More than 100 readers participated in the 2020 Winter Words Adult Reading Club. They read hundreds of books in all fiction genres and nonfiction categories. We asked the participants to name a book they read in 2020 that they’d recommend to other readers. Their recommendations follow: 

Fiction

The Overstory—Richard Powers
American Dirt—Jeanine Cummins
Jam on the Vine—LaShonda Katrice Barnett
The Starlet and the Spy—Ji-Min Lee
The Language of Flowers—Vanessa Diffenbaugh
The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek—Kim Richardson
The Moment—Douglas Kennedy
Jane Eyre—Charlotte Bronte
The Good Lord Bird—James McBride
A Woman in White—Margaret McDonald
The 44 Scotland Street series—Alexander McCall Smith
The Searcher—Tana French
The Nightingale—Kristin Hannah
Call the Midwife (series)—Jennifer Worth
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine—Gail Honeyman
Secrets of a Charmed Life—Susan Meissner
We Were the Lucky Ones—Georgia Hunter
The Keeper of Lost Things—Ruth Hogan
Written in Red—Anne Bishop
At Home in Mitford—Jan Karon 
The Dead Hand of History—Sally Spencer
Strands of Truth—Colleen Coble
Lost Boy Found—Kirsten Alexander
BFFs Forever (series)—Brenda Hampton
The Silver Chair—C.S. Lewis and Pauline Baynes
No One Ever Asked—Katie Ganshert
The Midwife’s Revolt (series)—Jodi Daynard
The Starcrossed Sisters of Tuscany—Lori Nelson Spielman
Little Fires Everywhere—Celeste Ng
Found Guilty at Five—Ann Purser
The Bird Sisters—Rebecca Rasmussen 
Monogamy--Sue Miller
Courage in Patience—Beth Fehlbaum
The Midnight Library—Matt Haig
Their Eyes Were Watching God—Zora Neale Hurston
The Penthouse Prince—Kendall Ryn
Pilgrim’s Inn—Elizabeth Goudge
The Calligrapher’s Daughter—Eugenia Kim
My Antonia—Willa Cather
Pretty Little Savage—Lucy Smoke

Nonfiction

Thank You For Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion—Jay Heinrich
Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West—Dorothy Wickenden
Greenlights—Matthew McConaughey
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man—Emmanuel Acho
Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford—Clint Hill and Lisa McCubbin
The Listening Life: Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction—Adam McHugh
On Tyranny—Timothy Snyder
A Promised Land—Barack Obama
Blood and Germs: The Civil War Battle Against Wounds and Disease—Gail Jarrow
The Secret Rooms: A True Story of a Haunted Castle, a Plotting Duchess, and a Family Secret— Catherine Bailey
Anti-Social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of American Conversation—Andrew Marantz
Rising Strong—Brene Brown
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History—Kurt Andersen