Year-End Lists

The Boston Globe: The Best Books of 2021

[see also 2024 • 2023 • 2020]

Fiction

• Afterparties
  Anthony Veasna So
• Bewilderment
  Richard Powers
• Caul Baby
  Morgan Jerkins
• The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
  Brian Evenson
• Great Circle
  Maggie Shipstead
• Harlem Shuffle
  Colson Whitehead
• In the Company of Men
  Véronique Tadjo
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
  Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• The Man Who Lived Underground
  Richard Wright
• Monkey Boy
  Francisco Goldman
• Monster in the Middle
  Tiphanie Yanique
• My Heart Is a Chainsaw
  Stephen Graham Jones
• Of Women and Salt
  Gabriela Garcia
• The Other Black Girl
  Zakiya Dalila Harris
• The Prophets
  Robert Jones Jr.
• Skye Falling
  Mia McKenzie
• The Sweetness of Water
  Nathan Harris
• The Turnout
  Megan Abbott
• Velvet Was the Night
  Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• What Storm, What Thunder
  Myriam J A Chancy

Nonfiction

• America on Fire

  The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s
  Elizabeth Hinton
• All That She Carried

  The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
  Tiya Miles
• Burning Boy

  The Life and Work of Stephen Crane
  Paul Auster
• Covered with Night

  A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
  Nicole Eustace
• Disorientation

  Being Black in The World
  Ian Williams
• Empire of Pain

  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
  Patrick Radden Keefe
• Festival Days
  Jo Ann Beard
• How the Word Is Passed

  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
  Clint Smith
• Keats's Odes

  A Lover's Discourse
  Anahid Nersessian
• A Little Devil in America

  Notes in Praise of Black Performance
  Hanif Abdurraqib
• On Freedom

  Four Songs of Care and Constraint
  Maggie Nelson
• On Juneteenth
  Annette Gordon-Reed
• On Violence and On Violence Against Women
  Jacqueline Rose
• Read Until You Understand

  The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature
  Farah Jasmine Griffin
• Red Comet

  The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
  Heather Clark
• The Right to Sex

  Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
  Amia Srinivasan
• Seek You

  A Journey Through American Loneliness
  Kristen Radtke
• Smile

  The Story of a Face
  Sarah Ruhl
• Travelling While Black

  Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move
  Nanjala Nyabola
• What Just Happened

  Notes on a Long Year
  Charles Finch