The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,365 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

Melanie Springer Mock ❤️ loved this book because...

One of the best books I've read in a long time, and an important read for anyone who identifies as evangelical, or is evangelical-adjacent, like me. I appreciate how carefully reported this book is, showing that the big white evangelical stars, like Franklin Graham, have chosen power over Christ; but so too have the small-town pastors, who have chosen power in Trump over Christ. It's sobering and dismaying, but the last chapter gives me hope that things can yet change.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Outlook
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Tim Alberta,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

New York Times Bestseller

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of the Year

An Air Mail Best Book of the Year

The award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic follows up his New York Times bestseller American Carnage with this timely, rigorously reported, and deeply personal examination of the divisions that threaten to destroy the American evangelical movement.

Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Great Believers

Melanie Springer Mock ❤️ loved this book because...

What an extraordinary read. I loved the characters, I loved the entwining storylines, I loved the prose. It is heartbreaking and tragic and beautiful, just as any great book should be.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Character(s)
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Rebecca Makkai,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Great Believers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER
ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER
THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER

Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler

"A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it's like to live during times of crisis." -The New York Times Book Review

A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of A Fever In The Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

Melanie Springer Mock ❤️ loved this book because...

The best book I've read this year, and what a year to read it: when our country is clinging to Democracy by its fingernails, and another racist, misogynistic, bombastic autocratic is trying to gain control, much like the grand wizard in Egan's book. I knew nothing about this history--a shame, for sure--and also found the story chilling, because so many parallel things seem to be happening right now. The story is an important reminder that history does risk repeating itself, and that normal people need to fight like hell to make sure that what happened in 1920s Midwest, and in the 1930s Germany, doesn't happen here.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Outlook
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Timothy Egan,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked A Fever In The Heartland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time." —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile

“Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Finding Our Way Forward: When the Children We Love Become Adults

By Melanie Springer Mock,

Book cover of Finding Our Way Forward: When the Children We Love Become Adults

What is my book about?

When our children turn 18, we hope to happily launch them into the world to become the adults we’ve been preparing them to be. Their pathway seems clear: most will go to college, find a vocation and then a true love, and settle into a comfortable life while we parents keep in touch through occasional phone calls, family gatherings, and surprise trips home for Christmas. But now more than ever, these expectations fail to acknowledge the significant challenges faced by many young people, from a pandemic to racial unrest to a climate crisis that is setting the world on fire, figuratively and literally.

While young people are consistently told they need to discern God’s calling, in Finding Our Way Forward, Melanie Springer Mock draws on her decades as a college professor and mom to four adult children to explore how finding our way means developing a more expansive understanding of calling for ourselves and for the young adults we love, one that moves beyond vocation and capitalistic enterprises to what God really calls us to: Seeking justice. Loving mercy. Walking with humility. Loving others. Loving God. As we do so, our relationships can be transformed as together we find our way forward.

Book cover of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
Book cover of The Great Believers
Book cover of A Fever In The Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

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