Our Top 20 Books from the 21st Century (So Far)

This novel is a stunning, provocative debut about a darkly comic Bangalore driver navigating life through poverty and the corruption of modern India’s caste society. It is narrative genius with mischief and personality all its own—which is why it was an international publishing sensation that won the Booker Prize! And now, Adiga is coming out with another novel in 2020, so it’s only right that we recognize his talent and the book that knocked us off our feet.

Anthony Doerr’s book won the Pulitzer Prize and was on the New York Times’s bestseller list for more than two and a half years—and it was a finalist for the National Book Award. The reason? It’s an extremely powerful, stunning novel, set against the backdrop of World War II, about the ways in which people try to be good to each other against all odds.

If you’ve never read Jesmyn Ward, you are missing out. She has won the National Book Award twice—once for Salvage the Bones and once for this novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, which is destined to become a classic. It’s a majestic, stirring story about a multigenerational family on a journey through rural Mississippi. Hope, struggle, and love all play a major part, and with Ward’s lyrical writing, the book captures your every sense.

We couldn’t get through a list on Off the Shelf without throwing some love to Fredrik Backman! We’ve written about him over and over, and it’s because we absolutely love him. He writes beautiful, heartfelt stories about community and the way people can touch each other’s lives, and this debut is no exception. Ove is a curmudgeon, but under his cranky exterior is a sadness—and when a young couple and their daughters move in next door, it leads to unexpected friendships and lives changed forever. This book introduced us to Fredrik Backman, and as such, we’ll never forget it.

This #1 New York Times bestseller is the rich, compelling historical drama full of love, sex, and ambition that became a film sensation and snowballed our fascination with the Tudor court into an entire fan culture. This novel brings to light a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived a treacherous political landscape by following her heart—Mary Boleyn, who had to step aside for her best friend and rival to take over Henry VIII’s heart and throne. We’ll just say: Thanks, Philippa. Now we can’t get enough historical fiction!

This list comprises books we loved from the past 20 years, and for almost half that time, The Glass Castle has been on the New York Times’s bestseller list. For years, this remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption has given readers a glimpse into a family both deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. It’s heartbreaking, but also full of love and faith—and honesty—making it easily one of the top books published in the 21^st century.

When Milk and Honey was published, it took the world by storm. Rupi Kaur’s short, honest, and relatable poems resonated with readers everywhere. Each poem deals with pain, survival, love, loss, and femininity—and they show that, even in the most bitter moments in life, there is sweetness everywhere, if you’re willing to look.

Ruth Ware is the queen of twist endings and we love her for it. In this instant New York Times bestselling thriller, what should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn. She weaves a deeply obsessive and dark tale we could not put down—and because of it, we’ll pick up every book she writes from now on.

If you visit us frequently, you’ll know our ed board loves Stephen King. And this year, 2020, this memoir/manual turns 20 years old. In honor of its anniversary, we’ll share a quick ode to it: brilliantly structured, friendly, and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it—fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

The premise of this fantastical and philosophical novel is a young boy stranded on a boat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker for 227 days. It’s spiritual, it’s moving, and, ultimately, incredibly impactful. And it won the Booker Prize!

We talk a lot about the extremely talented author Sarah Waters. Our own Sarah Jane has said, “Her novels are a skillful and engrossing combination of so many things I love: lush historical details with a seedy Dickensian underbelly. Complex, flawed but strong female characters. Unexpected plot twists. And though I’m not usually a reader of romance, the romantic pairings and journeys in her novels have so much emotional depth and passion and nuance, I can’t help but be swept up in them.” She has become one of our top authors, and her novel Fingersmith is a true treasure.

Marlon James is a masterful storyteller, capable of weaving an intricate, striking, and atmospheric tale of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the 1970s. This novel is a brilliant example of James’s ability to craft an entire world through the eyes of multiple characters—and that’s why it both won the Booker Prize and stole our hearts.

Some books leave impressions on readers, and some books leave impressions on society as a whole. The Underground Railroad did both. It shook us to our core. Whitehead’s novel shows the brutal history of the US, following escaped slaves as they search for the Underground Railroad that will take them out of the South—and in this story, the railroad is an actual train and tracks. It’s harrowing, powerful, and moving, with lyrical writing that will forever be etched in our minds and hearts.

Patti Smith is an icon, and her memoir about her time living in New York with Robert Mapplethorpe as they both grow into themselves and rise to fame is remarkable. It focuses largely on their relationship, and acts as a sort of elegy to Mapplethorpe. It celebrates artistry, love, friendship, and the hustle of New York in the 60s and 70s. It’s beautiful and, frankly, iconic.

My Brilliant Friend was a book we could not get enough of in the past few years. Elena Ferrante is a force, and this novel introduced us to her incredible gift: the ability to write flawed characters tangled in friendships and relationships that are both loving and resentful, and incredibly universal. She is coming out with a new novel shortly, and we wouldn’t have been so excited if we first hadn’t read and fallen in love with the first of her Neapolitan Novels.

Gillian Flynn took femme fatale to a whole new level, and turned everyone into suspense and crime fiction readers with this book. Flawed women, mysterious plots, and twist endings have existed forever—but not only has this novel become a staple of its genre, it created a phenomenon. It’s now the book we think of when we talk about domestic thrillers.

Similar to Gone Girl, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo became an international sensation. This pulse-pounding thriller follows a journalist and a troubled hacker as they try to discover what happened to a young woman who disappeared forty years earlier. It sparked us to pad our book stacks with even more Scandinavian thrillers.

This captivating mystery quickly became a modern classic, and for good reason. The main character, 15-year-old Christopher Boone, doesn’t understand human emotions, doesn’t like to be touched, and relates well to animals. When he finds the neighbor’s dog dead under suspicious circumstances, Christopher tries to investigate what happened. It’s incredibly touching, funny, and heartfelt, and lasted with us years after we finished reading it. (It made one of our Books I’ll Never Forget lists!)

Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is an excellent writer, and in this dystopian science fiction book (shortlisted for the Booker), his writing mastery is on full display. We chose this over his other novels because it’s a heartbreaking but courageous mystery that knocks us down every time we read it. Through the eyes of Kathy—a young girl at an English boarding school that doesn’t allow for contact with the outside world—Ishiguro explores morality, humanity, and memory.

An instant New York Times bestseller, this magnificent novel follows four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression. They escape a horrific school, and over the course of a summer, they cross paths with many others: struggling farmers and traveling faith healers, displaced families, and lost souls of all kinds. It’s a big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole—and it is one we will be rereading for years to come.