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Marie Claire
Marie Claire
Lifestyle
Catherine Jarvie

We’ve found the best books of 2024 to curl up with

A montage of the best books of 2024.

Autumn in book world is traditionally the season for much-anticipated releases by big-name authors, and September/October 2024 doesn’t disappoint.

Elizabeth Strout, Rachel Kushner, Rumaan Alam, Richard Powers and – of course (drumroll, please…) – Sally Rooney are just some of the established heavy-hitters in this edition of our round-up. But there’s plenty of fresh talent coming to bookshelves near you, too, starting with Morgan Talty’s poignant debut about belonging and legacy.

So pull up a chair and get cosy with this lot in your reading pile for the next two months, you’re not going anywhere.

The best new books of 2024

More September/October books in brief:

  • Our Evenings, Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty author returns with a decades-long tale of two men, Dave and Giles, from their first encounter as schoolboys to their very different careers as actor and politician, respectively. Now in his sixties, the novel is narrated by Dave, as he looks back on his life and loves as a gay man coming of age in a rapidly changing world.
  • Night of Baba Yaga, Akira Otani: This queer gangland Japanese thriller is styled as Kill Bill meets The Handmaiden meets Thelma and Louise – and from violence to sex to friendship, that pretty much nails it on all fronts.
  • Our London Lives, Christine Dwyer Hickey: It’s 1979 and teenage runaway Milly lands herself a job in a central London pub just after arriving in the capital from Ireland. There she meets rising boxer Pip, and a faltering, decades-long friendship and on/off love affair between the two ensues. As much a love letter to – and lament for – the changing face of London as a chronical of Milly and Pip’s star-crossed story.
  • Annihilation, Michel Houellebecq: The enfant terrible of French literature is back with the English translation of his most recent novel (published in France in early 2022) and he’s claiming it to be his last. Expect his usual provocative fare in the politics of the thriller set-up, but there’s softer, sadder side inside this too, with love and death, depression and grief all met head-on.

The best new books of July / August

We’re back with this year’s offering of brilliant new reads that are sure to keep the pages turning for you throughout 2024. In the spirit of that newness, we’ve given ourselves a little refresh, with a more detailed, bimonthly offering of fully reviewed must-reads and recommendations, supported by a flurry of additional favoured titles in brief.

Whether you’re spending it pool- or city-side, what better to keep you company through these long, lingering days and nights of high summer than a healthy stack of new releases.

From a heartbreakingly vivid contemporary ghost story to a triumphant – and chilling – take on the myths of Ancient Greece via Jazz Age New York and, er, Eastbourne, we’ve got you covered. Just don’t forget the SPF.

More July/August Books in Brief

The best new books of 2024

  • Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good, Eley Williams. That title – taken, weather watchers and insomniacs will be aware, from the shipping forecast – says everything about the funny, offbeat-to-the-point-of-nerdy nature of Williams’ newest short story collection. And that, in our book, is a very good thing.
  • Heart, Be at Peace, Donal Ryan. A return to the landscape – and characters – of Ryan’s widely acclaimed first novel, The Spinning Heart. Each short chapter is narrated by a different member of the community, building up a similarly moving and incisive take on small-town Ireland life.
  • The Instrumentalist, Harriet Constable. This vivid retelling turns the spotlight on forgotten 18th-century Venetian violinist and orphan Anna Maria dells Pietà – who studied under Vivaldi and was a true star of her day.
  • Ex-Wife, Ursula Parrot. Billed as the summer’s hottest rediscovered classic, Parrott’s debut about a young divorcee trying to find her way in Jazz Age New York was a bestselling sensation on release. The men are cruel, the women are feisty but inevitably – sometimes brutally – put-upon.
  • Wife, Charlotte Mendelson. Fledging academic Zoe falls for department senior, Penny, right from the off and a whirlwind relationship ensues. Years later and she’s trying to extricate herself – and their two daughters, conceived with and co-parented by the brother of Penny’s ex – from this most complicated and toxic of relationships. Grimly funny.

Best Books from May/June

Our May/June round-up of new fiction releases lands just as the weather is heating up and has all you need to start building your ultimate summer TBR pile.

In the mood for a stonkingly good (and swooningly romantic) time-travel caper? Or perhaps a sharply observed marriage story featuring an AI sex doll is more your bag? Or how about a masterful, end-of-days spin on King Lear?

Alongside these, we have two very different – yet equally heart-breaking – tales of small-town Ireland, a love letter to big city life set across one scorching hot London weekend, a century-spanning art-murder mystery and a whole lot more. Read on!

More May/June Books in Brief

  • Openings, Lucy Caldwell. The third collection of stories from the 2021 National Short Story Award winner offers 13 tales of relationships, family and motherhood, all written with Caldwell’s characteristic clear, concise prose and keen eye for the space between who we are and who we present ourselves to be. A delight.
  • Bright I Burn, Molly Aitken. Aitken’s lyrical second novel tells the story of Alice Kyteler, the first recorded person in Ireland to be condemned as a witch. It may be set in the 13th century, but its fierce rebuke of the patriarchal constraints that lead Alice to her fate resonates powerfully to this day.
  • Hold Back the Night, Jessica Moor. Former nurse Annie reflects on the path that led her from her training as a naive student in a private psychiatric hospital to a widow taking in a series of HIV-positive lodgers at the height of the AIDS crisis in 1980s London.
  • A Cage Went in Search of a Bird, various authors. 2024 is the centenary of Kafka’s birth and this collection of determinedly ‘Kafkaesque’ stories from a storied list of writers (Ali Smith, Yiyun Li, Naomi Alderman and Helen Oyeyemi among them) has been specially commissioned to celebrate. A mixed, but intriguing, bag.
  • (Paperback release of the month) August Blue, Deborah Levy. A celebrated concert pianist blows up her career by walking off stage mid-performance in this tale of other lives and paths not taken. In a market stall in Greece, she is drawn to a woman she fancies as her doppelganger and a chase of sorts ensues as each woman pursues the other across Europe.

Best books from March/April

Where to start? Our March/April top-notch selection takes us from dystopian futures to new romance, spans centuries past and future, and sees magical realism sit happily alongside the gritty realities of a teenage girls’ boxing tournament.

Let’s just say it’s a knock-out.

More March/April books in brief:

  • The Children's Bach, Helen Garner: In her home country, Garner is recognised as one of Australia’s greatest living writers. This deceptively simple story of what happens when two old friends from university, Dexter and Elizabeth, are reunited by chance goes a long way to explaining why.
  • Until August, Gabriel García Márquez: While far from his finest (García Márquez himself declared the story ‘didn’t work’), this posthumously published tale of a woman’s annual pilgrimage to place flowers on her mother’s grave and the one-night stands that follow, is an intriguing post-script to the great Gabo’s career.
  • Day One, Abigail Dean: Dean’s follow-up to her best-selling debut, Girl A, explores the years-long fallout of a mass shooting in a Yorkshire primary school. As with Girl A, the chief focus is on the psychology and motivation of those involved rather than the horror of the event itself. A gripping read.
  • The Morningside, Téa Obreht: Magical realism meets climate catastrophe in this latest novel from The Tiger’s Wife author. In a future world, the once prosperous Island City is now dependent on ‘climate refugees’ to attempt to repopulate it. Enter Sil and her mother, who move into the now seriously rundown, building of the title where, Sil soon learns, darkness resides.
  • Meet Me When My Heart Stops, Becky Hunter: Emery is born with a rare illness that causes spontaneous heart failure. Each time it happens, she meets Nick, whose job is to guide people through their deaths. It’s an unusual premise for a love story, to which Hunter brings both plausibility and vulnerability. Heartbreakingly tender.
  • Her Side Of The Story, Alba de Céspedes. First published in 1949 and reissued after renewed interest in de Céspedes brought praise from fans of both her writing and proudly feminist stance, including none other than Elena Ferrante (who writes the afterword in this edition), Her Side… is an epic tale of love and a woman’s search for independence and agency, set in fascist Italy. Brilliant.

Best books from earlier this year

Our Jan-to-Feb reads kick things off as we plan to continue with a brace of debuts by award-winning writers in their various other lives as poets and masters of the short story. Add to that a sprinkling of very different takes on pandemic fiction – a genre that doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere fast – some dark dystopian fiction from both sides of the pond, a visit to the Russian circus and an eerily beautiful Sami-Swedish novel in verse, and you have some idea of the diversity of reading fun that lies ahead.

More Jan/Feb books in brief:

  • The Storm We Made, Vanessa Chan. Chan’s debut is a heartbreaking – and hopeful – generational saga set in British colonial Malaysia as falls into Japanese occupation during WW2. And yes, it is as epic as that sounds.
  • Glorious People, Sasha Salzmann. A fascinating account of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its fallout over several generations of one extended Ukrainian family and their friends.
  • The Beholders, Hester Musson. Musson’s gothic historical debut abounds with secrets, lies and mysteries after young maid Harriet takes up a new post in a big scary house and falls under the spell of its charismatic mistress, Clara. Need we say more?
  • Aednan, Linnea Axelsson. Axelsson If you’re going to read one so-called ‘experimental’ novel in 2024, let it be this. Awarded Sweden’s prestigious August prize, this novel-in-verse tells the story of two Sami families across three generations and is as stunning as it is ambitious.
  • Green Dot, Madeline Gray. Terminally dissatisfied Hera takes up a post as a comment moderator at a Sydney news outlet and surprises herself by falling into a passionate relationship with an older, very married, male colleague. (She has, up to this point identified as a lesbian.) As smart and sardonic as they come.
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