Our Readers’ 10 Favorite Books of 2024

The legend of Elena Ferrante is one of the great literary mysteries of the past decade. The Italian author’s identity is unconfirmed and oft-speculated, but what everyone agrees on is that her Neapolitan novels are masterpieces—in fact, all four of them were ranked in our top 50 books of the year. The first in the quartet, My Brilliant Friend, was even voted the greatest novel of the 21^st century so far by The New York Times. It’s an honor Ferrante’s work has 100% earned.

My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to Elena Greco and Raffaella Cerullo, two lifelong friends who lived very different lives. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Naples of the 1950s, Lenu and Lila found themselves growing divided thanks to their intellectual rivalry, their respective families' various troubles, and the societal blocks put upon women. Their bond demonstrates the sheer potency of intense female friendships.

There may be no adventure novel more influential or beloved than The Count of Monte Cristo. First serialized from 1844 to 1846, it helped to lay the groundwork for the entire genre. Almost 180 years later, the book is still thrilling audiences with its propulsive pacing and tale of revenge gone awry. 

Before he can marry his fiancée Mercédès, Edmond Dantès is falsely accused of treason and imprisoned on an island fortress off the coast of Marseille. Eager for vengeance, he formulates a plan to escape jail, reinvent himself as the enigmatic and alluring Count of Monte Cristo, and avenge himself from those who ruined his life.

Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where hunting is a part of everyday life. Being the warden makes him highly unpopular, particularly since Joe won't take bribes or look the other way when some hunters want to bend the rules. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, he takes it upon himself to uncover the killer. 

As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in the woodpile that the corpse was found splayed across. If word of this unique creature gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline in the region. Joe is about to become public enemy number one in his fight for answers.

Harry H. Crosby's account of his service during the Second World War was one of the inspirations for the Apple TV+ miniseries Masters of the Air (he was portrayed by Anthony Boyle). The Bloody 100th bomb group trained in England then were tasked with leading their Flying Fortresses on almost daily strategic battles across Europe and the Axis forces. 

Crosby was in the center of the fury, avoiding death endlessly while leading 37 missions, some of them involving two thousand aircraft. The Bloody Hundredth became the stuff of legend, their astonishing courage and appalling losses earning them that nickname and the respect of generations.

Lily Robinson and Sean McGuire have nothing in common. She's an independent woman who prizes her quiet life. He's freewheeling and happy to go wherever the wind blows. But their lives change forever when the sudden deaths of a couple close to them both bind them together in grief and responsibility. 

The two become the official guardians of the couple's three orphaned children. Now, they must step up to the ultimate challenge and embark on a cross-country road trip as a new family. For Lily and Sean, it exposes to them the magic of love above all else.

Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne, France. She helps to maintain the graveyard and pays witness to the everyday rhythms of community and grief. She knows all of the familiar faces, including her colleagues, and is always available to provide comfort to those who need it. 

Her quiet routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of Julien Sole, the local chief of police who demands to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased mother on the grave of a total stranger. It soon becomes clear that the grave Julien is looking for belongs to his mother’s one-time lover, and that his mother’s story of and illicit affair is intertwined with Violette’s own secret past.

Journey to the West is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century that is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential works in all of Chinese fiction. It's a fictionalized and fantastical version of the story of Xuanzang, a Buddhist monk who traveled to India in search of special sculptures called sūtras. 

In this version, he fights cannibalistic demons, communicates with the spirits, and confronts the mischievous Monkey King. The Journey to the West has always been a complicated and difficult text to properly translate into English in a way that doesn't dilute the lyricism of the prose or its satirical edge. Anthony C. Yu's version is considered one of the most successful translations for English readers eager to check out this slice of iconic Chinese storytelling.

Swan is a nine-year-old girl living with her mother, moving from one trailer park to the next looking for a safe place. She starts to receive dark visions of a terrible future, one of nuclear annihilation and an apocalyptic hellscape where America once stood. In Manhattan, a homeless woman stumbles from the sewers, guided by the prophecies of a mysterious amulet. 

On Idaho’s Blue Dome Mountain, an orphaned boy falls under the influence of a survivalist cult with plans to take over the land. Swan's visions reveal the impending arrival of a mysterious and all-consuming force of evil that is hell-bent on destroying the last vestiges of optimism and purity on the planet's scorched surface. It's up to this little girl to fight not only for her own survival but for humanity the world over.

Reuben Land is a bright 11-year-old boy living with asthma. His family live in the merciless plains of the American heartland. After his older brother Davy is charged with the murder of two locals who terrorized their family, he flees to escape certain death. Now, his family are following him. 

There's Reuben, his hyper-religious father Jeremiah, and his little sister Swede. They journey across the frozen Badlands of the Dakotas in search and a chance at a brighter future.

It’s been 42 years since its publication and The Color Purple remains a beloved novel among generations old and new. Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama has been adapted into an Oscar-nominated movie, an award-winning musical, and a film of said musical that was released last Christmas. The BBC listed it as one of the 100 most influential novels ever written, and it's not hard to see why. 

As a child, Celie, a poor Black girl, experiences abhorrent abuse at the hands of her father. After she is given to a man named Mister to be his wife, she spends many years fighting to retain her spirit in the face of immense hardships. Through bonds with her daughter-in-law Sofia and the beautiful jazz singer Shug, she begins to find her true self and the strength to be more than what the world deems her to be.