The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,188 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Mortmain Hall

Cathy Pickens ❤️ loved this book because...

Martin Edwards, as a researcher and reader, knows Golden Age mystery fiction. With Rachel Savernake, he's created a worthy, strong, intriguing central character and given her a setting with arresting details and a solid puzzle to solve. Love how her mysterious past unfolds -- and how she takes all comers.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Story/Plot
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Martin Edwards,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mortmain Hall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A superb Golden Age mystery packed with twists, from the winner of the Diamond Dagger 2020

ENGLAND, 1930. Grieving widows are a familiar sight on London's Necropolis Railway. So when an elegant young woman in a black veil boards the funeral train, nobody guesses her true purpose.

But Rachel Savernake is not one of the mourners. She hopes to save a life - the life of a man who is supposed to be cold in the grave. But then a suspicious death on the railway track spurs her on to investigate a sequence of baffling mysteries: a death in a…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Swamp Kings

Cathy Pickens ❤️ loved this book because...

The Murdaugh murder case captivated true crime junkies for months. Journalist Jason Ryan, who knows the quirks and characters in coastal South Carolina crime, has provided a fascinating journey into the dynasty that drew international headlines. He knows that "power" in the rural South isn't the same as "power" in gangland Chicago. Here, favor and friendship are valued currency -- something that lots of journalists covering the murder trial and financial shenanigans of Alec Murdaugh missed. If you want to know where the family came from and what coastal South Carolina is really like, this is the book to read.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Writing
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Jason Ryan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Swamp Kings as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The stranger-than-fiction story of the now-notorious Lowcountry clan, in all its Southern Gothic intensity-by an author with unparalleled access to and knowledge of the players, the history, and the place.

The most famous man in South Carolina lives in prison. He stands convicted of a staggering amount of wrongdoing-more than 100 crimes and counting. Once a high-flying, smooth-talking, pedigreed Southern lawyer, Alex Murdaugh is now disbarred and disgraced. For more than a decade, prosecutors asserted that Alex was secretly a fraud, a thief, a drug trafficker, and an all-around phony. On the night of June 7, 2021, they claimed, he…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Bleeding Heart Yard

Cathy Pickens ❤️ loved this book because...

This is the 3rd of 4 books (so far) featuring detective Harbinder Kaur. If you love a real puzzle of a mystery, multiple viewpoints with interesting characters, and good writing, start with the first in the series (Stranger Diaries, which won MWA's Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2020) and enjoy your way through this exceptional series. Then give her Ruth Galloway series a try. Her crime novels are on my short list of go-to delights.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Story/Plot
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Elly Griffiths,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bleeding Heart Yard as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE DR RUTH GALLOWAY MYSTERIES

A propulsive new thriller set in London featuring Detective Harbinder Kaur. A murderer hides in plain sight - in the police.

DS Cassie Fitzherbert has a secret. When she was at school, she and her friends were responsible for the death of a fellow pupil. Decades later, Cassie is happily married and loves her job as a police officer.

Her husband persuades her to go to a school reunion and another ex-pupil, Garfield Rice, is found dead, supposedly from a drug overdose. As Garfield was an eminent MP and…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

True Crime Stories of the South Carolina Midlands

By Cathy Pickens,

Book cover of True Crime Stories of the South Carolina Midlands

What is my book about?

Mischief and Mayhem in the Midlands. A thrilling account of dramatic and menacing crimes that shaped the central region of the state. Crimes that captured the attention of residents in the area and statewide over the years from gamblers with too much debt to insurance fraud and a famous cat burglar. A well-known televangelist had a run in with arson, and a murderer made his presence felt all the way in California. This collection of headlining stories features notorious serial killers, families divided, vicious politics and marital strife. Author Cathy Pickens brings her eye for a great story to Columbia and recounts with a novelist's detail the infamous crimes that rocked a region.

Book cover of Mortmain Hall
Book cover of Swamp Kings
Book cover of Bleeding Heart Yard

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