The Best Books I Read in 2024
(Author’s note: Some of these books were released this year, while others are older and therefore ‘new’ books to me. There are no spoilers below.)
As of this post, I have had the enjoyment of reading fifty-two books this year. Through a combination of travel and early morning reading sessions, I successfully achieved my 2024 of completing a book every week. Please share your own list of your favorites in the comment box below!
A decent sized portion of my 2024 reads were new releases. I’ll start with The Ascent by Adam Plantinga. Plantinga is an author of whom I’d never heard of before taking a flier on this story, but I am so glad I’m now in the know. Kurt Argento, a disgruntled former Detroit cop, is erroneously thrown in prison due to the ways of a corrupt Missouri sheriff, and the results are terrifying. After the penitentiary has a security malfunction and the inmates are freed inside the locked prison, Kurt and the Missouri governor’s daughter Julie must team up to defend themselves against a pack of unruly and mentally disturbed inmates. It’s a tense, worthwhile trip. I’m excited for the second installment of the series, set to be released in April.
Last fall, I met William Kent Krueger at the Deep Valley Book Festival in Mankato, Minnesota. It was my debut as an author at a festival, and it turned out to be an unforgettable experience. I got a chance to speak to him about the publishing process and building a reader base. The standalone release he was promoting, The River We Remember, is an affecting depiction of small-town life in the 1950s. This is the mold he followed in Ordinary Grace, one of my favorite books of the last ten years. Each character in fictional Jewel, Minnesota becomes part of an unforgettable ensemble. Krueger’s novels speak to the Midwesterner.
Another fun 2024 thriller was Harlan Coben’s I Will Find You. Coben’s novels are always fast-paced and full of plot twists, and this one was no exception. The story is about a man named David convicted of his son’s murder, and his attempt to break out of prison to proclaim his innocence. This is the kind of book I couldn’t read every day but it’s one I look forward to immersing myself in every few months.
Without question, the author I enjoyed reading the most this year was C.J. Box. He is a massive influence of mine as a writer, and I branched out into his lesser-known series, The Highway Quartert, and standalones in 2024 by choice. Everyone knows Joe Pickett, but do they know Jess Rawlins, Cody Hoyt, and Cassie Dewell? Blue Heaven is one of those stories I wish I could crack open and restart. In northern Idaho, two children are on the run after witnessing something a brutal crime they were not supposed to see. It’s a classic cat-and-mouse story that takes place in quite the awe-inspiring location. The highest compliment I can give Blue Heaven is that I read the entire thing in the span of a work week while having a one-year-old daughter and a wife pregnant in her third trimester. Sticking with C.J. Box here for another moment, I read the first four books of The Highway Quartet, and Back of Beyond was my favorite. Again, the detailed landscapes of another beautiful place—this time, Yellowstone National Park—coupled with complex characters like Cody Hoyt make this a gripping mystery you’ll want more of. Luckily, there are five more installments you can read as of today and perhaps more in the future.
John Grisham has long been one of my favorite authors. There’s something that appeals to me as a non-lawyer about the way he details the judicial system. His experience as a lawyer has been helping readers understand bits of the legal system for the last thirty-five years. The best novel of his I read this year, 2019’s The Guardians, is a subtle call to aid the wrongly convicted and highlights the stories of a few fictional cases. I also really enjoyed Ford County, a short story collection regarding the crazy happenings of fictional characters in Mississippi.
After years of neglect, I finally read Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Gone Girl is one of the best books (and movies) of this century, but I had heard from trusted reader friends that Sharp Objects was a little too gruesome and tough to stomach. The story revolves around a journalist living in Chicago who treks back home to the bootheel of Missouri to report on a shocking abduction and murder. I thought the ride was worth it, considering the depth of the characters and the shocking twists and turns. You’ll think about this one long after you’ve completed it. I plan on completing Flynn’s trilogy of mysteries in 2025 when I read Dark Places.
Mark T. Sullivan’s The Last Green Valley and Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale were the two best historical fiction novels I read in 2024. They are both cut from the same mold in that they revolve around World War II survivors loosely based on real people. In Sullivan’s book the Martel family, a German clan, are vehemently against the invasion of other countries. Amid the Nazi reign, they abandon their generations old homestead in search of freedom, and the results are mixed. Hannah’s novel offers a unique perspective by focusing instead on the women and children left behind as their husbands went off to war. The protagonist Vianne initially believes that the Nazis will never invade France, but as the story unfolds her credence vanishes. Meanwhile her sister Isabelle is a mutineer with aspirations to help those who appear doomed given the war. I wasn’t entirely familiar with the idea of billeting before The Nightingale, and somehow feel a little uneasy upon learning of the concept. There’s a reason these two novels are so highly regarded.
I had heard great things about Fredrik Backman’s Beartown, a story of a hockey team in small-town Sweden with championship aspirations. The novel follows a litany of characters before and after a crime that changes the city forever. I’m excited to begin both the second and third installments of the series.
Here are some more of my favorites I read this year:
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
The Deep, Deep Snow by Brian Freeman
Bend Don’t Break: My Son’s Survival by Cindy Weber
Badlands by C.J. Box
The Good Lie by A.L. Torre
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston (2024 release)
Ironweed by William Kennedy
Please submit to me your suggestions for 2025. Three of your recommendations from 2023 made this year’s list!