The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 800 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of By the Fire We Carry

Susan A. Brewer ❤️ loved this book because...

It is a powerful, difficult history well told.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Rebecca Nagle,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked By the Fire We Carry as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year  • A Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

"Impeccably researched. . . . A fascinating book and an important one.” — Washington Post

“[A] brilliant, kaleidoscopic debut. . . . Nagle’s narrative is lucid and moving. . . . A showstopper.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

Most Anticipated Book of the Fall: Washington Post, People, Los Angeles Times, Parade, Bustle, Book Riot, and Literary Hub

A powerful work of reportage and American history that braids the story…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains

Susan A. Brewer ❤️ loved this book because...

I was impressed with the way the author grappled with her own nostalgia regarding her home town while also showing how the mill at its economic and social center was killing the people who lived there.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Outlook 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Kerri Arsenault,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Mill Town as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Mill Town "[Kerri] Arsenault pays loving homage to her family's tight-knit Maine town even as she examines the cancers that have stricken so many residents."-The New York Times Book Review

"Mill Town is a powerful, blistering, devastating book. Kerri Arsenault is both a graceful writer and a grieving daughter in search of answers and ultimately, justice. In telling the story of the town where generations of her family have lived and died, she raises important and timely questions." -Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Where You Come from

Susan A. Brewer ❤️ loved this book because...

The novel about refugees of ethnic cleansing considers how where you come from shapes your life. It combines darkness with humor with real and imagined memories.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Saša Stanišić, Damion Searls (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Where You Come from as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award

A Washington Post, Chicago Review of Books, Kirkus, and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month

“Inventive, funny and moving.” ―The New York Times Book Review

Translated from the German by Damion Searls

Winner of the German Book Prize, Saša Stanišic’s inventive and surprising novel asks: what makes us who we are?

In August, 1992, a boy and his mother flee the war in Yugoslavia and arrive in Germany. Six months later, the boy’s father joins them, bringing a brown suitcase, insomnia, and a scar on his thigh. Saša Stanišic’s Where You…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory

By Susan A. Brewer,

Book cover of The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory

What is my book about?

In The Best Land, Susan A. Brewer recounts the fascinating story of the parcel of central New York land on which she grew up. Brewer and her family had lived on this land for generations when the Oneida Indians claimed that it rightfully belonged to them. Why, she wondered, did she not know what had happened in this place her grandfather called the best land? Here, she tells its story, tracing over the past four hundred years the two families---her own European settler family and the Oneida/Mohawk family of Polly Denny---who called the best land home.