The year Andy Weir did it again, Richard Osman became a publishing phenomenon, and literary fiction had some of its most beloved recent entries.
A lone astronaut wakes up on a spacecraft with no memory of how he got there, tasked with saving Earth from extinction. Weir's best book — funnier than The Martian, more emotionally ambitious, with a central relationship that genuinely moves. Beloved by readers who don't even like sci-fi.
Four funerals across forty years of a white South African family. Each section is told in a different voice, in a different era of the country's history. Galgut's prose style — shifting, invasive, almost cinematic — is unlike anything else in contemporary fiction.
The sequel to The Thursday Murder Club — and many readers prefer it to the first. Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim pursue a spy thriller involving stolen diamonds and an assassin. Osman is at the height of his powers here: funny, warm, and cleverly plotted.
An Artificial Friend — a solar-powered companion robot — narrates the story of the girl she was purchased to care for. Ishiguro writes about consciousness, love, and sacrifice with his characteristic restraint. The ending devastates through understatement.
The Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and a woman who must choose between the land she loves and the future of her children. Hannah at her most epic scale — more historically ambitious than The Nightingale, equally devastating. Her biggest US bestseller.
Two best friends with obvious chemistry — told through alternating chapters of their annual vacations and the present, where something went wrong. Henry's most structurally elegant novel; the slow reveal of what happened between Alex and Poppy is perfectly paced.
Four famous siblings throw one last party at the end of the summer — and by morning, their house will burn down. Reid structures the novel around a single night, with flashbacks to the family's whole history. Cinematic, propulsive, and full of her best character work.
A novella — a tea monk leaves their comfortable life and travels into the wilderness, where they meet a robot who asks: what do people need? Chambers' gentlest and most meditative book. The question it asks is the one the whole book is trying to answer.
Set on a plantation in the antebellum South, following two enslaved men whose love for each other becomes a site of resistance and a target of violence. A debut of immense moral seriousness and lyrical force.
A luxury hotel converted from a former tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps — guests arrive for a family reunion, and people start disappearing. An atmospheric debut thriller that delivers on every gothic promise it makes.
The conclusion to the Inheritance Games trilogy — Avery Grambs must find a final solution to the puzzle left by Tobias Hawthorne before the family tears itself apart. YA thriller at its most satisfying: clever, romantic, propulsive.
Originally published in 2010, this epic history of the Great Migration — the decades-long movement of Black Americans from the South — became one of the most-read books of 2021. Wilkerson tells the story through three individuals across three different migrations. Essential.