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20 Best Book Club Books of 2021
This is a list of the upcoming 2021 Best Book Club Books, limited to hardcover new releases to be published in 2021. I’ll be updating this list as more titles are announced, so stay tuned for more!
If there’s a book you think belongs on this list of anticipated book club reads, please do drop me a line!
The Four Winds
Kristin Hannah
What It’s About: From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression: a time when the country was in crisis, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them. My land tells its story if you listen
Publication Date: February 2, 2021
4.37 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction book club 2021 books
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
What It’s About: The New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon
Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick
“A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits.”—The Washington Post
The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book..
Publication Date: August 13, 2020
4.15 out of 5 on Goodreads
fantasy book club contemporary
The Rose Code
Kate Quinn
What It’s About: The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over 1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes
Publication Date: March 9, 2021
4.52 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction historical wwii
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
What It’s About: Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside…
Publication Date: March 2, 2021
3.92 out of 5 on Goodreads
science fiction sci fi 2021 releases
The Lost Apothecary
Sarah Penner
What It’s About: A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them—setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register..
Publication Date: March 2, 2021
3.86 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction botm mystery
The Push
Ashley Audrain
What It’s About: A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family–and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for–and everything she feared. Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.
Publication Date: January 5, 2021
4.16 out of 5 on Goodreads
thriller read in 2021 mystery
Later
Stephen King
What It’s About: The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine – as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave..
Publication Date: March 2, 2021
4.08 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror stephen king thriller
When the Stars Go Dark
Paula McLain
What It’s About: Anna Hart is a missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her..
Publication Date: April 13, 2021
3.98 out of 5 on Goodreads
mystery thriller mystery thriller
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir
What It’s About: Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission–and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time…
Publication Date: May 4, 2021
4.60 out of 5 on Goodreads
science fiction sci fi 2021 releases
Harlem Shuffle
Colson Whitehead
What It’s About: From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.
“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…”
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family…
Publication Date: September 14, 2021
4.04 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction 2021 releases historical
Malibu Rising
Taylor Jenkins Reid
What It’s About: Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit…
Publication Date: June 1, 2021
4.29 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction 2021 tbr contemporary
Whereabouts
Jhumpa Lahiri
What It’s About: A marvelous new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies–her first in nearly a decade. Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties…
Publication Date: August 30, 2018
3.81 out of 5 on Goodreads
2021 releases contemporary literary fiction
My Year Abroad
Chang-rae Lee
What It’s About: Librarian note: Please see alternate cover edition for Powells Indiespensable here: From the award-winning author of Native Speaker and On Such a Full Sea, an exuberant, provocative story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure – and about the human capacities for pleasure, pain, and connection…
Publication Date: February 2, 2021
3.55 out of 5 on Goodreads
2021 releases contemporary travel
The Maidens
Alex Michaelides
What It’s About: Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek Tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike—particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge…
Publication Date: June 15, 2021
3.84 out of 5 on Goodreads
thriller mystery mystery thriller
Hamlet Retelling (Hogarth Shakespeare)
Gillian Flynn
What It’s About: Coming in 2021. Gillian Flynn, author of the bestseller Gone Girl, is to write a new twist on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Flynn is the latest author to be commissioned by the Hogarth Shakespeare project to rewrite the Bard’s works. The series launches in 2016 to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
Publication Date: Not Available
out of 5 on Goodreads
AmazonBewilderment
Richard Powers
What It’s About: The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face…
Publication Date: September 21, 2021
4.44 out of 5 on Goodreads
literary fiction 2021 releases 2021 release
Apples Never Fall
Liane Moriarty
What It’s About: #1 New York Times bestselling author Liane Moriarty is back with a novel that looks at marriage, sibling rivalry, and the lies we tell others and ourselves. Apples Never Fall is the work of a writer at the top of her game. The Delaney family love one another dearly―it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other …
Publication Date: September 14, 2021
3.71 out of 5 on Goodreads
2021 releases mystery thriller
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr
What It’s About: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, perhaps the most bestselling and beloved literary fiction of our time, comes a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world, who find resilience, hope, and story…
Publication Date: September 28, 2021
4.55 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction 2021 releases arc
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney
What It’s About: Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young-but life is catching up with them…
Publication Date: September 7, 2021
4.35 out of 5 on Goodreads
to buy contemporary 2021 release
Velvet Was the Night
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
What It’s About: From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a riveting noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of a missing woman that brings them together. 1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance…
Publication Date: August 17, 2021
4.04 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction mystery thriller
This is a list of the upcoming 2021 Best Book Club Books, limited to hardcover new releases to be published in 2021. I’ll be updating this list as more titles are announced, so stay tuned for more!
If there’s a book you think belongs on this list of anticipated book club reads, please do drop me a line!
The Four Winds
Kristin Hannah
What It’s About: From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression: a time when the country was in crisis, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them. My land tells its story if you listen
Publication Date: February 2, 2021
4.37 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction book club 2021 books
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
What It’s About: The New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon
Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick
“A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits.”—The Washington Post
The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book..
Publication Date: August 13, 2020
4.15 out of 5 on Goodreads
fantasy book club contemporary
The Rose Code
Kate Quinn
What It’s About: The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over 1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes
Publication Date: March 9, 2021
4.52 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction historical wwii
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
What It’s About: Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside…
Publication Date: March 2, 2021
3.92 out of 5 on Goodreads
science fiction sci fi 2021 releases
The Lost Apothecary
Sarah Penner
What It’s About: A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them—setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register..
Publication Date: March 2, 2021
3.86 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction botm mystery
The Push
Ashley Audrain
What It’s About: A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family–and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for–and everything she feared. Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.
Publication Date: January 5, 2021
4.16 out of 5 on Goodreads
thriller read in 2021 mystery
Later
Stephen King
What It’s About: The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine – as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave..
Publication Date: March 2, 2021
4.08 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror stephen king thriller
When the Stars Go Dark
Paula McLain
What It’s About: Anna Hart is a missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her..
Publication Date: April 13, 2021
3.98 out of 5 on Goodreads
mystery thriller mystery thriller
Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir
What It’s About: Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission–and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time…
Publication Date: May 4, 2021
4.60 out of 5 on Goodreads
science fiction sci fi 2021 releases
Harlem Shuffle
Colson Whitehead
What It’s About: From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.
“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…”
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family…
Publication Date: September 14, 2021
4.04 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction 2021 releases historical
Malibu Rising
Taylor Jenkins Reid
What It’s About: Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit…
Publication Date: June 1, 2021
4.29 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction 2021 tbr contemporary
Whereabouts
Jhumpa Lahiri
What It’s About: A marvelous new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies–her first in nearly a decade. Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties…
Publication Date: August 30, 2018
3.81 out of 5 on Goodreads
2021 releases contemporary literary fiction
My Year Abroad
Chang-rae Lee
What It’s About: Librarian note: Please see alternate cover edition for Powells Indiespensable here: From the award-winning author of Native Speaker and On Such a Full Sea, an exuberant, provocative story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure – and about the human capacities for pleasure, pain, and connection…
Publication Date: February 2, 2021
3.55 out of 5 on Goodreads
2021 releases contemporary travel
The Maidens
Alex Michaelides
What It’s About: Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek Tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike—particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge…
Publication Date: June 15, 2021
3.84 out of 5 on Goodreads
thriller mystery mystery thriller
Hamlet Retelling (Hogarth Shakespeare)
Gillian Flynn
What It’s About: Coming in 2021. Gillian Flynn, author of the bestseller Gone Girl, is to write a new twist on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Flynn is the latest author to be commissioned by the Hogarth Shakespeare project to rewrite the Bard’s works. The series launches in 2016 to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
Publication Date: Not Available
out of 5 on Goodreads
AmazonBewilderment
Richard Powers
What It’s About: The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face…
Publication Date: September 21, 2021
4.44 out of 5 on Goodreads
literary fiction 2021 releases 2021 release
Apples Never Fall
Liane Moriarty
What It’s About: #1 New York Times bestselling author Liane Moriarty is back with a novel that looks at marriage, sibling rivalry, and the lies we tell others and ourselves. Apples Never Fall is the work of a writer at the top of her game. The Delaney family love one another dearly―it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other …
Publication Date: September 14, 2021
3.71 out of 5 on Goodreads
2021 releases mystery thriller
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr
What It’s About: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, perhaps the most bestselling and beloved literary fiction of our time, comes a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world, who find resilience, hope, and story…
Publication Date: September 28, 2021
4.55 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction 2021 releases arc
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney
What It’s About: Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young-but life is catching up with them…
Publication Date: September 7, 2021
4.35 out of 5 on Goodreads
to buy contemporary 2021 release
Velvet Was the Night
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
What It’s About: From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a riveting noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of a missing woman that brings them together. 1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance…
Publication Date: August 17, 2021
4.04 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction mystery thriller
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It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making
The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
