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The Best Books to Look Out For in 2020: Fiction

Posted on 19th December 2019 by Mark Skinner

From established storytelling maestros to exciting new voices, and from compelling crime thrillers to scintillating science fiction - not to mention the little matter of the conclusion of a certain Tudor-era trilogy - there are many, many reasons to get excited about publishing in 2020. In this exclusive first peek at some of the biggest and best new novels of the forthcoming year, there truly is something for everyone.

Fiction

General Fiction

The Mirror & the Light
The Mirror & the Light
Hilary Mantel
£25.00
Hardback
Out of stock
The triumphant conclusion to a modern classic, The Mirror & the Light carries the reader spellbound through the final, tragic era of Thomas Cromwell’s eventful life.

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The Lying Life of Adults
The Lying Life of Adults
Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein
£20.00
Hardback
In stock
Usually dispatched within 48 hours
Following the fortunes of an adolescent girl through changing family dynamics and growing self-realisation, The Lying Life of Adults is a pitch-perfect dissection of Italian family life and the follies of youth.
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Hamnet
Hamnet
Maggie O'Farrell
£20.00
Hardback
Out of stock
One of our greatest living novelists resurrects the short life of Hamnet Shakespeare, the Bard’s only son, in a profoundly moving account of grief, family and genius in an era where life was ever precarious.

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Summer
Summer
Ali Smith
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Ali Smith’s Summer continues the interplay between the recent past and modern day society that marked out her preceding works as so resonant and insightful. The culmination of a hugely ambitious and fast-paced literary project that aims to capture the state of the nation with burning immediacy, Summer is one of 2020’s absolute must-reads.

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Utopia Avenue
Utopia Avenue
David Mitchell
£20.00
Hardback
Out of stock
Steeped in the hedonism and idealism of the 1960s’ counterculture, Utopia Avenue documents the rise and fall of the eponymous psych rock band, from destiny in Soho to nemesis in Rome. Written with Mitchell’s trademark lyrical flair and eye for the extraordinary, Utopia Avenue adroitly captures a moment in time when the future seemed limitless and happiness was there for the taking.

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The Evening and the Morning
The Evening and the Morning
Ken Follett
£25.00
Hardback
We can order this from the publisher
UK delivery within 3-4 weeks
A stunning prequel to The Pillars of the Earth that delivers an enthralling slice of epic fiction in its own right, The Evening and the Morning tells the story of one man’s unquenchable ambitions for his abbey.
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The Foundling
The Foundling
Stacey Halls, Patrick Knowles
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
A compelling and poignant tale of motherhood, deception and loss in eighteenth-century London, The Foundling is suffused with the squalor and inequality of the Georgian metropolis. Boasting Halls’s keen eye for evocative historical detail and exquisitely structured narrative, this is another mesmerising novel from a hugely exciting talent.

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Redhead by the Side of the Road
Redhead by the Side of the Road
Anne Tyler
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Another acutely observed evocation of Middle America, Redhead by the Side of the Road is both a deliciously offbeat love story and a wry character study of a lovable eccentric, stuck in his ways. Showcasing the nimble prose and emotional warmth that have made her both a critical darling and a beloved popular author, this is Anne Tyler at her winning, wistful best.

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Silver Sparrow
Silver Sparrow
Tayari Jones
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
From the winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction comes a psychologically astute and emotionally devastating story about the messy dynamics of family and the damage long-buried truths can do when they explode into the open. As wise, perceptive and bittersweet as An American Marriage, Silver Sparrow resounds with delicate grace and poignant subtext.

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Grown Ups
Grown Ups
Marian Keyes
£20.00
Hardback
Out of stock
There are few writers as capable of skewering the contradictions, frustrations and frictions of family life with as much humour and piercing accuracy as Marian Keyes and her latest sees her on sparkling form. When one woman's concussion leads to an outpouring of long-contained gripes and secrets, it calls into question just how civilised and 'grown-up' any of us actually are.

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The Mercies
The Mercies
Kiran Millwood Hargrave
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Taking a real-life witch trial as her inspiration, Millwood Hargrave’s adult debut weaves an atmospheric tale of self-sufficient womanhood and sexual suspicion in a tight-knit island community during the seventeenth century.

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The Water Dancer
The Water Dancer
Ta-Nehisi Coates
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Coates’ blazing political and cultural writing is amongst the most intelligent and powerful work of the twenty-first century and here he delivers a debut novel of poetic intensity and righteous anger. Compellingly recounting the clandestine work of abolitionist cells buried in the 19th-century Deep South, The Water Dancer is a fearless and profound slice of crusading historical fiction.

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Islands of Mercy
Islands of Mercy
Rose Tremain
£18.99
Hardback
Out of stock
From the tea-rooms of Bath to the rainforests of Borneo, Tremain’s nineteenth-century, globe-spanning epic throws a reluctant healer and a flawed philanthropist together in a grand narrative of refuge and belonging.

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Ghosts
Ghosts
Dolly Alderton
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Already a millennial icon thanks to her Waterstones Books of the Year-shortlisted memoir Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton turns her scalpel-sharp pen to fiction, with this big-hearted debut about the unravelling of a seemingly successful life.

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Red at the Bone
Red at the Bone
Jacqueline Woodson
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Taking a sixteen year old girl’s coming-of-age party as a jumping off point to explore the dreams and struggles of a richly delineated cast of characters, Woodson’s stunningly assured work navigates three generations of black American history with verve and urgency.

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Actress
Actress
Anne Enright
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
A beautifully realised novel of mother-daughter relationships and the dark underbelly of fame and adulation, Actress deftly unpacks the secrets and lies of a renowned theatre performer and the effects of her notoriety on the child who idolised her. With a sharp eye for female interaction and familial subtext, Actress finds the former Booker Prize-winner on superlative form.

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A Thousand Moons
A Thousand Moons
Sebastian Barry
£18.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Exquisitely rendered in Sebastian Barry’s rhapsodic prose, A Thousand Moons continues the tale of Winona - featured in the author’s Costa Award-winning Days Without End – as she makes her way through the forbidding and treacherous world of post-Civil War America.

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The Glass Hotel
The Glass Hotel
Emily St. John Mandel
£14.99
Hardback
Temporarily unavailable
Six years after the ground-breaking dystopia Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel weaves together the stories of a bartender, a hotel owner and a shipping agent into a kaleidoscopic mystery.

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Strange Hotel
Strange Hotel
Eimear McBride
£12.99
Hardback
In stock
Usually dispatched within 48 hours
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing swept all before it six years ago and now Strange Hotel looks set to cause a literary similar sensation with its delicately poised narrative of a woman caught between multiple hotel rooms and the rich, emotive memories that they provoke. Written with singular lyrical power, this is a gorgeous, elegant novella about the anonymous spaces that come to define us.
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Here We Are
Here We Are
Graham Swift
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Perfectly capturing the faded glamour of late 1950s Brighton, Here We Are is a wryly comic character study of a trio of end-of-the-pier entertainers and the love triangle that envelops them.

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Apeirogon
Apeirogon
Colum McCann
£18.99 £9.49
Hardback
10+ in stock
Usually dispatched within 48 hours
Exploring the relationship between two bereaved men amidst the physical and emotional carnage of the West Bank, Apeirogon is a masterpiece of characterisation and subtle political commentary.
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Sisters
Sisters
Daisy Johnson
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
A uniquely disturbing novel from the author of Everything Under, Sisters explores the dark side of sibling devotion, striking a fine balance between character study and psychological horror.

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The Hungry and the Fat
The Hungry and the Fat
Timur Vermes
£16.99 £8.49
Hardback
10+ in stock
Usually dispatched within 48 hours
The author of the outrageous Look Who’s Back spins another bravura allegory, targeting the refugee crisis and transient celebrity amongst many other emotive and contentious themes. Brave, controversial and very, very funny, The Hungry and the Fat is a scintillating slice of satirical mayhem from a bold, maverick talent.
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Debut Voices

American Dirt
American Dirt
Jeanine Cummins
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
An incendiary novel of desperate love and pulse-quickening danger, American Dirt confronts the lawless frontier of the US-Mexico border in a scintillating narrative. With whip-smart pacing and an astounding ability to make the seemingly incredible both authentic and intimate, this is an enthralling page turner of the highest literary quality.

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Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
Cho Nam-Joo, Jamie Chang
£12.99
Paperback
Out of stock
A landmark publication in Nam-Joo’s native country where it kick-started a nascent MeToo movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 throws a grenade under the appalling misogyny and paternalism of South Korean society.

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Your House Will Pay
Your House Will Pay
Steph Cha
£12.99
Paperback
In stock
Usually dispatched within 48 hours
Cha’s explosive novel takes an unflinching look at the second-generation immigrant experience and the long shadow of the Los Angeles race riots of the 1990s. Drawing rich parallels between the tumult of 27 years ago and the present day, Your House Will Pay also has pertinent things to say about intersectionality and belonging in Trump’s America.
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Pine
Pine
Francine Toon
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Drenched in sinister rural gothic, Francine Toon’s eerie debut makes superbly unsettling use of the Scottish highlands to infuse the continuing aftershocks of a decade-old mystery with slowly encroaching dread. Steeped in brooding atmosphere and a hugely disquieting serenity, Pine comes complete with gorgeous sprayed edges bearing the elegant image of a pine tree.

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Such a Fun Age
Such a Fun Age
Kiley Reid
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Sprightly, topical and wonderfully involving, Kiley Reid’s freewheeling debut holds a mirror up to race, class and gender in twenty-first century America. In Alix, Reid has created a female protagonist who perfectly encapsulates the neuroses and contradictions of the day, whilst her witty, winningly crafted narrative marks Such a Fun Age out as a dazzling slice of contemporary fiction.

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The Memory Wood
The Memory Wood
Sam Lloyd
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
The Memory Wood tells the tale of two adolescents and the unbearably tense game of cat and mouse that develops between the two of them when one discovers the other, who has been abducted.

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My Dark Vanessa
My Dark Vanessa
Kate Elizabeth Russell
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Tackling the contentious issue of sexual abuse with unflinching enquiry and emotional complexity, My Dark Vanessa interrogates the blurred lines between consent and manipulation and how both memory and context can shift alarmingly over time. Perfect for fans of Lisa Taddeo’s groundbreaking Three Women, My Dark Vanessa is disturbing and unputdownable.

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Dear Edward
Dear Edward
Ann Napolitano
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Addressing issues of guilt, grief, identity and friendship, Napolitano’s heartwarming UK debut traces the path through life of the sole survivor of a tragic plane crash.

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The Last Day
The Last Day
Andrew Hunter Murray
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
A post-apocalyptic thriller with real urgency and credibility, this electrifying debut from ‘QI elf’ Murray describes an immobile future Earth, with each side locked in permanent day and night.

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Crime & Thrillers

The Other People
The Other People
C. J. Tudor
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Treading a fine line between grisly murder mystery and outright horror, Tudor has forged a formidable reputation as Britain’s answer to Stephen King. The Other People’s insidiously creepy tale of vanished daughters and miles of sinister, menacing motorway confirms her place at the forefront of unputdownable thriller writing.

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Haven't They Grown
Haven't They Grown
Sophie Hannah
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Based on a single brilliant conceit, Hannah’s latest spine-tingling mystery enmeshes the reader in a series of ever more artful twists and red herrings right up until the final page. Structured with the skill of a true master of the form, Haven’t They Grown throbs with chilly malice and delicious malevolence.

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The Last Protector
The Last Protector
Andrew Taylor
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
A purveyor of startlingly accomplished historical crime fiction, Andrew Taylor sends Marwood and Lovett off on another brilliantly baffling thriller set in seventeenth century London.

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The Guest List
The Guest List
Lucy Foley
£12.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Fresh from the bestselling success of the former Waterstones Thriller of the Month, The Hunting Party, Foley treats us to another closed community page-turner, set this time at a glamorous wedding on a remote island. Lean, pacy and terrifically twisty, The Guest List is a good, old-fashioned whodunit in distinctly twenty-first century trappings.

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Three Hours
Three Hours
Rosamund Lupton
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
This near-unbearably tense thriller is an outstanding novel that demands to be read in one sitting. As a blizzard engulfs the Somerset countryside, rogue shooters force a school into lockdown and a community into a cycle of panic, detection and a struggle for survival. Three Hours is both an exemplary page-turner and an insightful portrayal of radicalisation, rage and redemptive love.

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The Goodbye Man
The Goodbye Man
Jeffery Deaver
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
The second installment in the Colter Shaw series, The Goodbye Man finds the survivalist and expert tracker investigating a sinister organisation buried deep in the Washington wilderness.

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Written in Blood
Written in Blood
Chris Carter
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
A pickpocket, a loudmouth and a bag with sinister, life-changing contents coalesce in this utterly absorbing page turner, written by a former criminal psychologist.

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The Other Passenger
The Other Passenger
Louise Candlish
£14.99
Hardback
In stock
Usually dispatched within 48 hours
Set amongst the ‘water rats’ of the Thames riverboat community, Candlish’s disquieting thriller probes the enmity that lies beneath the surface of friendships as well as the fatal unreliability of memory.
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Science Fiction & Fantasy

Piranesi
Piranesi
Susanna Clarke
£14.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Susannah Clarke’s monumental masterwork Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was one of the finest works of speculative fiction of the twenty-first century and now, with Piranesi, she once more mines a darkly fantastical vision with a tale of a very singular house and its mysterious inhabitants. Saturated in gothic atmosphere and supernatural lore, Piranesi is simply unmissable.

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Dead Astronauts
Dead Astronauts
Jeff VanderMeer
£14.99
Hardback
In stock
Usually dispatched within 48 hours
A wickedly subversive tale of abstract, shape-shifting creatures battling the authoritarian Company, Dead Astronauts whirls with manic invention.
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House of Earth and Blood
House of Earth and Blood
Sarah J. Maas
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
The bestselling writer of YA fantasy delivers her adult debut in impressive style with an immersive mystery set in a richly drawn phantasmagorical landscape. A sweeping epic packed full of romance and adventure, House of Earth and Blood is a bold, brilliant opening chapter in what promises to be a spectacular new series from Maas.

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Agency
Agency
William Gibson
£18.99
Hardback
Out of stock
Another spectacular broadside from the cult science fiction scribe, Agency skips between a post-apocalyptic London and an alternate San Francisco where Hilary Clinton was crowned President.

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False Value
False Value
Ben Aaronovitch
£18.99
Hardback
Out of stock
The new Peter Grant mystery finds the erstwhile wizarding copper immersed in the nefarious goings-on of a shady tech company. Throbbing with Aaronovitch’s trademark blend of comic fantasy and compelling crime, False Value is a bravura addition to the Rivers of London sequence.

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The City We Became
The City We Became
N. K. Jemisin
£16.99
Hardback
Out of stock
A mesmerising novel from a giant of modern science fiction writing, The City We Became furnishes New York City with a quintet of souls before unleashing an ancient evil upon the futuristic metropolis. Brimming with Jemisin’s customary imaginative flair and luminous prose, this is a glorious slice of speculative fiction.

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