Bestsellers List on Sept. 20, 2020
SoCal Bestsellers
Hardcover Fiction
1. The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (Europa: $26) A teenage girl comes of age, with difficulty, in ’90s Naples, Italy.
2. All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny (Minotaur: $29) Chief Inspector Gamache visits Paris with his family and gets entangled in a mystery.
3. Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (Atria: $28) After a botched bank robbery the perpetrator takes eight hostages in an apartment.
4. The Guest List by Lucy Foley (Morrow: $28) On a remote island off the Irish coast, the wedding of a TV star and a magazine publisher is disrupted by a murder.
5. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (Riverhead: $27) Identical twin sisters run away from their small Black community in the South and live very different lives.
6. Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf: $29) The president politicizes the mysterious death of a high-society Palm Beach luminary, placing the blame on immigrants.
7. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (Knopf: $28) A Stanford PhD candidate and Ghanaian immigrant seeks to cure depression and addiction.
8. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey: $27) A woman is summoned to a mysterious home in rural Mexico to rescue her newlywed cousin.
9. One by One by Ruth Ware (Gallery: $28) Co-workers get snowed in while on a team-building mountain retreat.
10. What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead: $26) A woman listens as various people open up about their lives in a series of encounters.Hardcover nonfiction
1. Disloyal: A Memoir by Michael Cohen (Skyhorse: $33) A tell-all from President Trump’s former lawyer-fixer.
2. Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump (Simon & Schuster: $28) A tell-all from the niece of President Trump.
3. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House: $32) A hidden caste system influences the lives of Americans.
4. Untamed by Glennon Doyle (Dial: $28) The activist explores the peace that comes when we stop striving to meet the world’s expectations.
5. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (One World: $27) The author weaves ethics, history, law, science and personal narrative into a work that illuminates how racism works.
6. Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad (Sourcebooks: $26) How to dismantle white privilege and stop inflicting damage on people of color.
7. Vesper Flights by Helen MacDonald (Grove: $27) A collection of nature-themed essays from the author of “H Is for Hawk.”
8. Melania and Me by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff (Gallery: $28) A tell-all book from a former longtime friend of the first lady.
9. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson (Crown: $32) A portrait of Winston Churchill and his defiance during the Blitz.
10. Breath by James Nestor (Riverhead: $28) New research yields breathtaking results.Paperback fiction
1. The Overstory by Richard Powers (Norton: $19)
2. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Anchor: $16)
3. Circe by Madeline Miller (Back Bay: $17)
4. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (Ecco: $17)
5. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Ecco: $17)
6. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Grand Central: $17)
7. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Grove: $17)
8. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (Sourcebooks: $16)
9. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (Penguin: $17)
10. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (HarperOne: $17)Paperback nonfiction
1. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (Harper Perennial: $25)
2. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (One World: $18)
3. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz (Amber-Allen: $13)
4. Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi (Bold Type: $20)
5. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed: $18)
6. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (Beacon: $16)
7. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (Harper Perennial: $18)
8. The Castle on Sunset by Shawn Levy (Anchor: $17)
9. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (Seal: $17)
10. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Vintage: $18)
More to Read
Sign up for our Book Club newsletter
Get the latest news, events and more from the Los Angeles Times Book Club, and help us get L.A. reading and talking.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.