The Best Books of 2024 You Won't Be Able to Put Down
Make room on your bookshelf: These are the best books of the year.
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Sometimes a book comes along that changes your life. The kind of book you can’t put down, that you recommend to everyone you know, that you keep thinking about long after the last page. I’m always on the hunt for that next perfect book, chasing the reader's high of a really good novel. And in my hundreds of hours of reading this year, I've found some gems I think everyone should read. These are the standout new releases, the absolute best books of 2024.
These books include exciting new voices alongside installments from celebrated authors. Debut author Vanessa Chan offers a heart-wrenching historical fiction novel about a mother who becomes a Japanese spy in WWII-era Malaysia, while bestseller Liane Moriarty returns with a domestic thriller about a woman predicting the deaths of her fellow airplane passengers. Other picks include a genre-bending science-fiction read with a charming romance, a touching book about a girl who believes she’s an alien and more.
These are the books I’ve been recommending to my friends and family, and I hope they speak to you like they spoke to me. Don’t forget to join the Good Housekeeping Book Club for more great book recommendations every month!
This is my hands-down favorite read of 2024. Adina is a young woman who believes she is an alien whose job it is to report on life on Earth. She writes her observations about humanity and faxes them to her home planet. Her missives are both funny and heartbreaking as she navigates the loneliness of growing up feeling like an intergalactic outsider. This touching story about longing, home and family is the kind of book that will make you see your life just a little bit differently afterward.
This stunning debut is a heart-wrenching look at war, colonialism and the damage they wreak on families. In British-occupied Malaya (today's Malaysia) in the 1930s and '40s, Cecily is a dissatisfied housewife. Looking for an identity beyond her family, she becomes a spy for the Japanese, trying to overthrow British rule to create "an Asia for Asians." But the new occupation she ushers in is more brutal than the last, and her family pays the price. This book is being translated into 20 languages for good reason!
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Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies) is the mastermind of twisty domestic dramas. In her latest, a mysterious woman on an airplane starts making predictions for how and when the passengers will die. When the predictions start coming true, the passengers — newlyweds, a workaholic, a flight attendant — scramble to identify the woman and try to escape their fates. Suspenseful and tightly paced, this will suck you in and not let go.
Here One Moment was our September book club pick. Join the Good Housekeeping Book Club for more great reads!
This retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn follows the perspective of Jim, Huck’s enslaved friend. Jim is not the superstitious figure of the original book but an erudite, self-educated man who reads Voltaire and speaks with an exaggerated “slave speech” to protect himself. As a runaway slave, Jim traverses the horrors of the Antebellum South in Everett’s clear-eyed take on code switching and mixed race identity, recontextualizing Twain's original to emphasize the power of language and the cruelty of slavery.
Orange Prize winner Téa Obreht (The Tiger's Wife) returns with her trademark blend of Slavic folklore, magical realism and urban crisis. In a near future wrecked by climate change, Silvia lives in a crumbling tower in the half-flooded Island City. Her mother is tightlipped about their past before immigrating, but when Silvia becomes convinced a woman in their building is a creature from folklore, her obsession lets in the ghosts of a troubled past.
The Ministry of Time is one of the hardest books to classify of 2024. It's a sci-fi adventure romance spy thriller, of sorts, with a dose of historical fiction. When a door in time is discovered, a government program pairs rescued "expats" from different periods in history with "bridges," government agents who will help them adapt to modern life.
With a charming romance, a critique of colonialism and a spy thriller plot, this ambitious book offers a somewhat maddening kaleidoscope. A TV adaptation will be produced by A24.
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Ireland, 1994: While a referendum considers legalizing divorce, the many marital troubles in small town Ardglas fuel its active gossip mill. So when poet Colette returns from an affair in Dublin and tries to reconnect with the sons and husband she left behind, it shakes the town.
Alcoholism, abuse and the parish priest all become embroiled in this twisty look at small town gossip as it alternates between different couples in town, airing the dirty laundry of their marriages.
Cuban artist Anita de Monte falls from a window in New York City, cutting short her career. Suspicion is cast on her white husband, but her tragic death is buried by the art world. Years later, art history student Raquel feels crushed by the prestigious opportunities but oppressive whiteness of her Ivy League school, slowly mirroring Anita de Monte herself. A smart and stinging critique, this academic revenge story offers outspoken women, a splash of santeria and a lot of righteous fury.
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