Books You May Have Missed 2021: Adult Fiction

"It's the summer of 1996 and school's out forever for Andy, her boyfriend Marcus, her best friend Peter, and Em. When Andy's alcoholic mother predicts the apocalypse, the four teenagers decide to see out the end of the world at a deserted manor house, the site of a historic unsolved mystery. There they meet David - charming and unreliable, he seems to have appeared out of nowhere. David presents an irresistible lure for both Andy and Peter and complicates...

The best science fiction and fantasy stories of 2021, selected by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Veronica Roth. This year's selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde....

"Benjamin Gold is damaged goods. After he cracked up in the war and was discharged into a psych ward, his rich wife dumped him. Right after that, the white-shoe law firm that never hired Jews dumped him too; without powerful in-laws, it didn't matter how many cases he won or how much he shortened his name. Unemployable as a lawyer, he wound up working as a private eye - and not exactly at the top of the profession. Drunk and anorectic, his only remaining...

"Charlie Matheson has spent his life taking care of things. When his parents died two days before his eighteenth birthday, he took care of his younger brother, even though that meant putting his own dreams on hold. He took care of his father's hardware store, building it into something known several towns over. He took care of the cat he found in the woods... so now he has a cat. When a stranger with epic tattoos and a glare to match starts coming...

"26 new short stories representing the state of the art in international science fiction, selected by Lavie Tidhar. The Best of World SF draws together stories from across the spectrum of science fiction - expect robots, spaceships and time travel, as well as some really weird stuff - representing twenty-one countries and five continents."--Provided by publisher.

"Jen Spyra has worked in nearly every kind of comedy there is: penning stories for The Onion, writing skits and one-liners for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, contributing pieces to The New Yorker and McSweeney's, and taking the stage for improv at UCB Theater in Manhattan. Her incredible range is on display in this uproarious, addictive collection of short stories that include a twisted exchange between a wealthy New York woman and the child...

"Sloan McPherson and the Underwater Investigation Unit have discovered a van at the bottom of a murky Florida pond. Sealed inside the watery tomb are the bodies of four teenagers who disappeared thirty years ago after leaving a rock concert. To authorities, it looks like a tragic accident. To Sloan, it looks like murder. Every piece of evidence is starting to connect to a string of cold case vanishings throughout Florida. Clue by clue, Sloan navigates...

"On the night of February 6, 1978, a catastrophic nor'easter struck the city of New York. On that night, in a penthouse in the Upper West Side's stately Apelles, a crowd gathered for a wild party. And on that night, Mr. Albert Haynes Caldwell - a partner emeritus at Swank, Brady & Plescher; Harvard class of '26; father of three; widower; atheist; and fiscal conservative - hatched a plan to fake a medical emergency and toss himself into the Hudson...

"Gyre finally sees a way to overthrow the all-powerful Twilight Order. But he'll have to gain the alliance of both the ghouls and the human rebels to the south in order to even stand have a chance. And uniting them won't be so simple. His sister Maya is still a soldier of the Order. But after clashing with her brother, she isn't so certain where her loyalties lie. Chasing the origins of a mysterious artifact to a long-lost library, she just might...