2019 was a great year for reading, and 2020 is shaping up to be just as exciting, but sometimes we fall in love with books that aren’t necessarily new releases. Below, 10 authors—including Bernardine Evaristo, Emma Straub, and Anna Wiener—tell us about the books that captured their literary hearts this year.

Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie: This year I was totally smitten with How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs. It’s not a handbook, but a collection of stories around lust, love, and sexuality about characters of Jamaican descent both living on the island, or who have made their way to pastures new. It’s the only book I’ve read more than once since it was published. Alexia Arthurs is a true voyeur when it comes to human nature.

Photo: Courtesy of Ballantine Books

Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other: In Don’t Touch My Hair, Emma Dabiri has written a fantastically interesting and original book which explores black hair through the prism of history, culture, feminism, and philosophy. (Note: The U.S. edition, Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture, will be published by Harper Perennial in May 2020.) Runner-up: The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins, a historical thriller about an enslaved Jamaican woman who is sent to live in Georgian London, where she is eventually accused of murder. Collins brilliantly reinvents the gothic novel through the eyes of a black woman.