“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.
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
'A 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
