Best Novels of the 2020s (So Far)
Six novels from the first years of the decade that readers and book clubs keep coming back to: an Appalachian Dickens retelling, a friendship built on video games, a chemist on daytime TV, and three very different takes on what makes a life.
| Book | Rating |
|---|---|
 Demon Copperhead | 5/5
|
 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow | 4/5
|
 Lessons in Chemistry | 4/5
|
 The Midnight Library | 4/5
|
 Piranesi | 5/5
|
 Klara and the Sun | 4/5
|
Jim's Quick Takes
Demon Copperhead
Kingsolver moves David Copperfield to the mountains of southern Appalachia, where a boy born in a trailer passes through foster care and the opioid crisis. It is the longest and heaviest book here at 548 pages, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Start here for a big social novel with a narrator whose voice carries it.
Read full review →Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Two friends who met as children in a hospital game room spend thirty years making video games together. It is a story about creative partnership and the friction in it, and you don't need to play games to follow it. Warmer than Demon Copperhead, and more about ambition and love than hardship.
Read full review →Lessons in Chemistry
A chemist in the 1960s, pushed out of her lab, ends up hosting a TV cooking show and teaches chemistry to its audience. It is the funniest book on this list and the easiest to recommend widely, though it takes on sexism and grief along the way.
Read full review →The Midnight Library
A woman at her lowest point finds a library between life and death where every book is a life she might have lived. At 288 pages it is the quickest read here, built around a simple, hopeful idea. Note that it opens with a suicide attempt.
Read full review →Piranesi
A man lives in an endless house of halls, statues and tides, and keeps careful journals about it, until clues suggest his world is not what he thinks. The strangest and shortest literary pick here at 272 pages. Best for readers who enjoy puzzles and don't mind not knowing what is going on for a while.
Read full review →Klara and the Sun
An Artificial Friend watches the family who buys her and tries to understand human love. Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro writes it in a quiet, restrained voice, and the emotional weight builds slowly. Pair it with Piranesi for two novels told by narrators who don't fully understand their own situation.
Read full review →How to Choose
For a big, immersive novel, choose Demon Copperhead. For something warm and funny, choose Lessons in Chemistry or Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. For a short book with one strong idea, try The Midnight Library. Readers who like literary mysteries and unusual narrators should go to Piranesi or Klara and the Sun.
Looking for This Year's New Releases?
This page covers standout novels from 2020 to 2022 that are still widely read and discussed. It is not a list of books published in 2026. For the best books in a genre from any decade, see the best-of pages for classics, mystery, romance and sci-fi.