Best Books From 2021

Book Summary

Shelby Tebow went missing first. Then, Meredith Dickey and her six-year-old daughter, Delilah, vanished just blocks away from where Shelby was last seen. This strikes fear into a once-peaceful community. But are these incidents connected? After an elusive search that yields more questions than answers, the case eventually goes cold.

Eleven years later, Delilah shockingly returns. Everyone wants to know what happened to her, but some people will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried. And no one is prepared for the answers.

Book Summary

Long before spring meant placing orders for seeds through gardening catalogs, the Dakhótas relied on their strong seed-saving traditions for survival. While this book will teach you about that seed-saving heritage, it also covers so much more.

Rosalie Iron Wing grew up learning about plants and her ancestry as a Dakhóta from her father. However, when he goes missing, she is sent to live with a foster family. Decades later, Rosalie is now both a mother and the widow of a farmer. She still takes solace in their land, although it has been threatened by both nature and man.

When Rosalie returns to her birthplace to learn more about her family history, she learns about the trauma of boarding schools, the war between the Dakhótas and the government, and the cache of seeds that survived through generations.

Book Summary

Forty-four-year-old Alice is in the midst of deep grief. She’s unexpectedly lost her husband, her job is a dead-end, and even her beloved beekeeping hobby isn’t bringing her the usual joy. She has even begun to have anxiety attacks, thinking about how far her life has strayed from her dreams.

As she’s transporting 120,000 bees in her truck, she nearly collides with Jake. He’s a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County. When Alice sees Jake’s genuine interest in the bees and learns about his own difficulties at home, she impulsively invites him to see the farm.

The third member of the unlikely trio that makes up this novel is Harry. He’s twenty-four, and his social anxiety has prevented him from getting a traditional job. He answers Alice’s ad for part-time farm help and is shocked to be hired. Alice, Jake, and Harry become fast friends when they have to work together to stop a pesticide company that is threatening the bees. Through their new friendship, they each begin to heal.

Book Summary

Astronaut Ryland has just woken up millions of miles from home, a very long time after his mission. His crewmates are dead, and his memories are fuzzy. Slowly, he begins piecing together that he must single-handedly save Earth from an event that could cause total extinction.

Book Summary

Struggling novelist and divorced mom of two Finlay Donovan is BARELY holding things together. Each day has new challenges, like her ex-husband firing the nanny with no warning right before an important meeting.

Money is running out, and her next novel is way behind schedule. While meeting with her agent and attempting to buy more time, she receives a mysterious envelope with an offer of quick cash in exchange for a job.

Desperation and intrigue lead her to follow up with the number on the note, and before she knows what’s happening, she’s kind of agreed to be a contract killer for a woman with a truly terrible husband. Whoops.

Book Summary

This epic novel traces the journey of one American family from the colonial slave trade through the civil war and up to present day.

Ailey Pearl is named after two formidable Black Americans – a revered choreographer and her great grandmorther, who is a descendant of enslaved Georgians. She grows up in the city, but spends her summers in the small Georgia town where her mother’s family has lived ever since their ancestors were brought over from Africa in bondage.

As Ailey fights to come to terms with her identity and find where she belongs, she carries with her the whispers of two centuries of women in her maternal line. When she embarks on a journey through her family’s history, she uncovers shocking revalations about her ancestors.

Book Summary

Fiona has long kept her late mother’s secret – the man raising her was not her biological father. She knows her mother had an affair in Tuscany but has no idea that she was named in the will of her secret Italian father. In addition to the considerable, surprise inheritance, Fiona also learns about her two half-siblings. 

When she travels to Italy, the family is as shocked about her existence as she was about the will. This leads to tricky family interactions and new rivalries as Fiona tries to learn more about her mother’s summer in Italy and the father she never had a chance to meet.

Book Summary

Promising physics student Megs is attending Oxford in 1950 and prefers facts to creativity. However, her beloved but critically ill, 8-year-old brother is obsessed with a world created in a book – The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. When he asks her to find out where Narnia came from, she can’t refuse his plea.

When she tracks down the Lewis brothers, who are also at Oxford, they graciously invite her for tea. While they fill her with stories she can pass along to her brother, she doesn’t understand why he won’t answer her most important question about the origin of Narnia.

Book Summary

When family tragedy strikes, Uncle Patrick needs to take custody of his niece and nephew for the summer. Forty-three-year-old GUP (Gay Uncle Patrick) loves the kids, but he’s used to them going home after a weekend.

Once a famous sitcom star, Patrick’s career is stalled. His Palm Springs lifestyle of cocktails at brunch isn’t exactly ideal for a 6 and 9-year-old. He quickly realizes that having the kids longer than a few days means he needs to be more of a parent figure. But in order to help the kids, Patrick will also have to figure out how to help himself. This means facing some difficult memories from his past and deciding what he wants for his future.

Book Summary

This historical fiction novel is based on the remarkable true story of J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, a Black woman who became one of the most powerful women in NYC at the turn of the century.

Belle da Costa Greene was working at the Princeton University Library when J.P. Morgan’s nephew recommended her for a position curating a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artbooks for his uncle’s newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. This position of prominence made her one of the most influential people in the art and book world. She became a fixture on the New York social scene.

But Belle had a secret that could change everything. She led people to believe that her dark complexion was the result of her alleged Portuguese heritage. In truth, however, she was born Bella Marion Greener – the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard University.

Book Summary

In the 15th century, an young orphan named Anna lives in Constantiople (what is now Istanbul, Turkey). Growing up in an ancient city famous for it’s libraries, Anna discovers what could be the last copy of a centuries-old book chronicling the story of Aethon. Soon her path crosses with a village boy named Omeir who has been drafted into the army.

In a library in present day Idaho, 80-something Zeno is directing a children’s play adaptation of Aethon. But tucked among the books on the libraries shelves is a bomb planted by a troubled teen.

In the not-too-distant future, Konstance is on an interstellar ship copying down the story of Aethon told he her by her father.

Throughout the novel, the lives of these dreamers are intertwined in such an immersive way that you’ll forget your own world and feel as if you’ve been transported into theirs.

Book Summary

While jogging near her home on Nantucket, novelist Vivi is killed in a hit-and-run accident. After her death, Vivi is granted the opportunity to watch what happens to her family for one final summer. In addition to watching, she gets three “nudges” to change the outcome of events on Earth.

Between troubles for her children, the investigation into her death, and a childhood secret wrapped into the final novel she was writing, Vivi must be cautious with her nudges while learning to let her family make decisions without her.

Book Summary

As the Dust Bowl drought gripped the Great Plains, millions were out of work, crops failed, water dried up, and farmers fought to keep their land. This is the story of Elsa Martinelli, who is forced to make an agonizing choice: fight for her land in Texas or move west to California in search of a better life. 

Like so many of her neighbors, Elsa courageously faces the hardships and sacrifices that came to define an entire generation during the Great Depression as they fought for the American Dream.

Book Summary

As the producer of the long-running reality dating show called Ever After, Dev always scripts the perfect love stories for his contestants, but he hasn’t yet been able to do the same for himself.

When Charlie Winshaw – a disgraced tech genius – is cast as the next star of Ever After, Dev has his work cut out for him. Unlike Dev, who has always believed in fairy tales, Charlie doesn’t believe in true love and only agrees to the show in hopes of rehabbing his image. He’s far from a natural on camera, and behind the scenes, he’s cold and awkward.

As they travel the world filming the show, Dev tries desperately to get Charlie to connect with the contestants. Instead, Charlie discovers that he has better chemistry with Dev than with his female co-stars. But it’s not so simple to flip the script on reality TV. Whose love story will get told?

Book Summary

This YA thriller, written by a Native American author, is about a biracial teen who is an unenrolled member of the Ojibwe tribe. Daunis has never quite fit in at home or on the reservation. She dreams of heading to college, but after a tragedy, she must remain home to care for her mom.

Life takes another big turn when she witnesses a murder and then reluctantly goes undercover in the criminal investigation to infiltrate a drug ring in her community.

Book Summary

Albert Entwistle is a 64-year postal worker in the UK. He has no plans of retiring but receives a letter informing him that his mandatory retirement is just around the corner on his 65th birthday.

Albert’s only friend is his cat, and although he isn’t chatty with others at work or on his routes, he still dreads being home alone without a job. When he’s reminded of his only romantic relationship, which happened 50 years prior, something begins to stir in Albert. Perhaps it’s not too late to find happiness after all?

With the help of some unexpected new friends, Albert sets off to find George, the man he hasn’t seen since they were teenagers.

Book Summary

Rich Gunderson comes from a long line of loggers. For generations, his family has made their living off of the Redwood trees, but now his way of life is threatened as the National Park Service is expanding to protect tens of thousands of acres of trees. Additionally, environmentalists are protesting the logging operations on the remaining private lands, raising concerns about water contamination. In an effort to secure his family’s future, Rich secretly spends their savings on a grove of ancient Redwoods that he hopes to harvest.

Rich’s wife, Colleen, is an amateur midwife who hopes for a second child of her own. She has suffered a long string of miscarriages and has begun to see a disturbing number of birth defects and fetal deaths throughout her small community. She begins to suspect that the herbicides used by the logging company that employs her husband might be to blame.

Book Summary

In the present-day timeline, Caroline arrives in London on what was supposed to be a 10th-anniversary trip with her husband. Just days before the trip, she discovers that her husband has been cheating on her, so she’s making the trip solo in hopes of sorting out what her future will hold.

Her passion for history – the career path she gave up when she married her husband – is unexpectedly reignited when she stumbles upon a small vial with an unusual etching. As she seeks to learn more about where the vial may have come from, she begins to unravel the story behind a string of “apothecary murders” dating back to the 1790s.

This dual-timeline novel transports us back to 18th-century London, where we meet Nella, a female apothecary with a dark secret. As Nella’s story slowly unfolds in the 1791 timeline, Caroline gets closer to discovering Nella’s secret in the present. However, when their two stories collide, Caroline may face some unexpected consequences.

Book Summary

Mary Jane tells the story of two very different family lifestyles and a 14-year-old girl trying to decide who she really is. Mary Jane is a quiet, book-loving girl from a traditional, conservative family in 1970s Baltimore. When she is offered a job as a nanny for a local doctor, her mom assumes their home is equally tidy and respectable.

However, the house is a huge mess and it’s about to get crazier. The doctor has welcomed a rock star and his wife to stay at the house while he tries to get sober. Mary Jane has a lot to teach them about tidiness and schedules, and all the while, they are opening her eyes to the world outside her bubble. By the end of the summer, she’ll have a much better understanding of who she wants to be.

Book Summary

Mirielle West lives a glamorous life in LA as the wife of a silent film star. When a doctor sees a small spot on her hand, she’s whisked across the country to what feels like a different world. She hopes to have only a brief visit to the Louisiana Leper Home, but when she arrives, there is barbed wire, a curfew, and little chance of ever returning to her everyday life.

As Mirielle is assigned work inside the home, she must come to terms with both the illness and its perception in the outside world.

Book Summary

This novel is a book-within-a-book. Billy Summers is a former Marine sniper and Iraq war vet turned hitman who only kills “bad people.” He’s taking one last job before retiring that requires him to go undercover as a writer named David Lockridge. Under his assumed author name, he rents office space in the small town of Red Buff. At book alternates between Billy’s real-life and the fictional memoir that he is penning which tells his backstory.

Book Summary

In the early 1900s, Irish immigrant Sophie was desperate to leave her New York tenement. She answered a mail-order bride ad and agreed to marry a man named Martin Hocking in San Francisco. Martin is an aloof but handsome widower with a silent five-year-old daughter.

One evening, a young pregnant woman arrives at their doorstep. Sophie also learns of another woman, hundreds of miles away in Arizona, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. The fates of these three women become intertwined on the eve of the devastating San Francisco earthquake.

Book Summary

April has a rough life, fending for herself in a motorless motorhome that her father won while playing poker. She works at a diner but dreams of being a songwriter. After flunking out of school and another fight with her dad, April sets off to find a better life for herself.

Along the way, she meets others with complex stories, which are the perfect inspiration for her songs. But even more important than that, she finds that family doesn’t have to mean the community you were born into. Instead, people you meet can become family.

Book Summary

Ph.D. candidate Olive doesn’t believe in long-term relationships, but her best friend, Anh, is driving her crazy, trying to change her mind. In a desperate attempt to satisfy Anh, Olive kisses the first man she sees to show that she is dating and trying to find love.

Professor Adam Carlsen is known for being a tyrant in the lab, and unfortunately, he was the lucky recipient of her impulsive kiss. Olive is shocked when Dr. Carlsen agrees to go along with her fake boyfriend’s charade.

When her career is put at risk after a fiasco at a science conference, Adam’s response to her big disaster begins to change everything for Olive.

Book Summary

West With Giraffes is a charming tale of adventure that takes you on the ride of a lifetime from the East Coast of the US to the West, alongside a rowdy 17-year-old, a grumpy older man, and two giraffes. The year is 1938, and no American zoo has successfully housed giraffes before. The female zoo director of the San Diego Zoo believes she can do it. The giraffes have just survived a hurricane en route to the East Coast, and Riley Jones, the curmudgeonly head zookeeper, is responsible for safely transporting the giraffes from New York City to San Diego.

America is still in the throes of the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl conditions continue to ravage the drought-stricken Southern Plains states. Jones begrudgingly teams up with a starving teenager named Woody to help him make the coast-to-coast journey. The adventures along the way include run-ins with circus con artists, being tailed by a female photographer looking for a big scoop, an emotional visit to Woody’s hometown, and so much more.

At its heart, this is a coming-of-age story. Now, at the age of 105, Woody recounts his 12-day cross-country trip with Jones and the giraffes and how it shaped his life.

Book Summary

Bletchley Park is a real English estate and was an elegant country home before becoming the secret location of WW2 codebreakers. The Rose Code imagines the life of three women from different backgrounds who all qualified for this challenging and vital task. While the three become friends, the war and secrecy required for their jobs prove too much to keep them close.

Seven years later, in 1947, the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip is on everyone’s minds. But, when an encrypted letter is received, the former friends must reunite to crack the code and figure out which former Bletchley Park worker is now a traitor.

Book Summary

Diana has her life all planned out – marriage, kids, and climbing the professional ladder in the art auction world. And it all starts with getting engaged to her surgical resident boyfriend, Finn. They are about to head out on a romantic getaway to the Galapagos for her 30th birthday, and she knows he’ll propose on the trip.

On the eve of their departure, a virus that previously seemed a world away made its way to NYC, and Finn’s hospital needs everyone on call. He doesn’t want their nonrefundable trip to go to waste, so he convinces Diana to go without him. 

After she arrives, the whole island is quarantined, and she finds herself stranded until the borders reopen. Isolated and alone, Diana begins to form a connection with a local family. Through the experience, she reevaluates her priorities.

This is a thoroughly researched novel. Some say it starts out a bit slowly, but soon, you’ll find it going in unexpected directions. Readers say the story contains surprises that you won’t see coming!

Book Summary

The successful Riva siblings are always the envy of those around them in Malibu. Their father is legendary 70s singer Mick Riva, but each of the four siblings found success of their own in pursuits, like professional surfing and photography.

The book is set in 1983 at sister Nina’s famous end-of-summer beach house party. By midnight, the party is out of control. Before dawn, Nina’s mansion has been burned to the ground.

During this unforgettable night, each sibling has secrets revealed.

Book Summary

This entire novel takes place over the course of 10 days in 1954. Eighteen-year-old Emmett has finished his term on a work farm, where he was sent after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

The warden drives Emmett home to Nebraska, where he plans to pick up his 8-year-old brother before heading west for a fresh start. However, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work camp, Duchess and Wooly, have stowed away in the trunk. The three teens and 8-year-old Billy adjust their plans and set out across the country together. The book is told from alternating points of view.

Book Summary

For twenty years, Liv has run a successful NYC wedding-planning business with her husband, Eliot. When he dies unexpectedly, Liv is shocked to learn that he’s left his half of the business to his young girlfriend, whom Liv knew nothing about. Much to Liv’s chagrin, perky Savannah shows up on her doorstep, eager to be her partner and protege.

As Liv and Savannah struggle to find a way to work together, they each find new love in unexpected places. In addition to Liv and Savannah, we are introduced to many of the wedding vendors that they work with – the florists, caterers, servers, and musicians. In a Love Actually-style narrative, this book follows each of them as they navigate love and friendship, and we see their lives overlap at weddings throughout the city.