BEST BOOKS 2021

Hawai‘i author Chris McKinney’s first entry in a brilliant new sci-fi noir trilogy explores the sordid past of a murdered scientist, deified in death, through the eyes of a man who once committed unspeakable crimes for her.

Year 2142: Earth is forty years past a near-collision with the asteroid Sessho-seki. Akira Kimura, the scientist responsible for eliminating the threat, has reached heights of celebrity approaching...

"A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family, about a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for--and everything she feared. Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting, supportive mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter--Violet...

Mickie Lambert creates “digital scrapbooks” for clients, ensuring that precious souvenirs aren't forgotten or lost. When her latest client Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman's last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d'art. A music box, a hair clip, a keychain-twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia who collected them on her flea market scavenges across the...

"A piercing, unflinching new volume offers necessary music for our tumultuous present, from "perhaps the best public poet we have" (Boston Globe). In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America's, and the world's, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or Black Lives Matter, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect...

After burning out in her corporate marketing career, Michelle Amato has built a thriving freelance business as a graphic designer. So what if her love life is nonexistent? She's perfectly fine being the black sheep of her marriage-obsessed Puerto Rican-Italian family. Besides, the only guy who ever made her want happily-ever-after disappeared thirteen years ago.

'"Banished by her grandfather at the age of eighteen, Spring Lee has survived scandal to claim her own little slice of Paradise, Wyoming. She's proud of working her ranch alone and unwilling to share it with a stranger--especially one like Garrett McCray, who makes her second-guess her resolve to avoid men. Garrett escaped slavery years ago and is now a reporter in Washington. He's traveled west to interview Dr. Colton Lee for an article, yet it's...

"The beauty of stories is that you never know where they will take you. Full of dreams and nightmares, Honeycomb is an entrancing mosaic novel of original fairy tales from bestselling author Joanne M. Harris and legendary artist Charles Vess in a collaboration that's been years in the making. Dark, gripping, and brilliantly imaginative, these magical tales will soon have you in their thrall. Each original tale is a small piece of the larger picture...

"Set in a world inspired by historical India, The Jasmine Throne begins a sweeping new epic fantasy trilogy in which a captive princess and a servant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies--and eventually, much more than allies--on a dark journey to save their empire. Imprisoned by her tyrannical brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless...

Growing up on their parents' mythical stories about the opportunities of Australia, a brother and sister travel with their family from war-torn Pakistan through temporary homes in Indonesia and Nauru, before government indifference in Australia challenges their dreams.

"Beautiful Country is the real deal. Heartrending, unvarnished, and powerfully courageous, this account of growing up undocumented in America will never leave you."--Gish Jen, author of The Resisters. "Ba Ba told me this and I in turn carried it in my heart: so long as we didn't stake claim to what wasn't ours--the things, our rooms, America, this beautiful country--we would be okay." An incandescent and heartrending memoir about Qian Julie Wang's...