Okay, I lied. What follows is not a list of the 20 best books of 2024, if by that you’re expecting the 20 best books published during the past year. Truth to tell, I don’t believe anyone—not the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any other news organization can possibly claim to have selected the best books of the year. After all, some three million—that’s three million—books have appeared in print in 2024. And no one, not even any army of someones, would be nutty enough to try to read them all.
No, what I’m printing below is my selection of the 20 best books I’ve read this year. They appear in two lists of 10, each printed in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names. One list includes all the fiction titles, the other, the nonfiction. Relatively few were actually published in 2024.
One more caveat: in selecting just 10 books for each of the two categories, I made a number of arbitrary decisions. Some books were obvious choices. Others were not so easy. In reality, then, I’ve read and reviewed a larger number of books during the past year that might just as easily have made it into one of these lists. And that includes several other books written by authors who are already on the list. But I’ve limited myself to just one book by any author.
Fiction: the 10 best books of 2024
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict (2020) 319 pages ★★★★★—Where did Agatha Christie go when she disappeared?
For 11 days in December 1926, the pathbreaking mystery novelist Agatha Christie disappeared from her home in Berkshire, England. She left no traces, triggering fears that someone had kidnapped her. Eventually, following a nationwide manhunt throughout England, police came across her in a resort hotel calmly eating breakfast. But she never offered any explanation for disappearing, and the mystery has endured. Novelist Marie Benedict offers up an ingenious scenario that explains what happened.
Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby (2021) 336 pages ★★★★★—Two ex-cons team up to avenge their sons’ murder
In four widely acclaimed novels to date, S. A. Cosby has gained both numerous literary awards and wide recognition for pushing the boundaries of Southern noir. He writes from an African American perspective, exploring the dynamics of rural Virginia society. He does not write for squeamish readers. Violence is the order of the day in Razorblade Tears.
James by Percival Everett (2024) 320 pages ★★★★★—Huckleberry Finn, upside down
Lists of the best American novels of all time almost invariably include Huckleberry Finn. Many regard the book as the Great American Novel. So it takes a writer of exceptional skill and sensitivity to accept the challenge of retelling the story from a fresh perspective. Percival Everett accomplishes that with great aplomb. James, the protagonist of Everett’s alternative take on the story, is known as Jim, Huck’s slave friend in the original novel. Everett won the National Book Award for 2024 for his novel, and if you held a gun to my head and forced me to name the very best novel I read this past year, I’d have to give it my own top prize.
The Quantum Spy by David Ignatius (2017) 329 pages ★★★★★—The race with China for a quantum computer
David Ignatius has been a foreign affairs columnist for the Washington Post since 1999. A quarter of a century. And in that time, he has come to understand America’s security establishment as few others do. It’s that knowledge that underpins the 12 espionage novels he has written to date. And in The Quantum Spy, he began turning his attention to the role of technology in espionage, with a particular focus on the competition between China and the United States. This novel is about the race to build a functioning quantum computer. Achieving that breakthrough could give the winner an insurmountable advantage in any future armed conflict.
Shanghai by Joseph Kanon (2024) 300 pages ★★★★★—Gangsters, Communists, and the Japanese Gestapo in WW2 Shanghai
After a stellar career as the top executive at two major New York publishers, Joseph Kanon turned to writing spy thrillers in 1995 with the Edgar Award-winning novel, Los Alamos. Shanghai is his most recent effort, and it’s a winner in my estimation. Set in Shanghai during the early years of the Japanese occupation, Shanghai is the story of an emigre Jew from Nazi Germany who turns up in China’s financial capital and becomes deeply embroiled in the endemic corruption of the city.
How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue (2021) 384 pages ★★★★★—Ecological catastrophe strikes an African village
The Cameroonian-American novelist Imbolo Mbue dissects the dynamics of revolution and generational change in this enthralling novel set in an African village where predatory foreign companies have colluded with corrupt government offcials to enrich themselves at the expense of the local people. It’s a no-holds-barred account of change from the bottom up. The imagery and the characters linger in my mind.
A Case of Two Cities (Inspector Chen #4) by Qiu Xiaolong (2006) 307 pages ★★★★★—A detective investigates corruption in the Chinese Communist Party
Qiu Xiaolong left Shanghai for St. Louis in 1988 as a student with the intention of writing a book about T. S. Eliot, whose family had a long association with Washington University in that city. Following the Tiananmen Massacre the next year he decided to stay in the United States. Later, armed with degrees from Washington University, he joined the faculty. A published poet and translator, Qiu turned to writing detective novels as the means to explore the recent history of modern China. In Chief Inspector Chen Cao, he found the perfect foil to probe the dynamics of the Chinese Communist Party and the lasting legacy of Mao Zedong’s harsh rule.
Revelation (Matthew Shardlake #4 of 7) by C. J. Sansom (2008) 564 pages ★★★★★—Religious fanatics and other madmen in Tudor times
The late C. J. Sansom has gained a place in the top ranks of historical novelists with his seven-book series of Matthew Shardlake mysteries. Set during the later years of Henry VIII’s reign, the novels track the king’s deterioration from the mid 1530’s to his death late the following decade. Each book, built around the work of a brilliant hunchbacked attorney, involves a major legal case that invariably turns out to have broad implications for the king and his court. In Revelation, Sansom dwells on the religious fanaticism that dominated the era.
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford (2023) 464 pages ★★★★★—What if Native Americans had built a nation?
Through alternate history, we have the chance to think through what might have happened had things gone in a different direction at some pivotal point in the past. For example, writers in the genre famously imagine what might have happened if the Nazis had won World War II. But this exceedingly clever novel is grounded on a very different assumption. What if the Native Americans who built the city of Cahokia along the Mississippi River had succeeded in defeating the European colonists who attempted to seize their land? English author Francis Spufford tells this inventive tale with great skill, endowing it with a plot and writing style that make the book hard to put down.
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (2006) 608 pages ★★★★★—War and the Holocaust are the backdrop for this novel
This novel lingered for 500 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists, echoing its popular reception worldwide. Set in Nazi Germany over the years 1938 to 1943, The Book Thief is the uniquely compelling story of a young orphaned girl and her attempts to save books from burning by local officials. The others she encounters over the years include her foster parents, a Jewish refugee they harbor in their basement, and the mayor’s wife who befriends her. But no summary of the plot can do the novel justice. It’s a truly engrossing and often heart-stopping tale. Australian author Marcus Zusak has written five other novels, but none even approaches the popularity of this one.
Nonfiction: the 10 best books of 2024
Victoria, the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird (2016) 752 pages ★★★★★—An eye-opening biography of Queen Victoria
For me, as I imagine is much the same for other Americans as well, Queen Victoria epitomizes the strangled, hierarchical British society of the 19th century. It was the era when the British Empire came to rule one-quarter of the world, and Victoria—who was Queen and Emperor, after all—symbolized the supremacy of British power. But in all the symbolism, Victoria the woman is lost. Julia Baird corrects that in her magisterial biography. She depicts the timid young woman who inherited the throne in 1837 at the age of 18, evolving into a commanding presence who often rode roughshod over her ministers. It’s difficult to understand the politics of the United Kingdom in the 19th century without knowledge of those often tension-filled relationships.
Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans (2024) 624 pages ★★★★★—They did Hitler’s bidding until the bloody end
Anyone who is familiar with the history of the Third Reich is likely to recognize the names of at least half a dozen of the regime’s top officials. But of course in a nation of 80 million people, especially during wartime, the ranks of both government and military were bloated. Many thousands held responsible positions during the six years of warfare. Historian Richard Evans provides a window into the motivation and behavior of the men (and a few women) whose decisions—made far from the inner circle of sycophants surrounding Adolf Hitler—affected the lives of thousands. In biographical portraits of these officials, he provides a fuller picture of the Nazi regime than what emerges from general histories of the period or in biographies of Hitler himself or of the ranking officials in his orbit.
Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer (2021) 576 pages ★★★★★—American history through a Cuban lens
Any secondary school student is likely to be aware of two events entangling the United States and Cuba: the Spanish-American War of 1898, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. But as historian Ada Ferrer so vividly explains in her Pulitzer-winning book, our two nations have been engaged in an intimate relationship for a century and a half. In fact, she illuminates long-hidden aspects of the relationship that extends five centuries into the past. This is narrative history, brilliantly related, in a book that richly deserved the many honors it won.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann (2023) 327 pages ★★★★★—This bestselling maritime drama is hard to put down
Here, the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, tells a tale wrested from England’s past that so compellingly illuminates a crime on the high seas that it’s difficult to put the book down. The story is compulsive from beginning to end. Set during the 1740s, when England and Spain were at loggerheads, award-winning writer David Grann follows the captain and crew of HIs Majesty’s warship The Wager on its voyage around the Cape of Magellan into the Pacific Ocean. The story is part of a larger reality as the Spanish Empire slips into irrelevance and Britain rose to preeminence on the seas.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops (World War Two #1 of 4) by Damien Lewis (2015) 419 pages ★★★★★—The story of the world’s first Special Forces
The British author and filmmaker Damien Lewis has written 12 books to date on military subjects, a great many of them about the British armed forces in World War II. And four of those books constitute a single series devoted to the emergence of Britain’s special forces. Launched at the behest of Winston Churchill, the off-the-books Special Operations Executive and its official sister services, the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service, often worked in tandem to “set Europe ablaze,” as the Prime Minister had directed. The history makes for thrilling stories. And this first book is a prime example. It’s hard to put down.
Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter by Ian Mortimer (2024) 249 pages ★★★★★—What you know about the Middle Ages is probably wrong
Most people today, if they give any thought at all to the Middle Ages, think of them as the “Dark Ages.” While that might have been true in a sense during the first 500 years (roughly 500 to 1000), it is most assuredly not an apt label for the five centuries that followed (1000 to 1500). British historian Ian Mortimer leaves that moniker in the dust with his engrossing study of the monumental changes that English (and more broadly European) society underwent during those years. He relates nothing less than our sense of ourselves as independent human beings to those changes, when illiterate peasants evolved into self-confident actors in their own lives. Our concept of freedom today stems from this development.
The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy (2023) 480 pages ★★★★★—A deep dive into the history of women at the CIA
From its inception in the years immediately following World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency gained a reputation for its unusually harsh treatment of women. Perhaps the cause lay in the character of the adventure-seeking and sometimes brutal men who flocked into its clandestine service. But whatever the reason, it was years before women began to organize and resist. Author Liza Mundy does an exceptionally good job chronicling their efforts over the years. As she notes, however, it was only in 2018 when Gina Haspel was named director of the CIA, becoming the first woman in that powerful post. Mundy’s engrossing story spans the full length of the agency’s history.
Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman’s Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue by Sonia Purnell (2024) 525 pages ★★★★★—She helped jump-start the WWII Anglo-American partnership
Throughout the history of what we loosely call “Western civilization,” the role of women has been underrated or ignored. Yet outstanding women have played instrumental roles in British and American history over the past century despite the tendency of historians to write them off. Pamela Churchill Harriman may be the best example at hand. In her gripping biography of this extraordinary woman, author Sonia Purnell relates how the then Pamela Churchill (the Prime Minister’s daughter-in-law) played a central role in forging the Anglo-American partnership that was so central to the Allied victory in World War II. Three decades later, Pamela Harriman engineered the revival of the Democratic Party during the Reagan years and helped launch the national career of Bill Clinton.
Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War by Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff (2024) 320 pages ★★★★★—Bucking the Pentagon’s resistance to change
All bureaucracies resist change, some more fiercely than others. But few organizations of the size of the United States Department of Defense are more resolutely rigid. With a 2024 budget of $824 billion and a head count approaching three million men and women, both military and civilian, the Pentagon is by any measure a hard nut to crack. But entrepreneurs Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchoff tell their extraordinary story of accomplishing just that in Unit X, the extraordinary development of the public-private partnership they engineered between Washington and Silicon Valley.
Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple (2024) 544 pages ★★★★★—When the debate over evolution divided America
In 1925, the press labeled it the “Monkey Trial,” a civil liberties court case garnered nationwide attention because of the attorneys representing the contending sides. Former four-time Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan faced off with the country’s leading defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow, to argue the merits of a Tennessee state law banning the teaching of evolution in the state’s schools. Author Brenda Wineapple tells the story in a riveting account of the legendary encounter.
For related reading
You’ll find other terrific reading choices at:
- The 15 best espionage novels
- 25 most enlightening historical novels
- 20 top nonfiction books about history
- 12 great biographies
- 10 top science fiction novels
And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.
