14 of the Best & Most Anticipated Books of 2024, According to an Author

The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan

The hunger for this astronomically anticipated debut novel from Vanessa Chan is seemingly insatiable. I can confirm: expect to be swept away from the first sentence. Ten years after Japan’s WWII invasion of Malaya (which wouldn’t be called Malaysia until 1963), Cecily Alcantara’s family is on the verge of catastrophe. Her 15-year-old son, Abel, disappears, along with a number of other teenage boys; her older daughter, Jujube, works at a teahouse frequented by abrasive soldiers; and her youngest, eight-year-old Jasmin, resents her parents for confining her to the basement lest she gets caught and forced into service at a “comfort station.”

Cecily knows the perils that threaten to destroy her family are her fault—and that she must do anything to save them from the consequences of her actions, spurred by one fateful night 10 years prior, in 1934. A low-level administrator for the British occupation at the time, her husband, Gordon, has a work party one night, where Cecily comes into contact with a man who introduces himself as Bingley Chan and who claims to be a merchant from Hong Kong. He becomes a quick friend of the family under this guise, but Cecily soon discovers his true identity: He is actually General Shigeru Fujiwara of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Soon she is inveigled into plans to undermine the British and build “an Asia for Asians” by handing over intel stolen from Gordon’s desk. Her life of espionage continues for a few more years until the horrors of the Japanese invasion reach a brutal apex in 1945, which could cost her everything. The Storm We Made bears the full weight of war and the endless costs that comes with it, but is so triumphant in its depiction of survival, it soars.

City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter

This book had me at queerness, spirituality, and generational silence—or, as I like to call it, my sun, moon, and rising signs. To say this novel is extremely my shit is an understatement. In this deliciously spellbinding debut by literary star-on-the-rise, Temin Fruchter, we meet Shiva Margolin, a student of Jewish folklore reeling from the heartbreak of her first queer love and the death of her father. Her mother, with whom she struggles to connect, spends her spare time at the local funeral home. This wedge drives her to visit Poland and follow in the footsteps of her great-grandmother Mira—who remains another source of disconnect as no one talks about her—in an attempt to reconcile herself with her family’s past.

What she unearths not only traces back over the course of 100 years—four generations of Jewish women whose blood bond undulates across the ripples caused by the visitation of a mysterious, shape-shifting stranger we meet when the story opens—but leads her back to herself, in every iteration: past, present, and future. We’re reminded that the stories we inherit, whether told or untold, are the ones that guide us to the questions we were born to ask, and what we find (or don’t) will find its rightful place in the blank pages we were born to fill.

Isn’t She Great: Writers on Women Led-Comedies from 9 to 5 to Booksmart edited by Elizabeth Teets

Based on this writer and comedian’s film series, Isn’t She Great?, at Portland, Oregon’s famed arthouse the Hollywood Theater, this eponymous anthology is a celebration of some of the most-beloved female-centric comedies and their impact on audiences and the female-identifying standup comedians working today.

From cult classics like Jawbreaker to mainstream blockbusters like The Devil Wears Prada, recognizable voices like Lana Schwartz and Samantha Mann, along with emerging talent like humorist powerhouse-in-the-making Megan J. Kaleita, pen essays that are a love letter to the women who’ve made us laugh over the years. In the end, we’re left with a collection that serves as a reminder of the power inherent in a woman who finds the funny in the world around her, and within herself.

The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

The intensity of the punch this title packs matches the vivacity within this book’s pages. An epic family saga, buoyed by magical realism with nods to Westerns and Gothic literature, The Bullet Swallower introduces us to a grandfather and grandson whose lives could not be any further apart, yet are inextricably linked by the karmic debt accrued by their bloodline over generations.

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro and his family face mounting difficulties. A drought has devastated the town they call home near the Texas-Mexico border and financial precarity leaves Antonio with all but one option. With his younger brother, Hugo, in tow, the two set out for Houston to rob a train transporting gold and other treasures of the sort. The heist takes a fatal turn when a shootout with the Texas Rangers leaves Hugo dead and Antonio with a disfigured face, earning him the notorious nickname, El Tragabalas—the bullet swallower.

Then, in 1964, Antonio’s grandson, Jaime, an A-list Mexican actor and singer, stumbles upon a book recounting his grandfather’s story, along with the long line of misdeeds inflicted by generations of Sonoro men. As Jaime learns more about his family’s harrowing history, hoping to redeem his family name by depicting it on film, a mysterious figure by the name of Remedio from Antonio’s timeline reappears. He has come to collect, but the question is: Who pays for the sins of our ancestors? And how do break the harmful generational patterns we inherit for the sake of our forebears? James floods her pages with magic without putting readers under a spell: we are instead bewitched by storytelling so alive it leaps off the page.

Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin

If you’ve ever asked me for a book recommendation, I have probably recommended this author’s first book, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, to you, regardless of genre or subject-matter. It doesn’t matter; Everyone in My Life Will Someday Be Forced to Read Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. Now imagine my joy when I learned that this bestselling author will be blessing us with her next masterpiece in 2024.

In Interesting Facts About Space, space-obsessed Enid can drop facts about galaxies and blackholes at the drop of a hat. She is perfectly content with spending her days re-listening to her favorite true crime podcasts and simultaneously courting a bevy of women from various dating apps—all while harboring a major phobia of bald men.

When she tries to establish some sort of connection with her estranged half-sisters in the wake of their absent father’s death, Enid’s world ruptures with the unexpected: her first serious romantic relationship with the ex-wife of another woman she’s dated, and the unshakeable belief that someone is following her. Her paranoid thinking leads her to believe that something is deeply wrong with her despite her good job and life, and collides with the reckoning of her painful past in which her father left her mother to start a new family. When she confronts her phobias and troubling memories by seeing a therapist, and begins to let people see the real her, we can’t help but miss her as soon as we read the last sentence of this delightfully offbeat book overflowing with heart, humor, and everything in between.

Come and Get It by Kiley Reid

Not going to lie: trying to get my hands on this galley felt a little like I was competing in Squid Games. It was to be expected, though, given this New York Times-bestselling author’s debut smash hit, Such a Fun Age, in 2019. Back with another edgy and fiercely funny social novel, Come and Get It is set at the University of Arkansas in 2017. Agatha Paul, a gay white writer in her late thirties, arrives on campus as a visiting professor doing research on weddings for a book. She meets Millie, the 24-year-old Black RA of the dorm for scholarship students, five of whom she intends to interview for her book.

However, the subject-matter of nuptials is quickly pushed aside after Agatha hones in on the girls’ respective relationships to money—one girl, Jenna, glibly refers to herself as a “cute little refugee” after being awarded a scholarship for Mexican Americans because her grandmother is Mexican—and soon starts paying Mille $20 to let her come over and eavesdrop on the girls from the adjacent suite separated by very thin walls once a week. Hijinks ensue, especially when Agatha starts constructing what she overhears into “interviews” that she then sells to Teen Vogue. A virtuoso of adept observation, Reid once again delivers fiction with a sharp eye for social commentary, all while efficaciously mesmerizing the reader with her sublime sardonic wit from beginning to end.

How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica

This dreamy debut novel by Andrés N. Ordorica captivates from the get-go. Heartbreaking as much as it is exultant, it follows Daniel De La Luna, a queer first-generation college student, after he arrives at a fictional elite East Coast university on a scholarship with his family’s hopes and dreams shadowing him. He struggles to acclimate to campus life at first, but soon forms a bond with his exceptionally attractive and athletic roommate, Sam Morris, which swiftly evolves from brotherly to intimate.

Daniel finds himself falling in love, but things come to a halt after they share a drunken kiss one night. Sam pulls back, unable to reconcile himself with his queerness, and joins a frat after calling things off with Daniel. When their freshman year comes to an end, the two officially part ways, and Daniel returns to his family in Mexico for the summer. While there, he learns that his uncle—whom he was named after—lived life openly and proudly as a gay man, and also begins dating the debonair Diego, which flounders when he learns of Sam’s death. (Fret not, this is not a spoiler; the reader learns this early on, but the circumstances aren’t revealed until later.) Caught in a tangle of grief, desire, and his family’s past, Daniel’s verve for sorting the facets of his selfhood with the hope of achieving totality refracts in all of us.

How to Live Free in a Dangerous World by Shayla Lawson

Part of me just wants to write “SWOON” under this entry and move on. The other part wants to drop 2,000 words right here about the endless well of beauty and power that flows with unbridled conviction from this book. At 39, prize-winning poet and journalist, Shayla Lawson, was told by a doctor that they were dying after having been recently diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. While there is no cure for EDS, Lawson still found a way to heal by letting go, “whether that means recovering from convention or from a chronic illness.”

They unleash themselves into the world with the intention of revealing selfhood unrestricted by limits both external and self-imposed. From drag shows in Bloomington, Indiana that embolden them to divorce their deceitful husband, to a tryst with a good-looking gondolier in Venice, and a close call in Egypt that imparts the sanctity of friendship, each revelation joins together to form a powerful portrait of self-transformation. With language that drips like nectar, How to Live Free in a Dangerous World screams and whispers, inviting us to release the crescendo that’s lodged in our chests, begging to be heard, free.

 The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

This next-level literary luminary—his accolades are too many to list here and would threaten to exceed the word count for this roundup alone—returns with his latest, a gripping historical novel set in antebellum New Orleans. Born in slavery to her mother, Sanite, Ady comes into the world with resistance coursing through her veins. She is taught the necessities of survival by her mother, who grew up in a runaway settlement deep in the Louisiana woods, until they are sold to John du Marche to work at his townhouse. A few years later, Ady, now a preteen, loses her mother to scarlet fever, leaving her adrift with grief, fear, and hopelessness.

Shortly after, she meets Lenore, a young, free Black woman who owns the Mockingbird Inn, an integrated establishment in the French Quarter. Ady begins working there when she’s not expected by du Marche, and soon learns that the inn is a cover for a clandestine organization of women called the Daughters, who engage in espionage and other tactics of subversion to debase the incipient Confederacy. At once powerful and hopeful, daring and revelatory, this book is an unforgettable fight for freedom that is impossible to put down.

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

Fans of Xochitl Gonzalez, we feast yet again! I’m still reeling from her New York Times-bestselling debut novel, Olga Dies Dreaming, and honestly I never wish to stop. But I did take a beat to inhale her latest, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, which is inspired by the mysterious death of real-life Cuban American artist, Ana Mendieta, in 1985. This bifurcated novel begins the same year, when the title artist earns increasing acclaim from New York City’s art world before inexplicably plummeting to her death from her 33rd-floor apartment building. We then jump to 1998, where we meet and follow Raquel Toro, a third-year art history student at Brown University, who learns about the tragedy that has befallen the award-winning Cuban artist while doing research for her senior thesis on de Monte’s more-famous, white minimalist sculptor husband, Jack Martin.

As she continues to cast light on de Monte’s story, which has been eclipsed by the tradition of erasure perpetuated by the art world’s continued uphold of Eurocentrism, she becomes involved with a fellow classmate, Nick Fitzsimmons, a white and wealthy senior with connections to the New York art world. Before long, Racquel’s relationship with Nick starts to closely mirror that of de Monte’s and her husband’s: a pair of dimmed lights relegated to the shadows of their affluent partners’ privileged creative clout. Two stories, both unfolding and overlapping regardless of years past, are rendered unforgettable by the élan vital Gonzalez imbues her words with.

Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

Nothing makes me cringe at myself more than when I reply to a pitch from a publicist for a book I covet the second that email arrives in my inbox. I become feral. When I saw the words “new” and “Helen Oyeyemi” in the subject line for this pitch, I gave the publicist my address at the time (in case it arrived before I moved), my current address (from where I write this roundup), and, somehow, my future address (just in case!).

Once again, we are granted entry to the kaleidoscopic world born from the mind of this prize-winning, bestselling author of Pieces and Gingerbread . In Prague for a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend, Sofie, Hero Tojosoa encounters the usual in the book she’s brought with her. Depending on where and who is doing the reading, the text alters itself to reveal the painful histories of Praguers both past and present. The awry extends past the pages of the book, especially when old tensions resurface with the unexpected arrival of a friend from Hero and Sofie’s past. What results is the magnificent portrayal of a city whose beating heart vibrates in sync with those of its inhabitants.

Mother Doll by Katya Apekina

Speaking of Russian nesting dolls, Mother Doll is basically one in the form of a book. Our protagonist, Zhenia, is a perpetually unmoored medical translator for Russians in Los Angeles. She is a maven of mess, so, of course, I am immediately drawn to her. Living in fractious matrimony with her husband, whom she believes would rather be married to someone else, she is soon forced to contend with two-pronged chaos: First, she unexpectedly ends up pregnant. Then, as her favorite person in the world, her moribund grandmother, Vera, approaches her final days, she receives a phone call, out of the blue, from a psychic medium in New York named Paul. He claims to have a message for her from the other side.

Using Paul as her mouthpiece, Zhenia’s great-grandmother, Irina (Vera’s mother), seeks absolution from Zhenia by sharing her story of coming-of-age in a Jewish family and becoming a Russian Revolutionary. She also divulges secrets that force Zhenia to confront the things about herself that she has actively been avoiding. As two pasts collide, layered like the nesting dolls that inspired this book, both women have to rely on each other to tread through the “cloud of ancestral grief” they find themselves lost in. Profoundly poignant and deeply moving, garnished with chortles and cackles along the way, Mother Doll is a novel whose heartbeat reverberates beyond its written words.

All the World Beside by Garrard Conley

If you’re surrounded by people right now, look to your right. Now look to your left. Every person you see is clamoring for a copy of Garrard Conley’s latest. The anticipation for this debut novel from the New York Times-bestselling author of Boy Erased is palpable—and for good reason. Set in 18th-century puritanical New England, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his God-fearing family are exemplars of faith in their small-town community to whom Christians from the New World flock with aplomb. Physician Arthur Lyman is among the throng who gravitate towards the minister’s oration, but finds himself drawn to Nathaniel beyond his words. As the two men get closer, passion igniting the flames of their bond, their families must look beyond the secrets and judgements that threaten to destroy them, and contemplate how faith, sexuality, and gender would fit in a world newer than their own—untethered from repressive dogma. Prepare for your heartstrings to be intertwined into a game of Cat’s cradle by this queer love story.

Real Americans by Rachel Khong

2024 is truly the year of highly anticipated follow-ups. From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin—which is one of the few titles in my library that I won’t lend because I cannot bear the thought of being permanently separated from it given the concerning ratio of books lent and books returned. Yes, I am being petty on main!—comes an exuberant and exhilarating novel whose words will affix themselves to your heart and memory like magnets.

Spanning generations in one family, we start in New York City shortly before Y2K. Lily, a 22-year-old unpaid intern at a trendy media company, meets Matthew, an easy-on-the-eyes laidback East Coaster who is also the heir to a colossal pharmaceutical empire. As different as they are, they fall in love. Cut to: 2021. Living on an isolated Washington island where he’s never felt like he belonged, 15-year-old Nick can’t help but feel that Lily, now a single mother, is hiding something. He sets out to find his biological father, but is soon beset with more questions than answers.

This multigenerational family saga, textured with elements of magical realism, occupies the intersection of class and circumstance, race and visibility, and family, love, and forgiveness differently than other titles of this ilk—it pushes us to further think about how we move through the world, while encouraging us to look deeper within ourselves at the same time. Crafted for the gods, Real Americans is a profound reckoning of identity, both destined and created.

Greg Mania is the author of the memoir, Born to Be Public. Subscribe to his newsletter here.