2021 Lariat Reading List Announced

The 2021 Lariat list has arrived!

The goal of the Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List is to highlight outstanding fiction that is “simply a pleasure to read.” To that end, a committee of librarians from the Texas Library Association annually selects 25 outstanding fiction titles.

This year’s list includes mysteries, for example The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi (a Nigerian family must solve the crime that resulted in the heartbreaking death of their son), and Eight Perfect Murders: A Novel, by Peter Swanson (a mystery bookstore owner blogs about the “perfect murders” in novels but may have inspired a copycat killer.)

There’s also romance, in the form of You Had Me at Hola: A Novel, by Alexis Daria (Actors Jasmine and Ashton discover that love can bloom off-screen as well as on.) Gothic horror thrills abound in Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, when a young woman discovers the haunted secrets of a mansion in 1950s Mexico.

No matter what your taste in fiction runs to, there is sure to be something on the list that you will enjoy. Here is the list:

1. Betty by Tiffany McDaniel (Knopf/PRH)
2. Blacktop Wasteland: A Novel by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books/Macmillan Publishers)
3. The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate  (Ballantine/PRH)
4. The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Hammel  (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster)
5. Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel (Berkley/PRH) )
6. Deacon King Kong by James McBride (Riverhead Books/PRH)
7. The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead Books/PRH)
8. Eight Perfect Murders: A Novel by Peter Swanson (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
9. Ghosts of Harvard: A Novel by Francesca Serritella (Random House/PRH)
10.  The God Game: A Novel by Danny Tobey  ( Martin’s Press/Macmillan Publishers)
11.  The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (Tor Books/Macmillan Publishers)
12.  The Imperfects: A Novel by Amy Meyerson (Park Row-Harlequin/HarperCollins)
13.  The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner  (St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan Publishers)
14.  Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey Books/PRH)
15.  Miss Benson’s Beetle: A Novel by Rachel Joyce (Dial Press/PRH)
16.  My Dark Vanessa: A Novel by Kate Elizabeth Russell  (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
17.  The Roxy Letters: A Novel by Mary Pauline Lowry (Simon & Schuster)
18.  The Stone Girl: A Novel by Dirk Wittenborn  (W.W. Norton & Company)
19.  Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (Knopf/PRH)
20.  Valentine: A Novel by Elizabeth Wetmore (HarperCollins)
21.  We Are All the Same in the Dark: A Novel by Julia Heaberlin  (Ballantine Books/PRH)
22.  Weather: A Novel by Jenny Offill (Knopf/PRH)
23.  Where We Come From: A Novel by Oscar Cásares
24.  A Witch in Time by Constance Sayers (Redhook Publishing/Hachette)
25.  You Had Me at Hola: A Novel by Alexis Daria (Avon Publishing/HarperCollins)