20 of the Best Books to Pick Up This March

It's March—not the cruelest month, but close. For one, is there anything anyone needs more right now than the warmth of spring, longer, sunnier days, the promise of the new? After a full year of COVID, quarantine and political divisions as deep as the Grand Canyon, we can at least be grateful for the solace to be found in a good book—or twenty! We our favorite books of March 2021 to you as an early rite of spring, as good for the heart and soul as the sight of flowers blooming, or birds returning from their winter homes.

And this March is especially abundant, with new novels from some bonafide literary heavyweights, including Pulitzer Prize-winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nobel Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro, and Oprah's Book Club alum Imbolo Mbue. We also have a plethora of debuts from future big names: a rock-and-roll epic by Dawnie Walton, an idiosyncratic short story collection by Sam Cohen, engrossing family sagas by Thomas Grattan and Gabriela Garcia. If nonfiction's more your jam, we've got a trio of books about trailblazing women: Sharon Stone's intimate memoir, Walter Isaacson's biography of Nobel-winning scientist Jennifer Doudna, and a portrait of painter Helen Frankenthaler.

From Madagascar to France, from Cuba to East Germany, let some of the best books of spring take you away.