The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,034 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Demon Copperhead

Janet Hulstrand ❤️ loved this book because...

It seems to me to be absolutely critical for all Americans to know more about the Demon Copperheads of this world, and the world they live in. This book delivered immersion into that world and thus the opportunity to begin to better understand. It is also phenomenally well-written!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Thoughts 🥈 Character(s)
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Barbara Kingsolver,

Why should I read it?

73 authors picked Demon Copperhead as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.

In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…


Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Postcard

Janet Hulstrand ❤️ loved this book because...

This is an absolutely fascinating true story, only slightly fictionalized. A very compelling look into a historical past that we all hope never to repeat again.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Story/Plot 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Anne Berest, Tina Kover (translator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.

January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz.

Fifteen years after…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City

Janet Hulstrand ❤️ loved this book because...

A fascinating true story of a very determined young man down on his luck--who turns adversity into success. Inspiring, and riveting. And very well-written!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Character(s)
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Edward Chisholm,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Waiter in Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORT LISTED FOR THE ACKERLEY PRIZE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

***
'This astonishing book describes a cruel, feral existence and is worthy of standing on the shelf next to George Orwell's Down And Out In Paris And London (1933) as another classic about human exploitation.' - Daily Mail

'Chisholm's story is immersive and often thrilling ... He's a fine writer.' - WSJ

'Kitchen Confidential for Generation Z' - Fortune

'An English waiters riveting account of working in Paris' - Daily Mail

'Visceral and unbelievably compelling' - Emerald Fennell

'Vividly written and merciless in its detail' - Edward Stourton

'An excellent book' -…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France

By Janet Hulstrand,

Book cover of A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France

What is my book about?

This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written in by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search to find her grandmother’s journals, and uncover the hidden interior lives of her mother and grandmother. Her adventures take her to a variety of locations, from a small town in Iowa to New York, Washington, London and Paris—and finally to a little village in France, where she is finally able to write the book that will tell her own story, intertwined with the stories of her mother and grandmother.