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 The Exorcist

Todd Brown ❤️ loved this book because...

Blatty makes evil sound uncomfortably like us: petty, needling, relentless. It makes me think about how sometimes the scariest things aren’t demons, but what a people grab for when certainty slips.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Thoughts 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By William Peter Blatty ,

Why should I read it?

14 authors picked The Exorcist as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Father Damien Karras: 'Where is Regan?'
Regan MacNeil: 'In here. With us.'

The terror begins unobtrusively. Noises in the attic. In the child's room, an odd smell, the displacement of furniture, an icy chill. At first, easy explanations are offered. Then frightening changes begin to appear in eleven-year-old Regan. Medical tests fail to shed any light on her symptoms, but it is as if a different personality has invaded her body.

Father Damien Karras, a Jesuit priest, is called in. Is it possible that a demonic presence has possessed the child? Exorcism seems to be the only answer...

First published…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Small Things Like These

Todd Brown ❤️ loved this book because...

A short book with the weight of one that is goliath. One decent man, a cold town, and the price of looking away. Keegan’s sentences are incredibly clean, the courage quiet and costly. This entire story is the kind of moral flare I chase when I write about ordinary people standing in the deluge of history.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Writing
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Claire Keegan ,

Why should I read it?

29 authors picked Small Things Like These as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize

"A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers

Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Sinners All Bow

Todd Brown ❤️ loved this book because...

A super clean and vital look at who gets to tell a brutal story and why it costs so much. Dawson dissects the machinery of shame and authorship, the ethics of “using” a life, echoing my own obsession with how narratives can protect, distort, or wound the living.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Outlook 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Kate Winkler Dawson ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Sinners All Bow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

One of Amazon's Best History Books of January

Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.

On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah's death a suicide...or something much darker?…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

When Shadows Burn

By Todd Brown ,

Book cover of When Shadows Burn

What is my book about?

SOME HOUSES WHISPER. THIS ONE SCREAMS.
In the heart of Raven’s Cross, Virginia, the decaying Scott house looms. Its broken-window eyes watch a town desperate to forget. When Roxy, a teenage girl, vanishes into a cool night, long-buried fears erupt, and suspicion turns savage. The townspeople turn on the newcomers, blaming them for what they refuse to face in themselves. As polite smiles crack and old grudges resurface, Raven’s Cross’s genteel mask begins to slip, revealing the rot beneath.
Timothy Michaels came to town chasing a story. A true crime podcaster investigating the haunted legacy of the Scott house, he never expected to be pulled into something so immediate—and so dangerous. Alongside unexpected allies, Tim begins to unearth a legacy of complicity and cruelty—one the town would kill to keep buried. Because, in Raven’s Cross, the shadows don’t just linger. They burn.

My book recommendation list

Book cover of The Exorcist
Book cover of Small Things Like These
Book cover of The Sinners All Bow

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