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Best Books of 2024

By the editors of BookPage
Across all categories and genres, these 10 books are standout selections from an excellent reading year.
Across all categories and genres, these 10 books are standout selections from an excellent reading year.

Best Nonfiction of 2024

By the editors of BookPage
2024 was chock-full of auspicious debuts and sparkling returns from nonfiction’s heavy hitters. Journalists unearthed unreported histories and dug deeper into stories we thought we knew, while scientists and memoirists challenged us to look more closely at ourselves and our environments. Here are the 15 nonfiction books that floored us.
2024 was chock-full of auspicious debuts and sparkling returns from nonfiction’s heavy hitters. Journalists unearthed unreported histories and dug deeper into stories we thought we knew, while scientists and memoirists challenged us to look more closely at ourselves and our environments. Here are the 15 nonfiction books that floored us.

Best Fiction of 2024

By the editors of BookPage
The greatest novels of 2024 were notably unafraid to rewrite the past, lacing shimmering, enriching new narratives through personal and cultural histories. Even better: Many of them made us laugh along the way. Read on for the 15 novels and graphic novels that most impressed, charmed and inspired us this year.
The greatest novels of 2024 were notably unafraid to rewrite the past, lacing shimmering, enriching new narratives through personal and cultural histories. Even better: Many of them made us laugh along the way. Read on for the 15 novels and graphic novels that most impressed, charmed and inspired us this year.
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RomanceRomantic SuspenseHistorical RomanceContemporary Romance

The 5 best holiday romances of 2024

Feature by Christie Ridgway

★ The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

Ally Carter does it again with the delightful The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year. An anonymous invitation lures rival mystery writers Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt to a secluded and nearly snowbound English mansion for Christmas. Upon arrival, they encounter a series of surprises: the identity of their hostess, her almost immediate disappearance and the dynamic sleuthing duo they become. Alternating between Maggie’s and Ethan’s viewpoints, this romantic comedy packs in plot and smiles on every page as the two work to unravel the puzzles they encounter during their stay. The characters’ emotional backstories add authentic heft, and Ethan’s heartfelt and outspoken devotion for Maggie will warm the coldest winter night. Readers will be more than willing to put off any pending holiday tasks to indulge in this vastly entertaining read.

Kiss Me at Christmas

Describing Kiss Me at Christmas by Jenny Bayliss as “feel-good” would be a colossal understatement: The entire package is practically wrapped in a sparkly Christmas bow. Right before the holidays, 40-something main characters Harriet Smith and James Knight have a one-night stand . . . and then learn that they’ll be working on a production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol together. Single mom and private school counselor Harriet overcomes the awkwardness by focusing on her students: She agreed to manage the production to shield some of them from the consequences of breaking into the decrepit theater. The owner of the theater is one of serious lawyer James’ clients, and James isn’t happy about the play or how his night with Harriet ended. However, nothing’s more fun than let’s-put-on-a-show enthusiasm, which in this case brings together an entire English village as well as Harriet and James. Bayliss’ mature main characters are refreshing stars, even as they fall into the usual romantic insecurities and miscommunication that cause lovers of all ages to stumble. In the end, James loosens up with Harriet’s aid, and his regard helps her value herself more. Along the way, readers will revel in the cute and sometimes rebellious kids, the wise and charming oldsters, and the descriptions of scrumptious foods from all over the world.

The Duke’s Christmas Bride

Revenge leads to romance in Anna Bradley’s Regency-set The Duke’s Christmas Bride. Maxwell Burke, the Duke of Grantham, desperately wishes to recover Hammond Court, the family home his father lost long ago in a foolish wager with Ambrose St. Clair. When Ambrose dies, Max discovers the man left Hammond Court to him—but also to stubborn Rose St. Claire, Ambrose’s ward, who has no intention of moving out. What’s a ruthless duke to do to get her going on her way? Why, bribe an eligible London gentleman to romance and marry the chit, of course. A holiday house party is arranged, and the brooding Max finds himself ice-skating, sleigh-riding and arranging a Christmas ball . . . all while falling for the enchanting woman he’s scheming to hand over to someone else. Brooding won’t help him now, and Max must find a way to solve the very dilemma he created while his amused friends—main characters from other entries in Bradley’s Drop Dead Dukes series—look on. A closed-off aristocrat and a warmhearted heroine who bakes the best Christmas treats? That’s a recipe for love story satisfaction.

The Christmas You Found Me

Prepare for a few tears along with your hot chocolate while reading The Christmas You Found Me by Sarah Morgenthaler, which follows two total strangers who enter into a “marriage of purpose” to provide for a 4-year-old with a life-threatening illness. Sienna Naples may be busy maintaining her family ranch in the Idaho wilderness, but she can’t look away from the dire dilemma of Guy Maple and his daughter, Emma, who has Stage 5 chronic kidney disease. Sienna’s generosity in taking in the small family provides a boon to her, too, as she’s lonely post-divorce and with her dad in acute elder care. Providing Emma with some needed fun is imperative despite her hovering illness, and Sienna steps up to make memories for them all. Cue small-town holiday events in between emergency medical visits, and two people who fall in love despite their vulnerability and grief. Told in Sienna’s first-person voice, this story provides a roller-coaster of emotions as well as an enthralling look at winter life on a remote ranch. Have a hankie at hand.

Christmas Is All Around

A curmudgeon unearths her holiday spirit in Christmas Is All Around by Martha Waters. Charlotte Lane has been over the season since starring in the now-classic film Christmas, Truly as a child. When her refusal to join a reboot of the film goes viral, she escapes to her sister’s in London. There, she’s roped into holiday escapades, including a country house tour where she meets the owner, attractive Englishman Graham Calloway. Now an artist, Charlotte can’t resist his idea that she create a series of Christmas-themed illustrations around London . . . with Graham as her guide to several iconic locations. While there’s an initial spark, these two are slow to succumb to the burn of passion as they’re dealing with—or more accurately, not dealing with—family issues that hold them back. But love truly finds its way on this fun tour through a London holiday, which is peopled with amusing secondary characters and has a satisfying happy ending that ticks all the boxes.

The year’s most delightful Christmas love stories are full of mistletoe and merriment—with just a dash of potential murder to spice things up.
NonfictionPop CultureLGBTQ+Film

5 books to get the biggest movie & TV fans in your life

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

★ Believe         

Fans of beloved hit television series Ted Lasso will delightedly embrace Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way Into Our Hearts.

Part oral history, part cultural analysis, Believe is an entertaining and insightful behind-the-scenes tour in which New York Times television editor Jeremy Egner offers a wealth of interviews with key players as he reflects on Ted Lasso’s origins as a 2013 commercial; standout influences and episodes (e.g., the divisively trippy “Beard After Hours”); and its rocket-like ascension to national-treasure status.

Like Ted Lasso, Believe brims with enthusiasm, sports-talk and fun. As Egner writes, “It’s a story, appropriately enough, of teamwork, of hidden talent, of a group of friends looking around at the world’s increasingly nasty discourse and deciding that, as corny as it sounds, maybe simple decency and a few laughs still had the power to bring people together.” Believe is a winning read about a stellar show.   

★ Steven Spielberg     

Steven Spielberg: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work is an upbeat, photo-packed tribute to the famous filmmaker, written with wit and warmth by British film critic Ian Nathan.

Nathan believes Spielberg is “the medium’s defining artist. Indeed, the embodiment of the Hollywood ideal: the commercial potential of film married to its creative possibilities. Art and commerce.” He proves his point as he traces the filmmaker’s development as director, producer and writer over his 50-plus year career, from his earliest films (1971’s Duel, his first feature-length film) to his most personal work to date, 2022’s semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans. 

Analysis of the auteur’s favorite collaborators and common themes offers illuminating context, and reveals a bounty of nitty-gritty details about Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Hook, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Lincoln and more. Photos and movie posters amp up the fun, and even Nathan’s captions offer fresh insight. Steven Spielberg will absolutely intrigue and enchant fans of “the man with the universal touch.”

Box Office Poison       

There’s always high drama on movie sets, thanks to the studio politics, budget-busting sets and creative intensity that swirls around them. Sometimes a hit is born, but other times, as film critic Tim Robey writes in Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops, one must wonder, “What the hell were they thinking?”

Robey spotlights 26 cinematic “weirdos, outcasts, misfits, [and] freaks” via well-informed, gleefully snarky takes on what went wrong and what we might learn from flops. Intolerance (1916) exemplifies the “giant folly of trying to be a one-man film studio”; Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) was waterlogged; and Cats (2019) suffered from “the buttholes” and endless production problems.

Robey notes that many flops become cult classics or are eventually recognized as misunderstood, and due to streaming, it’s become difficult to quantify losses and thereby designate a new ultimate bomb. But on the upside, our cord-cutting world has also made it easier than ever for cinephiles riding high on the spirited Box Office Poison to experience the movies Robey deems “turkeys.” 

★ Hollywood Pride

In his wonderfully wide-ranging encyclopedia of 130 years of movie history, Hollywood Pride: A Celebration of LGBTQ+ Representation and Perseverance in Film, film critic Alonso Duralde “hope[s] to pay tribute to artists whose contributions on both sides of the camera have been essential to cinema history while also spotlighting films that have told queer stories and/or had special resonance with queer audiences.” 

Mission accomplished: This chronological compendium examines filmic LGBTQ+ representation in key eras like the years after World War II, when “gay men were among the biggest stars in Hollywood, even if almost no one outside the industry knew it”; and the “opening of the floodgates” after 2005’s Brokeback Mountain. There are vivid photos and sidebars galore, and lists of notable films and artists, too. 

Hollywood Pride is a well-written, visually appealing cultural history: a book to learn from, gaze at and celebrate that “as long as there is a cinema . . . we will continue to exist and to thrive and to create.”

The Worlds of George R.R. Martin

George R.R. Martin fans—especially those who wish they lived in Westeros—will clamor for Tom Huddleston’s The Worlds of George R.R. Martin: The Inspirations Behind Game of Thrones, which illuminates the creative process of the much-loved author of the Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series.

Huddleston ponders “What sources—historical, literary and personal—did [Martin] draw upon in the writing, and what inspiration did they give him?” He notes that Martin’s writing has a “sprawling, breathtaking sense of scale” that draws readers in, and certainly echoes that scope and intensity here as he delves into the creation of the hugely popular series, considers how it was translated into TV shows Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, and assesses its place in pop culture.

Fans who want to spend even more time in Martin’s medieval-esque world will treasure The Worlds of George R.R. Martin: It’s a well-researched, engagingly written and visually immersive experience.

These books are just the thing for screen buffs who want to revel in their favorite stories and auteurs, with deeply knowledgeable experts as their enthusiastic guides.
Nonfiction

The best books to gift in 2024

Feature by the editors of BookPage

FOR POP-CULTURE AFICIONADOS

5 books to get the biggest movie & TV fans in your life

These books are just the thing for screen buffs who want to revel in their favorite stories and auteurs, with deeply knowledgeable experts as their enthusiastic guides.

Read More

 

 

FOR ART LOVERS

4 gift-worthy art books bound to inspire

Get inside the mind of an artist, revisit Manet and celebrate queer life in some of 2024’s best art and photography books.

FOR THE LITERARY CROWD

5 gifts that will shoot to the top of any reader’s TBR

Got a serious bibliophile on your list? Tick that box with one of these titles.

 

 

FOR FANS OF WILD THINGS

4 gift books for nature lovers

Looking for a holiday gift for a birder, tree-hugger or civilian scientist? We’ve got just the thing.

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FOR MUSIC LOVERS

A trio of tuneful gifts

Three loving tributes to the history of the makers and the shakers, the undersung and the unseen.

Read More

FOR INSPIRATION-SEEKERS

4 modern takes on the eternal quest for self-improvement

Humans have been trying to improve themselves since they discovered they had selves that needed improving. As the search for spiritual, mental and physical health continues ever on, four new books are here to help.


FOR GARDENERS

4 gardening books for plant enthusiasts in your life

These titles make perfect gifts to help anyone get ready for the planting season.

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FOR ANY HOST WITH THE MOST

4 books to help you ace your next (or first!) dinner party

Whether you’re an accomplished or aspiring dinner party host, these books brim with ideas that will add sizzle to your soirees.

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Welcome to our list of books to give as gifts this holiday season! Divided by subject, discover our suggestions for music lovers, gardeners, art aficionados, literature mavens, hosts with the most and many more.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCrafts, Hobbies & HomeCookbooks

4 books to help you ace your next (or first!) dinner party

Feature by Alice Cary

★ The Hostess Handbook

According to Maria Zizka (The Newlywed Table), the three pillars of party planning are “the desire to host, some reliably excellent go-to recipes, and a bit of party know-how.” You’ll get a hefty dose of all three in The Hostess Handbook: A Modern Guide to Entertaining. It’s filled with a wide variety of truly enticing recipes that will make you want to start cooking, including vegetarian summer rolls with peanut sauce, saffron couscous with cauliflower, chickpeas and pomegranate, and—wait for it—churro doughnuts with chocolate glaze. These are included in a variety of menus, ranging from a Sunday supper to a holiday dinner party. Zizka also advises on flower arranging, expelling lingering fishy smells and—importantly—navigating dietary restrictions of guests.

Zizka’s writing style is entertaining in itself, as well as informative. The flavor of salt-and-vinegar potato-peel chips with chive dip is as if “a regular potato chip went on vacation to a tiny British coastal village and had a fling with a fisherman.” Along with numerous elegant recipes, Zizka offers helpful basics, such as a list of 10 Simple Nearly No-Cook Appetizers, including my personal favorite: “potato chips served in a pretty bowl.” As Lewin notes, “They never disappoint.”

Big Night

Katherine Lewin is the sort of entertainment goddess everyone needs. An introvert who sometimes recharges with short naps while hosting, Lewin owns a dinner party essentials shop in New York City. She shares boatloads of tips in Big Night: Dinners, Parties & Dinner Parties, a guide to making “any night you choose . . . a little more special,” whether it’s an elegant gathering or casual weekday meal. Four chapters—one for each season—include 85 recipes along with bartending, preparation and pairing suggestions galore, presented with photos and graphics that pop.

Lewin notes, “You know it’s a party when pigs arrive in blankets,” so she includes a sweet-salty “grown-up” recipe for the eponymous appetizer. Her recipe titles alone will make readers smile, with names like A Noodle Soup to Get People Excited and A Big Chopped Salad (to Go With Takeout Pizza). Lewin’s encouraging humor shines through on every page, giving would-be hosts the confidence to plan their own big night.

Swing By!

If you really want to step up your entertaining game, dig into Swing By! Entertaining Recipes and the New Art of Gathering. Stephanie Nass has been called the “millennial Martha Stewart,” and this is by far the largest, lushest, most over-the-top of these entertaining books. Nass, who earned the nickname “Chefanie” as a child and uses it as her brand name today, caught the entertaining bug early: “All my life,” she writes, “I have been at greatest peace in the middle of a party.” The book’s winsome cover features Nass perched atop a dinner table, dressed in a drapey pantsuit that matches the place settings.

Thumbing through these colorful pages will make you feel as though you’ve been to a fun, fabulous fete. Innovative takes on standards, like her King Midas Pizza with edible gold leaf, shine. Nass is a gifted baker, and her show-stopping chocolate-meringue cake will surely inspire readers to muster their culinary courage.

★ Victorian Parlour Games

Liven up any gathering with Victorian Parlour Games: A Modern Host’s Guide to Classic Fun for Everyone. Ned Wolfe’s charming treatise is chock-full of easy-to-play games “that have stood the test of time for good reason.” Featuring competition games like Smells, Endless Story and German Whist, its compact size makes it an ideal stocking stuffer or hostess gift. Did you know, for instance, that it’s Blind Man’s Buff, not Bluff? Or that the game Hot Boiled Beans and Bacon was featured in both The Big Bang Theory and Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood?

These amusements are suitable for a variety of ages and occasions, from children’s birthday parties (Musical Chairs and a variation, Musical Potatoes), long car trips (Crambo), family get-togethers (pillow fights, with rules) and romantic evenings (kissing games!). Don’t miss Wolfe’s colorful cautions—including “nothing ruins a game night quite like a visit to the hospital.”

Whether you’re an accomplished or aspiring dinner party host, these books brim with ideas that will add sizzle to your soirees.
NonfictionSelf-HelpBody, Mind & Spirit

4 modern takes on the eternal quest for self-improvement

Feature by Arlene McKanic

Tiny Pep Talks

Reading Paula Skaggs and Josh Linden’s humorous and often snarky Tiny Pep Talks: Bite-Size Encouragement for Life’s Annoying, Stressful, and Flat-Out Lousy Moments is much like an afternoon spent with your favorite vodka aunty who’s always had your best interest at heart. After a lighthearted introduction, their advice covers sticky situations that range from the utterly trivial to the somewhat deep. It starts out, for example, with “For When It’s Time to Get Off the Couch and Go to Bed.” Other offers of comfort include “For When Your Clothes Don’t Fit,” and, inevitably, “For When You Just Got Ghosted: A Spooky Tale.” There’s also advice for if you’ve been walking around with spinach between your teeth, when your battery’s down to 5% and when you can’t stand your friend’s significant other (Skaggs and Linden specify that this means a significant other who’s simply annoying, as opposed to one who’s abusive and dangerous. That’s for a “more serious book.”)

Even weighty  stuff like grief is handled with a touch of sass. Grief, they write, “is like a toddler. At any given moment, it might be messy, it might kick and punch you in the gut, and it might refuse to go to bed when all you want is to go to sleep.” But as Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow is another day. You’ll be okay.

Good People

Gabriel Reilich and Lucia Knell’s lovely, open-hearted Good People comforts through example. It tells the stories of all kinds of ordinary folk who’ve gone through stuff and come out the other side, sometimes battered, like the narrator of “Invictus,” but unbowed.

In the very first story, we follow Amy B. as she happily moves from Washington, D.C., to attend law school in New York City, only to be poleaxed by a family tragedy. New Yorkers are notorious for ignoring people who break down and cry on subways or airport terminals, but in Amy’s case, someone notices and helps her. She never learned his name and doesn’t even know if she’d recognize him if she saw him again, but his brief presence permanently changed her life for the better. Good People is full of stories where an “angel” shows up at a moment of crisis. Wherever you land in this book, you’ll be comforted by the fact that despite the insanity of the times we live in, most people are indeed, good.

Life Audit

Ximena Vengoechea’s Life Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Discovering Your Goals and Building the Life You Want is one inspirational book where you’ll need to do some work. As the title says, it asks you to do an audit of your life, but the process is led by pages of delightful bar graphs, mind maps, drawings and Venn diagrams in cool pastel colors. In other words, it’s much more fun than an IRS audit of your taxes.

Auditing your life is a worthwhile pursuit when you don’t quite know what you want to do, or if you’re in a rut. Vengoechea breaks down the process into small but revealing steps. At the beginning you’re encouraged to write down every single one of your wishes, no matter how trivial, on 100 sticky notes in the space of an hour. Though labor-intensive, this helps you prioritize your wishes, identify your core values, use your time wisely and pick the people (five of them, the author suggests) who are eager to offer you support. Vengoechea also shows you how to avoid folks who would drag you down and shares motivational tricks, such as getting an ice cream cone or putting on a party dress after you’ve turned in your manuscript. Life Audit is a lovely book to keep on your bedside table.

Not Sure Who Needs to Hear This, But . . .

Though this book is over 200 pages long, you can easily read Willie Greene’s Not Sure Who Needs to Hear This, But . . . in a few hours. Indeed, its layout allows you to just jump in anywhere, for every page holds something pithy. Greene, the founder of WE THE URBAN, which launched as a Tumblr account that dispenses similar advice, divides his book into six chapters: Peace; Love; Learning, Unlearning, Relearning; Creativity; Well-being and Affirmations. The first few pages of each chapter posit the virtue, followed by sections, none more than a couple of paragraphs long, that tell you how to achieve it. After that comes pithy adages, often framed by colorful boxes that recall sticky notes. Included are: “Forgive yourself every night before going to sleep”; “Act. Even if fear is present” and “Delete the Ex-files.” (This one, I believe, means to move right along after you’ve been dumped or subjected to that even worse 21st-century atrocity of “ghosting.”) There are dozens of these little pep pills for the soul. Who needs to hear them? We do!

 

 

Humans have been trying to improve themselves since they discovered they had selves that needed improving. As the search for spiritual, mental and physical health continues ever on, four new books are here to help.

Discover your next great book!

BookPage highlights the best new books across all genres, as chosen by our editors. Every book we cover is one that we are excited to recommend to readers. A star indicates a book of exceptional quality in its genre or category.

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