10 Best Books Since 2020, Ranked

The 10 Best Books Released Since 2020, Ranked

Published 18 October 2026

The 2020s have produced a remarkable run of ambitious fiction and non-fiction. These ten books stand out for their distinctive ideas, memorable characters and willingness to explore difficult subjects, from artificial intelligence and corporate power to war, addiction and identity.

This is not simply a list of polished prose. Each selection leaves a lasting impression, takes a meaningful creative risk or examines a complicated world with unusual clarity. Readers who enjoy stories with the atmosphere of games, films and speculative worlds may find plenty to explore here, alongside our broader arcade and gaming features.

10. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022)

Barbara Kingsolver relocates the structure of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield to modern Appalachia. Demon grows up amid foster care, rural poverty and the opioid epidemic, yet his sharp observational humour prevents the novel from becoming poverty spectacle.

The result is a bruising but propulsive account of resilience and institutional failure. Demon’s voice gives the novel its energy, while its examination of addiction makes it a natural companion to Patrick Radden Keefe’s non-fiction investigation, Empire of Pain.

9. The Wager by David Grann (2023)

David Grann turns the disastrous 1741 voyage of a British naval ship into a gripping historical thriller. The vessel, sent after a Spanish galleon, is wrecked off Patagonia, leaving its crew to face scurvy, starvation and an unforgiving coastline.

The book becomes even more compelling when survivors return to England with contradictory stories. Their competing accounts reveal how authority, reputation and the historical record can be shaped by whoever controls the narrative.

8. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (2022)

Ray Nayler’s first-contact story looks beneath the ocean rather than into space. A marine biologist is sent to an island chain near Vietnam after a technology company seals off the area, where an unusually intelligent octopus species appears to possess its own language and culture.

Alongside the marine research, Nayler explores neural-interface exploitation, autonomous artificial intelligence and the destructive logic of corporate ownership. It is detailed science fiction with a strong thriller engine and serious questions about consciousness and control.

7. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022)

Two childhood friends build a hugely successful independent game in the late 1990s, beginning a creative partnership that stretches across decades. Gabrielle Zevin understands both the excitement of making virtual worlds and the personal damage caused by ambition, fame and creative conflict.

The novel captures development constraints, crunch, industry success and the intimacy of communicating through code and level design. Its emotional core is a story about friendship, grief and the ways digital spaces can offer shelter when ordinary life becomes difficult.

Its attention to game development makes it an especially appealing read alongside RETROCADE’s arcade videos and industry coverage.

6. Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World by Parmy Olson (2024)

Parmy Olson follows the contest between OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind as both organisations pursue increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. Rather than accepting Silicon Valley’s grand promises, the book focuses on competition for computing resources, talent, investment and influence.

Supremacy reads like a corporate thriller while explaining the people and institutions driving the technology race. It is an accessible examination of the ethical safeguards, commercial pressure and flawed assumptions shaping the digital landscape.

5. Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe (2021)

Patrick Radden Keefe investigates the Sackler family and the business practices that helped fuel the OxyContin crisis. He traces the family’s corporate decisions, pharmaceutical marketing, regulatory failures and use of philanthropy to protect its public image.

The reporting is painstaking, but the structure has the pace of a crime drama. Keefe shows how wealth, institutional influence and carefully managed reputation can shield powerful people from accountability.

4. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)

Susanna Clarke places her protagonist inside an immense House filled with marble statues, tidal waters and seemingly endless halls. Piranesi charts the tides, fishes for food and communicates with the dead, content in a world whose boundaries he barely questions.

As traces of the outside world begin to appear, the quiet fantasy becomes a tense mystery. Clarke creates a complete environment through limitation, silence and architecture, making each revelation feel both unsettling and deeply moving.

Readers drawn to liminal spaces and atmospheric worldbuilding may also appreciate the careful environment-first thinking behind a well-planned arcade machine setup.

3. The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez (2022)

Simon Jimenez follows two warriors escorting an escaped moon goddess across a failing empire. The novel rejects conventional fantasy presentation, shifting between first-, second- and third-person viewpoints while ancestral ghosts form a kind of Greek chorus.

Its prose moves with the speed and visual force of animation, particularly during the action scenes. The result is an inventive reworking of mythic fantasy that rewards close attention and challenges the reader’s expectations about narrative form.

2. James by Percival Everett (2024)

Percival Everett revisits Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through Jim’s perspective, replacing the original caricature with a strategic, intelligent protagonist determined to survive. The novel exposes the violence and mythology surrounding the earlier work while giving Jim full agency.

One of its most effective devices is the difference between the language enslaved characters use privately and the dialect they perform when white people are listening. The result is funny, devastating and sharply controlled: a familiar story transformed into a powerful character study.

1. Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (2025)

Daniel Kraus sets this metaphysical horror novel during the Meuse-Argonne offensive of the First World War. Five American soldiers discover a celestial being in no-man’s-land and learn that their supposed mission to euthanise a traumatised comrade is instead connected to an attempt by military superiors to exploit the wounded angel.

Kraus writes in a relentless, rhythmic cadence that resembles a trench chant. Mud, blood, feathers and mustard gas create an oppressive atmosphere, while the horrors of industrial warfare support a meditation on divine grace, exploitation and survival. The dread remains intense from the opening pages to the conclusion, making Angel Down the strongest book in this ranking.