Little did any of us know what this year would bring. These 10 fiction and 10 nonfiction adult titles helped the team at Shelf Awareness reflect, sustain, find some bright spots and some literary companions during the strange and unpredictable year that was 2021. (Reviews appear below; see our Best Children's and YA Books of 2021 here.)
Fiction
Bewilderment by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton)
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (One World)
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (Dutton)
One Two Three by Laurie Frankel (Holt)
Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi (Riverhead)
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Ballantine)
Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad (Knopf)
The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine (Grove Press)
Nonfiction
Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora, edited by Bryant Terry (4 Color)
The Everybody Ensemble: Donkeys, Essays, and Other Pandemoniums by Amy Leach (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith (Little, Brown)
Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist by Patrick Nathan (Counterpoint)
Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter's School by Courtney E. Martin (Little, Brown)
Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water by Kazim Ali (Milkweed)
Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson (Crown)
Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir by Brian Broome (Mariner)
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel (Mariner)
Three Simple Lines: A Writer's Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku by Natalie Goldberg (New World Library)