gothic |
Sylvia Garcia Moreno | The acclaimed author of Gods of Jade and Shadow returns with a darkly enchanting reimagining of Gothic fantasy, in which a spirited young woman discovers the haunting secrets of a beautiful old mansion in 1950s Mexico |
| Mongrels | Stephen Graham Jones | Set in the deep South, Mongrels is a deeply moving, sometimes grisly, and surprisingly funny novel that follows an unnamed narrator as he comes of age under the care of his aunt and uncle — who are werewolves. |
| Mount Fitz Roy | Scott Sigler | The cataclysm in Utah's Wah Wah mountain range left the skies thick with ash, and the surface littered with corpses. The survivors of Earthcore's ill-fated platinum mining expedition move forward, looking to the Andes for the next find — a trillion dollar motherlode that will make them rich ... or dead. |
| Name of the Wind | Patrick Rothfuss | A hero named Kvothe, now living under an assumed name as the humble proprietor of an inn, recounts his transformation from a magically gifted young man into the most notorious wizard, musician, thief, and assassin in his world. |
| No Mud, No Lotus |
Thich Nhat Hahn | The secret to happiness is to acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it. In No Mud, No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices and inspiration for transforming suffering and finding true joy. Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so bad, we try to run away from it or cover it up by consuming. We find something to eat or turn on the television. But unless we're able to face our suffering, we can't be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us |
| Over The Top | Jonathan Van Ness | Over the Top uncovers the pain and passion it took to end up becoming the model of self-love and acceptance that Jonathan is today. In this revelatory, raw, and rambunctious memoir, Jonathan shares never-before-told secrets and reveals sides of himself that the public has never seen. JVN fans may think they know the man behind the stiletto heels, the crop tops, and the iconic sayings, but there's much more to him than meets the Queer Eye. |
| Queenie | Candice Carty-Williams | Bridget Jones's Diary meets Americanah in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place. Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. |
| Shuggie Bain | Douglas Stuart | Hugh "Shuggie" Bain spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. His mother Agnes is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for his siblings. Dreaming of a house with its own front door and ordering happiness on credit as her husband philanders, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good but finds solace in drink. As she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety, Agnes's addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her-- especially her beloved Shuggie |
| Someone Has Led This Child to Believe |
Regina Louise | An unflinching, unforgettable true story of overcoming neglect in the US foster-care system to find success. The author is a well-known for her work as a an advocate for foster children. Readers will find inspiration in this remarkable story about determination, courage, and renewal. |
| Such a Fun Age | Kiley Reid | Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket... Alix resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help... When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other. |
| The Andromeda Evolution | Daniel Wilson |
Fifty years after The Andromeda Strain made Michael Crichton a household name--and spawned a new genre, the technothriller--the threat returns, in a gripping sequel that is terrifyingly realistic and resonant.... In 1967, an extraterrestrial microbe came crashing down to Earth and nearly ended the human race. Accidental exposure to the particle--designated The Andromeda Strain--killed every resident of the town of Piedmont, Arizona, save for an elderly man and an infant boy. Over the next five days, a team of top scientists assigned to Project Wildfire worked valiantly to save the world from an epidemic of unimaginable proportions. In the moments before a catastrophic nuclear detonation, they succeeded. In the ensuing decades, research on the microparticle continued. And the world thought it was safe... |
| The Beekeeper of Aleppo |
Christy Lefteri | Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss, but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Above all, they must journey to find each other again. |
| The Bluest Eye | Toni Morrison | Pecola Breedlove--an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. |
| The Glass Hotel |
Emily St. John Mandel | A captivating novel of money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise in which a woman disappears from a container ship off the coast of Mauritania and a massive Ponzi scheme implodes in New York, dragging countless fortunes with it |
| The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt | A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by a friend's family and struggles to make sense of his new life. In the years that follow, he becomes entranced by one of the few things that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the art underworld. ...The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America...It is a story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the enormous power of art |
| The Memory Book | Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas | Unleash the hidden power of your mind through Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas's simple, fail-safe memory system, and you can become more effective, more imaginative, and more powerful, at work, at school, in sports and play. Discover how easy it is to: file phone numbers, data, figures, and appointments right in your head; learn foreign words and phrases with ease; read with speed--and greater understanding; shine in the classroom--and shorten study hours; dominate social situations, and more. |
| The Nickel Boys | Colson Whitehead | Follows the experiences of two African-American teenagers at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. |
| The Night Circus | Erin Morgenstern | Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love with each other and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways. |
| The Once and Future Witches | Alix E. Harrow | In the late 1800s, three sisters use witchcraft to change the course of history... In 1893, there's no such thing as witches... If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box. But when the Eastwood sisters... join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote - and -perhaps not even to live - the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive. |
| The Raw Shark Texts |
Stephen Hall | Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house he doesn't recognize, unable to remember anything of his life. All he has left are his diary entries recalling Clio, a perfect love who died under mysterious circumstances, and a house that may contain the secrets to Eric's prior life. But there may be more to this story, or it may be a different story altogether. With the help of allies found on the fringes of society, Eric embarks on an edge-of-your-seat journey to uncover the truth about himself and to escape the predatory forces that threaten to consume him. |
| The Searcher | Tana French | Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets |
| The Secret Life of the Mind | Mariano Sigman | A leading neuroscientist draws on physics, linguistics, psychology, education, and other disciplines to explain the inner workings of the human brain and explore the role of neuroscience in daily life. |
| The Starless Sea | Erin Morgenstern | Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. |
| The Vanishing Half | Britt Bennett | The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. |
| The Wives | Tarryn Fisher | She's never met the other wives. None of them know each other, and because of this unconventional arrangement, she can see her husband only one day a week. But she loves him so much she doesn't care. Or at least that's what she told herself. But one day, while she's doing laundry, she finds a scrap of paper in his pocket, an appointment reminder for a woman named Hannah, and she knows it's another of the wives. She thought she was fine with her arrangement, but she can't help herself--she tracks her down, and, under false pretense, she strikes up a friendship. Hannah has no idea who she is. Then, Hannah starts showing up to her coffee dates with telltale bruises, and she realized she's being abused by her husband. Who, of course, is also her husband. But she's never known him to be violent, ever. Who exactly is her husband, and how far would she go to find the truth? Would she risk her own life? And who is his mysterious third wife? |
| These Ghosts are Family | Maisy Card | Centers on Abel and Vera Paisley, a working-class Jamaican couple striving to build a better life for their children. Abel travels to London in the early 1960s in search of fortune. Instead, he sees an opportunity to escape the drudgery of his life by faking his death and assuming a new identity. Vera, now a widow, is racked with guilt over her husband's "death" and takes out her grief on her children, Irene and Vincent. The effects of Abel's decision reverberate across generations. |
| This Tender Land | William Kent Krueger | 1932, Minnesota. The Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O'Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent's wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own. Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. |
| Transcendent Kingdom | Yaa Gyasi | A novel about faith, science, religion, and family that tells the deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief, narrated by a fifth year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford school of medicine studying the neural circuits of reward seeking behavior in mice |
| We Were the Lucky Ones | Georgia Hunter | An extraordinary, propulsive novel based on the true story of a family of Polish Jews who scatter at the start of the Second World War, determined to survive, and to reunite.... spans five continents and six years and transports readers from the jazz clubs of Paris to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro to Krakow's most brutal prison and the farthest reaches of the Siberian gulag, We Were the Lucky Ones is a tribute to the capacity of the human spirit to endure in the face of the twentieth century's darkest moment |
| Where the Crawdads Sing | Delia Owens | For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens. |
| Wintering | Katherine May | An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down. Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered. |
| Yellow Bird |
Sierra Crane Murdoch | When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher 'KC' Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone, and no one but his mother was actively looking for him. Unfolding like a gritty mystery, Yellow Bird traces Lissa's steps as she obsessively hunts for clues to Clarke's disappearance. She navigates two worlds -- that of her own tribe, changed by its newfound wealth, and that of the non-Native oil workers, down on their luck, who have come to find work on the heels of the economic recession. |