The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe Best Books of the Year 2021
The Boston Globe Best Books of the Year 2021 names 40 books across 2 categories. 26 of them also won or were shortlisted for an award.
Fiction
- Afterpartiessource (opens in a new tab)
- Bewildermentsource (opens in a new tab)
- Caul Babysource (opens in a new tab)
- Great Circlesource (opens in a new tab)
- Harlem Shufflesource (opens in a new tab)
- In the Company of Mensource (opens in a new tab)
- Monkey Boysource (opens in a new tab)
- Monster in the Middlesource (opens in a new tab)
- My Heart Is a Chainsawsource (opens in a new tab)
- Of Women and Saltsource (opens in a new tab)
- Skye Fallingsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hellsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Boissource (opens in a new tab)
- The Man Who Lived Undergroundsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Other Black Girlsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Prophetssource (opens in a new tab)
- The Sweetness of Watersource (opens in a new tab)
- The Turnoutsource (opens in a new tab)
- Velvet Was the Nightsource (opens in a new tab)
- What Storm, What Thundersource (opens in a new tab)
Nonfiction
- A Little Devil in Americasource (opens in a new tab)
- All That She Carriedsource (opens in a new tab)
- America on Firesource (opens in a new tab)
- Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Cranesource (opens in a new tab)
- Covered With Nightsource (opens in a new tab)
- Disorientation: Being Black in the Worldsource (opens in a new tab)
- Empire of Painsource (opens in a new tab)
- Festival Dayssource (opens in a new tab)
- How the Word Is Passedsource (opens in a new tab)
- Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discoursesource (opens in a new tab)
- On Freedomsource (opens in a new tab)
- On Juneteenthsource (opens in a new tab)
- On Violence and On Violence Against Womensource (opens in a new tab)
- Read Until You Understandsource (opens in a new tab)
- Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plathsource (opens in a new tab)
- Seek Yousource (opens in a new tab)
- Smilesource (opens in a new tab)
- The Right to Sexsource (opens in a new tab)
- Travelling While Blacksource (opens in a new tab)
- What Just Happenedsource (opens in a new tab)
About the The Boston Globe Best Books of the Year
The Globe's year-end Fiction and Nonfiction critics' picks. Picks from the same year-end package for mystery, poetry, sports, graphic novels, science, New England, children's, middle grade, and young adult books are left out. 2006-2009 lists are the boxed title lists that ran with the year-end fiction and nonfiction essays on boston.com. In 2011 and 2014 each section was the combined picks of two or three critics; books picked by more than one critic appear once. Missing years: no 2010 adult list could be found in the Wayback Machine (only a children's list was archived). No list is ranked. bostonglobe.com robots.txt blocks AI crawlers, so no Globe page was fetched directly: Globe pages were read through Wayback Machine captures, and the 2022-2024 lists were read from the Flourish card embeds the Globe pages load. Secondary sources: yearendlists.com copies of the 2020-2025 lists were used to cross-check counts and to correct three page typos (Walter Mosley, Natasha Trethewey, and the title Loved and Missed). Other page typos were corrected against existing catalog entries (Tenth of December, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Jodi Kantor) and against the publisher listing for Helon Habila's Travelers. The 2016 list files Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time under Fiction, as the Globe did.
Organization: The Boston Globe. Official site (opens in a new tab)