The 44 books we couldn't put down in 2024
The year may be wrapping up, but not before we give our favourite new book releases one last nod. Indeed, 2024 was a fulfilling year for bookworms everywhere. Between exhilarating fiction like Kaveh Akbar's 'Martyr!' and Taffy Brodesser-Akner's 'Long Island Compromise', highly-anticipated drops from beloved authors like Sally Rooney and Emily Henry, and provoking non-fiction like Judith Butler's 'Who's Afraid of Gender?' and Jennifer Romolini's 'Ambition Monster,' the year brought cherished shelf additions for every kind of reader.
Keep scrolling to see our top picks of 2024.
Intermezzo
An intimate look at love, grief, and family, 'Conversations With Friends' author Rooney’s fourth novel explores the relationship between two estranged brothers who have drifted apart in the wake of their father’s death. Moving between narrators, it follows Peter, a successful lawyer in his early 30s who is caught between his first love and his younger girlfriend, and Ivan, an awkward 22-year-old chess champion who falls in love with a significantly older woman — much to his brother’s chagrin.
Didion and Babitz
In this dual biography, Anolik attempts to better understand two late literary titans through their complicated relationship: the legendary Joan Didion and L.A. writer and society figure Eve Babitz, who met in 1967 and became fast friends — until a falling-out over Didion’s harsh critiques of Babitz’s first book drove them apart. Through interviews with Babitz (whom Anolik biographed in 2019’s Hollywood’s Eve) and letters the women exchanged, the book traces their convergence, divergence, and singular personas.
Real Americans
In her sophomore novel, award-winning author Rachel Khong crafts an inter-generational saga that asks timely questions about trauma, identity, assimilation, and destiny. 'Real Americans' is split into three different perspectives: twenty-something Lily Chen, a recent NYU graduate who falls in love with the heir to a pharmaceutical dynasty; teenage Nick Chen, Lily’s son who is struggling to fit into the isolated small town he grew up in; and Mei Ling, Lily’s mother who immigrated to the U.S. following Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Part sci-fi and part coming-of-age, the book weaves their storylines together to paint a modern portrait of what it means to fulfil the American Dream.
Adam & Evie's Matchmaking Tour
'Adam and Evie’s Matchmaking Tour' is the perfect rom-com novel for travel bugs. Following the death of her Auntie Hảo, poet Evie Lang is set to inherit her beloved San Francisco row house — on the condition that she embarks on a pre-paid matchmaking tour in their ancestral homeland of Vietnam. Meanwhile, Adam Quyền is busy working as the CMO of his sister’s tour guide company, Love Yeu. Despite the premise of Love Yeu, Adam has totally sworn off any prospect of romance — that is, until he comes face to face with the unpredictable and charismatic Evie.
The Divorcées
In the 1950s, Reno was the country’s divorce capital. Women seeking to escape their marriages would seek residency at so-called “divorce ranches” for six weeks, the length of time required to establish residency in Nevada and subsequently file for divorce. In Rowan Beaird’s gripping debut novel, Lois is one such woman who finds herself in the company of fellow divorcées-to-be at the Golden Yarrow. At first, the weeks seem to pass by uneventfully, with daily horse-riding tours or trips to the local casino. But, when the mysterious and enigmatic Greer arrives at the ranch with a blistering bruise across her face, the women of the Golden Yarrow quickly find themselves liberated under her influence.
Margo's Got Money Troubles
In this laugh-out-loud coming-of-age novel (which will soon be adapted into an Apple TV+ series starring Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, and Michelle Pfeiffer), 20-year-old Margo reconnects with her estranged father, an ex pro wrestler, in order to get free childcare help for her newborn baby. In the process, she also rekindles a relationship with her mother, a former Hooters waitress, and kickstarts a new project to make quick money.
The Book of Love
Short-story writer Kelly Link weaves a captivating tale of friendship and magic in her debut novel. Teenagers Laura, Daniel, and Mo return to their hometown — a small coastal community called Loveland — after an unexpected figure brings them back from the dead. Now, as they attempt to reclaim their lives, they will have to fight off supernatural creatures and solve a longstanding mystery.
Health and Safety: A Breakdown
At the start of Donald Trump’s presidential administration, investigative journalist Emily Witt immersed herself in New York City’s vibrant underground nightlife scene. Her entry into this brand new world was electrifying — full of experimental psychedelics, pulsing techno music, and dark warehouse venues. But, as she chronicles in this memoir, it also showed her a different lens through which to look at how people embrace hedonism to cope with dysfunction.
The God of the Woods
When 13-year-old Barbara Van Lear goes missing at the Adirondacks summer camp that her dynastic family owns, it prompts a panicked search — not least of all because her older brother disappeared in a similar fashion 14 years before. The mystery unravels long-kept family secrets.
Long Island Compromise
The 'Fleishman Is in Trouble' author’s much-anticipated follow-up opens in 1980, when a wealthy businessman is snatched from his home and held for ransom. Once his kidnappers are paid off, he is returned within a week. But decades later, it becomes apparent that the lasting trauma from the abduction has affected him and his family in ways that he, his wife, and their three kids have just begun to reckon with — and have left them irrevocably changed.
The Mighty Red
Set in North Dakota against the backdrop of the 2008 recession, this new book from Pulitzer Prize winner Erdrich revolves around a love triangle involving teen Kismet Poe, whose mother hauls sugar beets for a living. Kismet is about to graduate from high school, and two young men are vying for her affection: Gary Geist, who is set to inherit his family’s two farms, and the bookish, homeschooled Hugo Dumach. But determined to avoid marriage and all that it entails, she begins searching for a way out.
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
National Book Award winner Perry traces the connection between the color blue and its equally harrowing and divine roles in Black history and culture. From the dyed indigo cloths that were traded for human life in the 16th century to the periwinkle flowers that marked the graves of enslaved peoples, and from liberating blues music to the hue of police uniforms, Perry explores the power and potency of the color in a vivid new light.
Rental House
Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who meet at Yale and ultimately get married. As adults, they host each of their families at a vacation rental on Cape Cod, staggering the visits of Keru’s demanding Chinese immigrant parents and Nate’s white Appalachian working-class parents. Years later, they once again host their families, this time in the Catskills. On both trips, tensions around race, class, and cultural expectations arise, bringing with them questions about what it means to make and sustain a family.
City of Night Birds
Kim’s sophomore novel follows former Russian prima ballerina Natalia Leonova, who returns to her native St. Petersburg two years after a crushing injury that cut her time performing with the Paris Opera Ballet short. Addicted to painkillers, sleeping pills, and vodka, she hopes to make a comeback dancing with the Mariinsky Ballet. As Leonova attempts to get her mind and body in shape, she reflects on her unlikely rise from poverty to center stage and how hard she’s fought for her craft.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Murakami’s first novel in six years centers on a 17-year-old boy in love with a nameless girl, who transports him to a fantastical city. There, he works as a Dream Reader, reviewing old, backlogged dreams — until the storyline switches back to real life. The boy, now a middle-aged man living alone in Tokyo, decides to leave the city behind and move to a remote Japanese town, where he becomes the local librarian — and meets a pair of new magical friends.
James
Everett’s Booker Prize-nominated literary retelling of Mark Twain’s controversial 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' resets the canonical tale from the perspective of Jim, the Black man escaping enslavement with whom Huck, who is running away from his abusive father, travels down the Mississippi River. Through his narration, Jim reveals how he uses “slave” talk when he’s around white people in order to make them feel comfortable and superior, punctuating a narrative that careens between violence and satire.
Sugar, Baby
Living at home and cleaning houses for a living, 21-year-old Agnes feels like her life is going nowhere. That changes when she meets her client’s daughter, Emily, who works as a sugar baby. Enraptured, Agnes follows Emily into her line of work, thereby estranging herself from her religious mother and setting out on a dark path of self-discovery.
The Fetishist
When Kyoko’s mother Emi dies by suicide, Kyoko blames washed-up musician Daniel Karmody — the man who seduced and then abandoned Emi. Now in her twenties, Kyoko is ready to take her revenge. Armed with a knife, she sets out to kidnap and murder Karmody, only for her plans to swiftly go awry.
Martyr!
Cyrus Shams — the Iranian-American protagonist of accomplished poet Akbar’s first novel — may be several years sober, but that doesn’t mean he’s not self-destructive in other ways. Haunted by the deaths of his mother (when he was a child) and father (after his first year of college), Cyrus is nearing 30 and still loitering around his old college town when he decides to try and make sense of his parents’ passing the only way he can think of: by writing a book of poetry about martyrs through history. When he learns of an Iranian artist who has been diagnosed with cancer and has decided to turn her final days into a work of performance art, he sets off across the country to meet her.
Come and Get It
In her second novel, the much-lauded author of 2019’s 'Such A Fun Age' takes clever aim at the social stratifications and warped value systems of academia. When a white visiting professor named Agatha offers Black college senior and resident assistant Millie an opportunity to make some money arranging interviews with students for a book Agatha is writing, Millie sees the job as an easy way to make some extra cash. But the enterprise quickly spirals out of hand as the two become wrapped up in the messy lives of three female suitemates living in Agatha’s dorm.
Good Material
The beloved author of 'Ghosts' and 'Everything I Know About Love' is back with her fourth book and second novel in less than six years. In the wake of a devastating breakup, aspiring stand-up comedian Andy is left to sift through the wreckage of his most recent relationship. If he can figure out why Jen fell out of love with him, he figures, maybe he can win her back. But every relationship has two sides, and Andy is about to learn Jen’s version of the story.
Greta and Valdin
This laugh-out-loud-funny debut novel follows the titular gay children of a Maori mother and Russian immigrant father living in Auckland, New Zealand. (They also have an older brother, Casper, but he’s straight and therefore less interesting.) Gre and Val navigate love, family, and career angst as they make their way through their twenties amid a cast of friends and family just as colorful as they are.
Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story
Coming as it does from an author known for writing essays that braid together personal narrative with meticulous research, 'Splinters' marks a departure for Leslie Jamison: though she’s written herself into prior books, this one is her first straightforward, unadulterated memoir. Chronicling the birth of her child and attendant breakdown of her marriage, Jamison captures the magic of simultaneous love and loss as only she can.
Great Expectations
Naming your debut novel after the ubiquitous Charles Dickens classic is a bold move, but it pays dividends in the case of Cunningham’s sweeping tale of a young, Black single dad who finds work as an aide on a young, Black politician’s historic presidential campaign. Clearly inspired by the author’s own experiences as a staffer on Obama’s campaign (and then in the White House), this formidable debut ultimately digresses into a reality all its own.
Fire Exit
After winning widespread acclaim for 'Night of the Living Rez', his debut collection of short stories, Talty is back with a first novel that cements his status as a writer to watch. When his twentysomething-year-old neighbour Elizabeth goes missing, Penobscot tribal member Charles Lamosway grows worried — not least because of the secret he's been keeping for Elizabeth’s entire life: She's his daughter.
Wandering Stars
The long-awaited follow-up to Orange’s lauded debut novel — 'There There', released in 2018 — is sort of a prequel, sort of a sequel, and yet ultimately something entirely independent and original. Following the descendants of a single Cheyenne survivor of the Sand Creek massacre, 'Wandering Stars' stirringly spans the 160 years between the 1864 tragedy and the present day before ultimately depositing us neatly in the aftermath of the events of Orange’s first book.
Memory Piece
In her decades-spanning latest novel, Lisa Ko probes the distances that accumulate between ambition and reality. As teenagers in the 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are united by their shared worldview and sense of alienation. As adults, all three women — now a performance artist, a coder, and a community activist, respectively — their dreams have grown more complicated, and so have their conflicting definitions of success.
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
As a first-generation art history student from New York City, Raquel is used to feeling like an outsider at her elite Ivy League school. But when a chance encounter flings her into the public eye of the art world, she finds herself increasingly fascinated by — and connected to — the story of Anita de Monte, a once-rising artist whose burgeoning career was cut short by her tragic death in 1985. (Author Gonzalez took inspiration for de Monte’s fictional life story from that of real-life conceptual artist Ana Mendieta, who passed away that same year.)
Annie Bot
If there’s one thing artists are going to do to sort out our feelings about autonomy and free will in the age of artificial intelligence, it’s imagining how robots and humans would have sex. Such is the case in Greer’s darkly clever new novel about the titular Annie Bot, an artificial intelligence created to be the perfect companion for her human owner, Doug. But as Annie learns how to better mimic a “real woman,” she begins to wonder whether she can ever lay claim to any humanness of her own.
Worry
Described by its publisher as “Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This,” Tanner’s Brooklyn-set debut novel about two sisters’ coming-of-anxiety is both riotously funny and wryly existential. It’s 2019, and 28-year-old Jules Gold is reeling from a break up when her younger sister Poppy — relatively fresh off of a suicide attempt that no one except Jules knows about — invites herself to move into Jules’ apartment. Together, over the course of the year leading up to the global covid pandemic, the Gold sisters scramble to find their footing and figure out their respective futures.
Who's Afraid of Gender?
Arriving at a time when LGBTQ+ rights in states across the U.S. are increasingly under attack, this new treatise by legendary gender theorist Judith Butler is a much-needed balm to counter the right wing’s ever-escalating wave trans panic. In this incisive and vital new volume, Butler traces the current anti-trans movement to its roots in xenophobia, fascism, and misogyny.
The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality
After tackling our relationship with the English language, the best-selling author of 'Cultish' and 'Wordslut' is ready to challenge the uniquely 21st-century cognitive biases that rule us all. In 'Magical Overthinking', Montell dives into a slew of topics, from our hero worship of celebrities to the stranglehold that the “sunk cost fallacy” has on our dating lives, all with her trademark incisive wit.
Little Rot
A prolific genre-hopper, Akwaeke Emezi has already conquered the genres of literary fiction, romance, memoir, and YA fantasy. Now, Emezi turns their sharp, lyrical eye to noir with a novel spanning the seedy underbelly of New Lagos, Nigeria. When Kalu attends his friend Ahmed’s exclusive sex party, hoping to get his mind off his devastating breakup with ex-girlfriend Aima, Kalu makes an impulsive decision that will irrevocably alter the lives of everyone around him.
All Fours
This raw, unfiltered novel from the acclaimed author/artist/filmmaker sparked a new wave of conversation around the often-taboo topic of perimenopause. A semi-famous fortysomething artist leaves her husband and child at home in L.A. to drive across the country to New York City — but almost immediately goes rogue from her own plan, embarking on a different sort of journey altogether.
Exhibit
Living in the Bay Area with her college sweetheart Philip, photographer Jin Han is young, brilliant, and married. But is she happy? She’s never thought to question it — until she attends a party in the well-moneyed hills just outside of San Francisco, where she meets ballet dancer Lidija Jung. In her latest novel since 2018’s acclaimed 'The Incendiaries', Kwon once again holds nothing back.
Ambition Monster: A Memoir
At the top of her game, Jennifer Romolini had it all: a “girlboss” dream job, a total catch of a husband, and a beautiful child. So why was she so unhappy? And when did it all fall apart? These are the questions Romolini seeks to answer in her intimate, intensely resonant memoir about workaholism, unresolved trauma, and the “addictive nature of ambition.”
Tehrangeles
From their Los Angeles-area McMansion to their snack-food empire, the Milani family is Persian-American royalty — and soon they’ll have the reality show to prove it. But from parents Ali and Homa to every one of their four daughters, each of the Milanis has a secret they’re trying to hide from the cameras. Will the Milanis be able to guard their privacy as they skyrocket to fame? And will this experience bring the family closer together or drive them further apart?
Blue Sisters
How do you follow up 2022’s buzziest, messiest love story? If you’re 'Cleopatra and Frankenstein' author Coco Mellors, you chase it with a tale of three estranged sisters who return home in the wake of their fourth sister’s unexpected death. Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky have all gone their separate ways, but when the New York City apartment they were raised in is up for sale, they rush home to stop it — and reckon with their shared upbringing in the process.
Creation Lake
In novels and essays alike, the ineffable Rachel Kushner has chronicled motorcycle races, women’s prisons, 1970s counterculture, and more. Now, in her first novel in six years, she follows a mysterious American woman who makes her way to rural France to infiltrate an anarchist collective. But whom is she serving, and what is she after? And what happens when she begins to fall under the sway of the activists’ mentor?
Funny Story
Romance novels are all about the main character’s journey to find true love, but what happens to all the potential love interests who don’t make the cut? In her latest, genre titan Emily Henry answers this question by turning the spotlight on Daphne — the woman who got kicked to the curb when her ex-fiancé Peter left to pursue his “happily ever after” with childhood friend Petra. When Daphne unexpectedly starts sharing an apartment with Petra’s own ex-fiancée, Miles, the two hatch up a plan to fake a relationship on Instagram, in full view of their exes. What could go wrong?
How to End a Love Story
If one new Emily Henry novel this year isn’t enough for you, you may find your other new favourite author closer to home than you expected. In addition to writing novels, author Yulin Kuang is also a screenwriter and director — in fact, she’s the filmmaker who’ll be bringing Henry’s novels 'Beach Read' and 'People We Meet On Vacation' to a big screen near you. (We can’t wait!) So it feels only right that Kuang’s own debut romance, about two screenwriters with a shared past, is coming out within a week of Henry’s latest.
The Familiar
The acclaimed YA author of the Grishaverse series made her adult debut with 2019’s 'Ninth House', whose sequel 'Hell Bent' came out in 2023. Now, Bardugo tackles another first: 'The Familiar', an adult historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age, is the author’s first-ever standalone novel in any genre.
I Was A Teenage Slasher
Fresh off the conclusion of his Indian Lake Trilogy (the third installment, 'The Angel of Indian Lake', also came out this year), the prolific horror author already has an entirely new world for his fans to play in. It’s 1989, and small-town Texan teen Tolly Driver is a good kid — until he’s cursed to kill for revenge. Suddenly finding himself the villain in a slasher horror, Tolly sets out to write his own autobiography.
Parasol Against the Axe
In modern-day fabulist Oyeyemi’s new novel, aptly-named protagonist Hero Tojosoa accepts an invitation to her estranged friend Sofie’s bachelorette weekend in Prague. But the city seems to be playing tricks on her, with all manner of uninvited guests popping up throughout the weekend — including someone from Hero’s and Sofie’s past whose presence highlights the women’s differing accounts of their friendship’s rupture.
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