Powering up your backend knowledge? Our friends at Packt have shared five backend books you should read in 2021.

Node Cookbook, Fourth Edition

Discover solutions, techniques, and best practices for server-side web development with Node.js 14

What reviews say:

“Want to learn Node.js, brush up on your skills, or discover the latest features of Node 14 and beyond? This book is for you! Written by a senior developer and Red Hatter, With a thorough presentation of everything Node, Bethany Griggs delivers from cover to cover in this latest Node Cookbook edition.“

Node.js Web Development, Fifth Edition

Server-side web development made easy with Node 14 using practical examples

What reviews say:

“This book is great. I had some knowledge about full-stack JavaScript, but this book has already taught me a lot. I wouldn’t say that this book is for a complete beginner to software development (coding), but it’s definitely good if you need to deepen your understanding of JavaScript, or if you’re interested in getting started with JavaScript from another backend language like Python, C#, Ruby, etc.”

ASP.NET Core 5 and React

Full-stack web development using .NET 5, React 17, and TypeScript 4

What reviews say:

“The book had a very methodical approach to building single-page applications through React. I am familiar with React and .NET separately and partly why I could pick up the concepts in the book faster but I believe otherwise too, things are laid out very clearly. Recommend it for beginners.”

Full-Stack React, TypeScript, and Node

Build cloud-ready web applications using React 17 with Hooks and GraphQL

What reviews say:

“Nook has a philosophy of “learning by doing” “

Building Vue.js Applications with GraphQL

Develop a complete full-stack chat app from scratch using Vue.js, Quasar Framework, and AWS Amplify

What reviews say:

“This book is a fantastic deep dive into building an end-to-end application on AWS. I really like the fact that he dove deep into many topic areas, showing how to tie everything together to build something that is a real-world use case. The information in this book can also be used in many other areas so the knowledge is very transferable to other scenarios and use cases.”

What titles do you recommend? Share your thoughts in the comments.  Looking for more inspiration? Here are more book recommendations.