The 10 Most Anticipated Books Of 2021, According To Independent Bookstores

If you’re looking to plan your 2021 reading, here are recommendations from independent bookstore staffers across a range of genres, from young adult to biography to science fiction and beyond, from both popular authors and newer ones. Via email, I asked each bookstore staffer to share their most anticipated 2021 book and why they think readers will enjoy it. Book titles link to Bookshop where applicable, or the bookseller’s site, and books are listed in chronological order.

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas (Balzer + Bray, January 12)

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Blair Boles, co-owner and bookseller, Beausoleil Books, Lafayette, Louisiana: “Angie Thomas has already blown readers away with The Hate U Give and On the Come Up. Her stories are complex, layered, relevant, and enlightening. At Beausoleil Books, the focus of our store is inclusivity. We want everyone to feel heard, appreciated, and safe when they come in. This book, much like her others, gives a voice to people who have so often been marginalized by society. We admire that and we strive to do the same with the books we carry in our store. We want people to feel seen. Angie Thomas has done a remarkable job at doing just that to the people who need it most. I am so excited to see what this next book has in store for us. 

Without reading it, I don’t know the particular substance that will make readers enjoy it. I do know, though, that her previous stories are rich and they pull in any audience member that reads it from the first page. Readers who love to be attached to characters talk about her work months—even years after they have read it. Thomas’ characters stay with you and the themes of her stories haunt you.”

Ida B. The Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells by Michelle Duster (Atria/One Signal Publishers, January 26)

Jeannine A. Cook, shopkeeper, Harriett’s Bookshop, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: “Because 89 years after Ida B. Wells’ death, she was recently awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her courageous anti-lynching, human rights activism—not only in this country but around the world. I think as we look at the work that needs to be done to address today’s social ills, it makes sense to return to the great women of the past who laid the blueprint for how to make large sweeping change in the face of immediate danger.

First off the book is visually stunning, collaging bold graphics with primary source materials. But also, I think folks will enjoy the passionate writing of the author, Michelle Duster, who is also Ida B. Wells’ great granddaughter. Finally I think readers who are looking for bold, out-of-the-box, approaches to social change will undoubtably be inspired by Ida B. The Queen.”

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The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press, March 2)

Jennifer Caspar, owner, Village Well Books & Coffee, Culver City, California: “My book group loved Nguyen’s first novel, The Sympathizer, which was a bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner, and The Committed promises to deliver more meaty, conversation-worthy action, humor and existential despair. In The Sympathizer, the unnamed narrator related (to Hollywood filmmakers) his stories about being a Communist mole from North Vietnam in the South Vietnamese army. In the new book, it is 1981 and he’s in Paris, his father’s homeland, where he and his best friend Bon make their way into the city’s criminal underbelly. Nguyen’s quirky intellectualism takes on heavy and relatable issues that are even more critical today: race, immigration, identity, irreconcilable world views, and the addiction and PTSD that lie in the wake of the big isms (commun-, capital- and Catholic-) that dominated the 20th century.”

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Life After Death by Sister Souljah (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, March 2)

DeShanta Hairston, owner/bookseller, Books and Crannies, Martinsville, Virginia: “Life After Death is the much anticipated sequel to Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever, which originally published in April 1999. The Coldest Winter Ever served as a staple coming-of-age story for every young black girl I know. So many of us could either relate to Winter, knew someone like Winter, or wanted to be Winter. Sister Souljah did an extraordinary job highlighting the highs and lows that come with the fast life and what it means to grow up faster than you should. Since the group most impacted by the original book are all now adults, it will be a true fandom moment to see how Winter has also transitioned into adulthood and how her choices made a lasting impact on her life.”

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Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman (Beacon Press, March 9)

Christina Ciampa, owner/founder, All She Wrote Books, Somerville, Massachusetts: “What made me pick up this book at first was the fact that it was a retelling of old stories of female monsters from Greek Mythology, such as Medusa, the Sphinx, Chimera, Charybdis, Scylla. Any chance to read a retelling of ancient mythologies with a feminist twist—I am there for it! What makes this book not just another retelling is because author Jess Zimmerman takes us on a feminist journey through mythology, providing a roadmap for how we can shape the world around us by embracing ‘undesirable’ traits like hunger, anger, and ugliness. With her intimate and fierce writing, Zimmerman leverages the images we’re familiar with from literature and art (i.e. Medusa’s head with the snakes) and turns them into emblems to teach us of a new type of female hero: one that looks like a monster, but with all the agency and power to match. For those who loved Circe by Madeline Miller and Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay—this book is a must-read for 2021.”

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Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia (Flatiron Books, March 30)

Stephanie Skees, director of operations, The Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Missouri: “It’s a masterfully written debut novel exploring one family’s matriarchal choices and the legacy those choices create. A sweeping tale ranging from 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers it will leave the reader equal parts haunted and moved.”

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Early Morning Riser: A Novel by Katherine Heiny (Knopf, April 13)

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Drew Cohen, co-owner, The Writer’s Block, Las Vegas, Nevada: “Heiny’s previous novel, Standard Deviation, is one of my most-recommended books of the past several years. Various authors are described (erroneously, in my opinion!) as a ‘modern Jane Austen,’ but Heiny actually is—she unites stylistic verve with laugh-out-loud humor, and is a perfect balance of literary and accessible. Early Morning Riser, like her last novel, sneaks up on you. It declares itself as romantic comedy in its early chapters (one with superb, precise writing), but evolves into a narrative with deep stakes and moral concerns, and all without forfeiting its levity and wit. I’d read the back of a cereal box if it was written by Katherine Heiny. This is a real 2021 treat.”

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Ballantine Books, May 4)

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Jill Hendrix, owner, Fiction Addiction, Greenville, South Carolina: “We were early fans of Andy Weir and his debut novel, The Martian, which was a huge bestseller and made into a major motion picture starring Matt Damon. We loved The Martian so much we brainstormed a ‘trust fall’ campaign aimed at getting non-science fiction readers to buy it sight unseen and give it a try. I’m explaining all this so you understand how huge it is that we love Andy’s third science fiction novel even more than his first.

In Project Hail Mary, another lone astronaut has to use science to survive, except it’s not just his survival, but the world’s. This is hard science fiction with a heart, featuring sun-killing microbes, amnesia, and alien first contact.”

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No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone Publishing, September 7)

Keri Cooks, owner, The Womb Bookstore, Wailua, Hawaii: “No Gods, No Monsters is a thrilling story, set in a world not unlike our own, that follows events in the wake of the discovery that creatures from myth and legend are real. It’s a page turner and my customers will love the weaving of tales as the story follows several characters as they navigate their new world where monsters no longer hide but come out of the shadows to gain safety through visibility. My customers are from all backgrounds, ethnicities, identities, etc. and like me, they love to see themselves reflected in the books they read; this book manages to reflect a bit of each of them. Plus, this book has all the things my readers like: an exciting plot, full characters, complex moral dilemmas, mystery, mayhem, with a bit of romance. This science fiction/fantasy story grabs your attention from the beginning. I love the way Cullen changes the narrative of hate and division that has been written about so many times and makes us ponder the question, Who are the real monsters?”

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Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller (US Grove Atlantic September 14/UK Canongate, May 6)

Naledi Yaziyo, curator, Rofhiwa Book Café, Durham, North Carolina: “As a new bookstore that endeavors to capture, in its selection, the vastness of the Black imagination across geographies. Jamaican poet, novelist, and essayist, Kei Miller is the writer who came immediately to mind.

With Things I Have Withheld, Miller promises a lyrical collection of essays in which he ‘examines the experience of discrimination through silence,’ exploding the things that we do not say and testing the boundaries of what we can stand to hear. Drawing on his travels across the US, the UK, Jamaica and other places, Miller’s essays say something about the ways in which meaning, as well as our own positionality can shift as we travel through the world and encounter systemic violence.

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A letter to James Baldwin forms the subject of a chapter that I am particularly excited about. Both Miller and Baldwin are known to be devastatingly concise and honest in their observations concerning race and racism. At a moment when many of the questions this country is grappling with confront the historical violences performed in the name of race, it is compelling to consider what Miller might have to share with Baldwin about where we are as a world. What might Miller say to Baldwin about all the lessons we have not learned despite his best efforts to teach us?”