novel ebook reviews

The 10 Best Books of 2024

The staff of The New York Times Book Review choose the year’s top fiction and nonfiction.

Credit... By Karan Singh

Supported by

• Share full article

By The New York Times Books Staff

• Published Dec. 3, 2024 Updated Dec. 4, 2024

Here they are — the 10 Best Books of 2024.

At the Book Review, we spend all year getting ready for this moment. We begin debating our annual best-of list in the spring, going to the mat for what we love. By fall, we’re preparing for rhetorical slugfests.

Ultimately, we aim to pick the books that made lasting impressions: the stories that imprinted on our hearts and psyches, the examining of lives that deepened what we thought we already knew.

We delve into each of these books on a special edition of the Book Review podcast , and we break down three picks in a handy video . For even more great books, take a spin through all 100 Notable Books of 2024 , or even this list , which features every book we’ve anointed the best since 2000.

By Miranda July

July’s second novel, which follows a married mother and artist who derails a solo cross-country road trip by checking into a motel close to home and starting an affair with a younger rental-car worker, was the year’s literary conversation piece, dubbed “the talk of every group text — at least every group text composed of women over 40” and “the first great perimenopause novel” in just two of many articles that wrestled with its themes. Sexually frank and laced with the novelist’s loopy humor, the book ends up posing that most universal question: What would you risk to change your life? Read our review.

Local bookstores | Barnes and Noble | Amazon | Apple

Good Material

By dolly alderton.

In Alderton’s brisk, witty novel, a 35-year-old struggling comedian in London tries to make sense of a recent breakup at the same moment when the majority of his friends seem to be pairing off for life. Cue snappy dialogue, awkward first dates and a memorable quest for a new home; toss clichéd gender roles, the traditional marriage plot and a ho-hum happily ever after. Not only does Alderton cement herself as a latter-day Nora Ephron, she also puts her own mark on the classic romantic comedy form. There are no second fiddles in “Good Material”; every character sings. And there is a deeper message, revealed in a surprise twist, having to do with independence, adventure and charting your own course. Read our review.

By Percival Everett

It takes a lot of ambition, skill and vision to reinvent one of the most iconic books in American letters, but Everett demonstrates he possesses those virtues in droves in “James.” The novel is a radical reworking of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” telling the story not from Huck’s perspective, but from the point of view of the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River: Jim (or, as he clarifies, James). From James’s eyes, we see he is no mere sidekick but rather a thinker and a writer who is code-switching as illiterate and fighting desperately for freedom. Everett’s novel is a literary hat trick — a book that highlights the horrors in American history and complicates an American classic, all while also emerging as a work of exquisite originality in its own right. Read our review.

By Kaveh Akbar

Cyrus Shams, an Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering drug addict, wallows in a post-college malaise in a fictional Midwestern town. He’s working dead-end jobs and halfheartedly attending A.A., while grieving his parents’ deaths and, increasingly, fantasizing about his own. Cyrus is lost and sad, but this captivating first novel, by an author who is himself a poet, is anything but. As Akbar nudges Cyrus closer to uncovering a secret in his family’s past, he turns his protagonist’s quest for meaning — involving a road trip to New York and a revelatory encounter in the Brooklyn Museum — into an indelible affirmation of life, rife with inventive beauty, vivid characters and surprising twists of plot. Read our review.

You Dreamed of Empires

By álvaro enrigue; translated by natasha wimmer.

History has long been Enrigue’s playground, and his latest novel takes readers to 16th-century Tenochtitlan, or what is now Mexico City. Hernán Cortés and his men have arrived at Moctezuma’s palace for a diplomatic — if tense and comically imbalanced — meeting of cultures and empires. In this telling, it’s Moctezuma’s people who have the upper hand, though the emperor himself is inconveniently prone to hallucinogenic reveries and domestic threats. The carnage here is devilishly brazen, the humor ample and bone-dry. Read our review.

Cold Crematorium

By józsef debreczeni; translated by paul olchváry.

Debreczeni, 39 when he was deported from his native Hungary to what he calls “the Land of Auschwitz,” would later memorialize the experience in a book that defies easy classification. First published in 1950, “Cold Crematorium” is a masterpiece of clinical, mordant observation. In a cattle car he watches a fellow deportee whose hand retains the gestures of a chain-smoker; newly arrived at Auschwitz, he encounters the lousy barroom piano player he avoided back home. This is more than gallows humor; it’s a stubborn fight to stay human and place the unimaginable in the context of the known. Look elsewhere for platitudes — Debreczeni witnessed, and reported, the best and worst of mankind and showed it to us to use as we will. Read our review.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

By jonathan blitzer.

Blitzer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, presents a timely analysis of the situation at America’s southern border, placing the blame for today’s screaming headlines, detainee camps and unaccompanied minors firmly on post-Cold War U.S. policy. His kaleidoscopic narrative moves between the Central American insurgencies that flooded this country with refugees, and the shifting and frequently incoherent policies that worsened the fallout. We meet morally pragmatic domestic politicians, a tireless activist who’s moved from El Salvador to Chicago, Los Angeles teenagers ensnared in gang pipelines. None of it is simple; all of it has a terrible cost. Blitzer handles his vast topic with assurance and grace, never losing sight of the human element behind the global crisis. Read our review.

I Heard Her Call My Name

By lucy sante.

When the veteran literary and cultural critic came out as transgender in 2021 at the age of 66, she described in an email to her loved ones the devastating realization that her “parallel life” — the one presented to her by a “gender-swapping” app that showed her how she would have looked as a girl and then a woman at various junctures in her life — had passed her by. “Fifty years were under water, and I’d never get them back.” As she reflects on her upbringing as the “only child of isolated immigrants,” her early adulthood in 1970s New York and her career of seeking truths through writing while hiding an important truth about herself, Sante fearlessly documents a transformation both internal and external, one that is also a kind of homecoming. Read our review.

By Max Boot

This elegant biography of the 40th president stands out for its deep authority and nimble style. Boot, a historian and foreign policy analyst, grew up idolizing Ronald Reagan, but after a decade of interviews and research, he finds himself asking whether his onetime hero paved the way for Donald Trump, the man whose ascent to power led Boot to abandon the right. The book is a landmark work that shows how Reagan emerged from his New Deal roots to become a practiced Red baiter and racist dog whistler before settling into the role of the optimistic all-American elder statesman. “It is no exaggeration,” Boot writes, “to say that you cannot fully comprehend what happened to America in the 20th century without first understanding what happened to Ronald Reagan.” Read our review.

The Wide Wide Sea

By hampton sides.

In this masterly history, Sides tracks the 18th-century English naval officer James Cook’s third and final voyage across the globe, painting a vivid and propulsive portrait that blends generations of scholarship with the firsthand accounts of European seafarers as well as the oral traditions of Indigenous Pacific islanders. The story begins in Britain as the last embers of the Enlightenment are going out, a time when curiosity and empathy gave way to imperial ambition and moral zeal. Between tales of adventure on the open ocean, complex depictions of Polynesian culture and colorful scenes of a subarctic frost littered with animal life, Sides expertly probes the causes of Cook’s growing anger and violence as the journey wears on and the explorer reckons with the fallout of what he and others had wrought in expanding the map of Europe’s power. Read our review.

Advertisement

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Book Reviews

• NPR Books Home
• Subscribe to Books Newsletter

'Time of the Child' is a marvelous blend of despair and redemption

December 4, 2024 • Set in a small Irish village in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1962, Niall Williams' latest novel avoids cliché by investing specificity and life into characters and places.

Books We Love

12 novels that npr critics and staff were excited to share with you in 2024.

December 2, 2024 • Every year, we ask NPR staff and book critics to share their favorite titles in our annual Books We Love guide. Behind the scenes, it's fun to spot trends and see what gets nominated again and again.

Here are the Books We Love: 350+ great 2024 reads recommended by NPR

November 25, 2024 • Books We Love returns with 350+ new titles handpicked by NPR staff and trusted critics. Find 12 years of recommendations all in one place — that's nearly 4,000 great reads.

Two books delivered beauty, inspiration and humor — just when I needed them most

November 14, 2024 • Sometimes, the right book shows up just at the right time. Our book critic encountered two such books this week: Water, Water, by Billy Collins, and The Dog Who Followed the Moon , by James Norbury.

Need a break from politics? Marvel at the 'Vanishing Treasures' of the natural world

November 7, 2024 • With 23 short essays on creatures ranging from the wombat to the spider, Katherine Rundell's new book is essential reading for anyone whose wonder could use a jumpstart.

What if a 'Blood Test' predicted you'd commit murder?

October 22, 2024 • In Charles Baxter's new novel, a small-town insurance salesman buys a blood test that can predict romantic entanglements, promotions — and more. It's a screwball satire of all-American zaniness.

A housemaid is suspected of killing a child in 'Clean,' a novel about class and power

October 17, 2024 • Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zerán has written an intense novel about the kind of deep down rot that lingers, despite the most vigorous scrubbing.

Michel Houellebecq says Annihilation will be his last novel. Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A polarizing, provocative French novelist says he’s written his last book

October 16, 2024 • Michel Houellebecq is a controversial literary superstar. His new book, Annihilation, centers on a middle-aged Paris bureaucrat in a sexless marriage. It's slow to start, but still holds surprises.

Shred Sisters Grove Atlantic hide caption

Modest moments become revelatory in the wry and incisive 'Shred Sisters'

October 14, 2024 • Betsy Lerner's debut novel weaves together the ordinary and the erratic to tell the story of a middle-class Jewish family whose suburban life is turned upside down by mental illness.

'Intermezzo' is Sally Rooney's most moving novel yet

September 24, 2024 • Rooney's fourth novel is a story about learning to accept loss. And though it has its share of grief and strife, it's happier and less disturbing than Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Powers plunges deep into the ocean in 'Playground'

September 23, 2024 • Richard Powers' latest novel brims with love for humanity and the planet. He makes clear that while humans have made this planet our amusement park, we have not always taken proper care of our toys.

Death at the Sign of the Rook Penguin Random House hide caption

A light-hearted murder mystery weekend turns deadly in Kate Atkinson's cozy thriller

September 20, 2024 • Death at the Sign of the Rook is an expansive novel that pokes fun of baroque, classic murder mysteries — but also delivers a fully satisfying, all-the-pieces-click-together ending.

Entitlement Penguin Random House hide caption

'Entitlement' disappoints — 'Leave the World Behind' was a tough act to follow

September 19, 2024 • Rumaan Alam’s previous novel was an inspired swirl of suspense, social commentary and apocalyptic disaster. His latest is about a young Black woman working for a uber-rich white philanthropist.

'Brothers and Ghosts' is a multi-generational saga of the Vietnamese diaspora

September 18, 2024 • Khuê Phạm's debut novel follows a young Berlin journalist whose parents emigrated from South Vietnam. A message from an estranged uncle in the U.S. prompts her to explore her family history.

Crater Lake Simon and Schuster hide caption

Rachel Kushner's new espionage thriller may be her coolest book yet

September 10, 2024 • In Creation Lake, a hard-drinking American spy infiltrates a radical farming collective in a remote region of France. Kushner challenges readers to keep up with her and not to flinch.

'Colored Television' is an ungentle satire set in post-post-racial America

September 9, 2024 • Danzy Senna's new novel is an exhilarating yet poignant riff on the struggling artist as a wannabe middle-aged sellout. The writing is endlessly quotable and meaningfully provocative.

'We're Alone,' but together, in Edwidge Danticat's remarkable essays

September 9, 2024 • With clear, concise prose that delves into harsh topics without losing its sense of humor, Danticat once again proves that she is one of contemporary literature's strongest, most graceful voices.

Everything is the worst in this 'Banal Nightmare'

September 8, 2024 • Novelist Halle Butler understands our worst enemy is sometimes our own brain. Her dark, chaotic novel manages to be often hilarious yet relentlessly uncheerful.

'I Just Keep Talking' is a refreshing and wide-ranging essay collection

September 5, 2024 • Scholar, historian, artist and raconteur Nell Irvin Painter is the author of The History of White People and Old in Art School. Her latest book is an insightful addition to her canon.

Gather 'round — we have some fall reading recommendations for you. Above, children listen to a story in Central Park on Oct. 23, 2017. Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Here are the new books we're looking forward to this fall

September 4, 2024 • Bad news: Summer's over. Good news: Fall books are here! We've got a list of 16 titles — fiction and nonfiction — you'll want to look out for.

This is genius: A new graphic novel imagines conversations between Einstein and Kafka

August 28, 2024 • Turns out Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka lived in Prague at the same time and had the same circle of friends. In a new graphic novel, Ken Krimstein puts us in the room with two 20th century geniuses.

'Interpretations of Love' is debut novel for 82-year-old author

August 24, 2024 • Two years ago, Cat Brushing, a collection of provocative stories about older women still very much in touch with the sensual side of life, put Jane Campbell on the map.

Paradise Bronx Macmillan Publishers hide caption

Frazier's 'Paradise Bronx' makes you want to linger in NYC's 'drive-through borough'

August 21, 2024 • Ian Frazier’s signature voice — droll, ruminative, generous — draws readers in. But his underlying subject here is even bigger than the Bronx: It’s the way the past “bleeds through” the present.

A Wilder Shore Penguin Random House hide caption

'A Wilder Shore' charts the course of a famous bohemian marriage

August 19, 2024 • Camille Peri's lively and substantive dual biography of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson offers a glimpse of their unconventional marriage — and an inspiration for living fearlessly.