The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 2,415 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Horse

❤️ loved this book because...

I loved Brooks’ exploration of very different historical elements and how they intersect: slavery, art, horse-racing. I felt like I learned a lot about the issues of the time but the modern day storyline was also very powerful.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Teach
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Geraldine Brooks ,

Why should I read it?

38 authors picked Horse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling." -The New York Times Book Review

"Horse isn't just an animal story-it's a moving narrative about race and art." -TIME

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of There Are Rivers in the Sky

❤️ loved this book because...

The writing is beautiful but also very descriptive and down to earth, and the characters were immediately interesting. I loved everything about this book, and as it went on I couldn’t put it down. I’m very drawn to books about the connection between nature and people, as well as the repetitions of historical events and traumas. If you’re interested in that as well, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Elif Shafak ,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked There Are Rivers in the Sky as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE TOP FIVE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives - all connected by a single drop of water.

*****

In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. When his brilliant memory earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, the world opens up far beyond the slums and across the seas.

In 2014…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Warm Hands of Ghosts

❤️ loved this book because...

I loved everything about this book, from the detailed history and setting (World War I Belgium and Halifax, Canada) to its beautiful but haunting story. It was the perfect blend of historical fiction and fantasy. I was already a big fan of Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy, but this book is very different from her other ones, and apparently it’s a book that took her a long time to write. It’s worth the wait. I loved the vivid, atmospheric writing and the way the fantastic elements just blended seamlessly with the history (war is already such a strange, unimaginable environment). I also loved the way Arden slowly builds the relationships that Freddie and Laura develop over the course of the story.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Katherine Arden ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Warm Hands of Ghosts as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist, from the author of The Bear and the Nightingale.

“A wonderful clash of fire and ice—a book you won’t want to let go of.”—Diana Gabaldon, author of Outlander

“Spectacular—a tour de force, wonderful and deep and haunting.”—Naomi Novik, author of A Deadly Education

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a…


Book cover of Horse
Book cover of There Are Rivers in the Sky
Book cover of The Warm Hands of Ghosts

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