“Best books” is always a subjective term. No one can honestly claim to know which books are best in a time when more than 1 million books are published each year in the United States alone.
But, as a book reviewer, I can tell you which books I reviewed in 2021 stand out as best in their categories (or in the somewhat eccentric categories I put them in).
So if that holiday bookstore gift card is burning a hole in your pocket, or you just want to catch up before the 2022 books start to arrive, here are some books to consider. Click the links to read my reviews.
Best novel about people responding to the pandemic
Tie:
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart
Best thriller that will make you want to throw your smartphone off the Skyway
Tie:
Last Girl Ghosted, Lisa Unger
Where They Wait, Scott Carson
Best first novel
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Best nonfiction book about true crimes on a staggering scale
Tie:
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story by Julie Brown
Best feminist historical novel
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Best short story collection by a Florida author
Tie:
Rising by Gale Massey
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Best biography of a Florida icon
The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling by Ann McCutchan
Best Florida essay collection
The State You’re In: Florida Men, Florida Women, and Other Wildlife by Craig Pittman
Best crime fiction by a master writing at top form
Tie:
The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly
Another Kind of Eden by James Lee Burke
Best anthology of American history
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
Best novel about writers’ dirty little secrets
Dream Girl by Laura Lippman
Best novel about a hitman
Billy Summers by Stephen King
Best Southern noir
Tie:
The Heathens, Ace Atkins
Razorblade Tears, S.A. Cosby
Best nonfiction book by a former Tampa Bay Times staffer
Tie:
Call Me Commander: A Former Intelligence Officer and the Journalists Who Uncovered His Scheme to Fleece America by Jeff Testerman and Daniel Freed
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Explore all your optionsA Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South by Ben Montgomery
Best natural history
The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans by Cynthia Barnett
Best essay collection about death that brims with life
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Best book of 2021
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead