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AIR MAIL’s 10 Best Books of 2021

Hustlers, hippies, artists, transcendentalists: holiday reading for every type

AIR MAIL’s Eight Best Mystery Books of 2021

Anthony Horowitz, Sarah Moss, Val McDermid, and more …

The Date That Lives in Infamy

Piano Man

The Call of the Wild

A mountaineer spent his life scaling the world’s great heights. Then he lost a friend in an avalanche, and everything—well, most everything—changed

Object Lesson

A new book traces India’s history and future through 100 objects

Tough Luck

Revisiting Lucky Jim, which Kingsley Amis wrote in collaboration with Philip Larkin before the friends fell out, a writer uncovers equal parts humor and spite

Boeing’s Double Game

Why was a sole Boeing employee criminally charged in the 737 MAX debacle that cost 346 lives and at least $21 billion?

The Chosen Ones

Garbo Lives

Nanny Diaries

A new book tells the story of Vivian Maier, the 20th-century nanny who led a secret life as a street photographer

Crown of Thorns

A new book reveals the identity of the royal whom Meghan and Harry called out in their Oprah interview. Hint: he’s next in line to the throne

Café Noir

Guitar Hero

B. B. King has been called “the world’s greatest blues singer.” A new book argues that his guitar riffs are just as influential

Suspect Protection Program

History’s largest-ever counterterrorism investigation enlisted efforts from the U.S., the U.K., and Pakistan. Why was its main suspect allowed to run free?

The Gang’s All Here

The first collection of Bruce Weber’s golden-retriever shots celebrates the dogs who never leave the photographer’s side, otherwise known as “the gang”

Murder, They Wrote

Dreaming Big

Flora Collins

The Brooklyn-based writer whose debut novel combines Freud, Jordan Peele’s Us, and her own upbringing

Lit on the Rocks

Crypto Cowboys

Cloud Atlas

A new book explores the 10 regions, from Australia to Ethiopia to outer space, that tell us where the world is headed next

A Gentleman (Murderer) in Paris

The Courage to His Couture