All Fours
Miranda July (Riverhead Books), $29
July’s second novel is a story that’s at once eminently relatable to women over 40 and utterly unique. A mom and married artist plans to drive from LA to New York, where she’ll splash out on a stay at the Carlye and catch up with old friends and culture.
Instead, she makes a pit stop in a suburb an hour into her journey, rents a motel room that she lavishly redecorates, develops an intimate relationship with a young guy who works at Hertz, and ultimately decides to blow up her life.
A finalist for the National Book Award, this gripping, hilarious read has rightfully been one of the year’s most talked-about and influential books.
Colored Television
Danzy Senna (Riverhead Books), $29
The “Caucasia” author’s darkly comic tale about a struggling biracial novelist on the brink of making it in Hollywood — while she and her young family housesit for an old classmate who is already a top TV writer — is a quick but thought-provoking read.
It’s full of witty, astute observations about not just race and class but also Labradoodles, American Girl Dolls, Hanna Andersson, the Kardashians, and grocery store wine.
Boldly drawn characters leap off the page, grab a protein shake, get into their luxury electric vehicles, and drive off to their faux-Tuscan mansions.
The God of the Woods
Liz Moore (Riverhead Books), $30
Moore’s gothic-tinged atmospheric thriller — set in a 1970s summer camp where a wealthy teen girl goes missing years after her younger brother disappeared — is a perfect page-turner.
Told mainly from the perspectives of the various women involved in the case, from a working-class camp counselor with a bad boyfriend to the missing girl’s oppressed mother, it touches on serious topics while never losing momentum as the case comes to a surprising, satisfying conclusion.
Headshot
Just over 200 pages, this tight debut, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, focuses on the Daughters of America Cup, a boxing tournament for women under 18 at Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada.
Each chapter captures a bout between two of the 16 competitors, thrillingly portraying both the punches in the ring and the young women’s lives beyond it.
James
This masterful retelling of “Huck Finn” through the point of view of the enslaved Jim has been one of 2024’s most universally acclaimed books, and it recently won the National Book Award.
Here, James is a voracious reader, devouring Kierkegaard and Voltaire and having internal discussions with them in his head.
He stealthily code-switches between the slave dialect of “Huck Finn” and a more literate manner of speaking, and this play with languages is one of the novel’s great delights. No surprise, it’s already in development as a feature film set to be produced by Steven Spielberg.
Long Island Compromise
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Random House)
Brodesser-Akner follows up her acclaimed “Fleishman is in Trouble” (and its great Hulu adaptation) with a novel set in one of Long Island’s wealthiest enclaves and inspired by true events.
A businessman is kidnapped, beaten, and held for ransom for a week in 1980. Decades later, he and his family struggle with the lasting effects.
His three children — a playboy screenwriter with a penchant for pills and prostitutes; a flailing family man who can’t keep up with the Goldbergs, and a lonely, disaffected daughter — crash and burn in adulthood, their family’s wealth both a life raft and an anchor.
Darkly comic yet sympathetic, it nails the landing after nearly 500 pages with big questions about family, trauma, and inheritance.
Playground
Richard Powers (W.W. Norton & Company)
With his Pulitzer-prize-winner “The Overstory,” Powers focused on trees.
Here, in one of his more accessible books, he plumbs the depths of the ocean along with artificial intelligence, the future of the planet, and the nature of friendship.
Various disparate storylines — a pioneering female SCUBA diver, a Navy brat who finds refuge in art, a Polynesian island that techies want to use to launch floating cities — come together in spectacular, mind-blowing fashion.
Wandering Stars
Orange’s follow-up to his Pulitzer finalist “There, There” firmly establishes him as one of our most important contemporary novelists.
Here, he follows Star, a survivor of the Native American Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 who is forced to become a Christian and learn English, and how his trauma plays out in the generations that follow.
Amidst the tragic subject matter, there are moments of wonder and droll humor.
The Women
by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s Press), $30
This sweeping story of Francis “Frankie” McGrath, a young debutante-turned-Vietnam War nurse, topped The New York Times bestseller list for a dozen weeks this past year, with good reason.
Hannah writes compelling characters and vivid scenes of combat and camaraderie.
Whether McGrath is waterskiing on the Mekong Delta, tending to orphaned villagers, patching men together in the OR, or struggling with drinking and depression after returning home, the novel drips with rich details that are both historic and cinematic.
Sure, there are moments of melodrama and all-too-convenient coincidences — family secrets, loves lost and found — but it’s all part of the epic, entertaining ride.
Rejection
Tony Tulathimutte (William Morrow)
In seven connected short stories, Tulathimutte brutally chronicles the lives of five losers, from an overweight woman with no friends to a 30-something video game addict who was bullied as a child.
Shrewd and bleakly funny, it lingers long after the last page.
Good Material
In this pitch-perfect romantic comedy, Alderton ably and hilariously writes from the perspective of a 35-year-old London man-child named Andy who was recently dumped.
The dialogue charms and the meet-cutes amuse, without succumbing to the cliches and pitfalls of the genre.
This Strange Eventful History
Claire Messud (W. W. Norton & Company)
This sprawling 448-page epic follows the pieds-noir Cassar family for seven decades, as they’re separated during World War II and later reckon with their relationship to their Algerian homeland.
Messud, who was long-listed for the Booker Prizer with 2006’s “The Emperor’s Children,” was inspired by a lengthy memoir that her paternal grandfather wrote, but she masterfully shapes the story into something wholly her own.
The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur
Lev Grossman (Viking)
The bestselling author of “The Magicians” trilogy reimagines the legend of King Arthur — looking beyond Lancelot and Gawain and giving quirkier characters such as Sir Palomides, the fool Sir Dagonet, and Merlin’s apprentice Nimue a chance to shine.
The Hunter
The great Irish crime writer has penned a spellbinding revenge tale.
A retired Chicago police officer moves to a quiet Irish village and finds love and contentment with a local woman.
But then her daughter’s absentee father returns, disrupting the peace.
The Book of Love
Link, a Pulitzer Prize-finalist for her short stories, has written a stunning — and very long (640 pages!) — first novel.
In 2014 in a small town in Massachusetts, three teens return from the dead and compete to remain alive.
They must complete various mystical tasks, and they can’t tell any of their loved ones where they’ve been. Complicating things, their returns summons other ghosts that threaten the town.
NONFICTION
All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons and Politicians
Phil Elwood (Henry Holt and Co.)
This hilarious, revealing memoir follows a PR man as he tries to keep the Las Vegas exploits of Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy’s son out of the press and manipulates media coverage of Qatar to help a bid to host the World Cup.
It’s a fun jaunt but also an exploration of how far one will go to do a job that takes morally dubious turns.
Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See
Bianca Bosker (Viking), $29
The bestselling author of “Cork Dork” claws her way into NYC’s insular art scene to better understand both it and the nature of art.
She works for free at a pretentious Brooklyn gallery, stretches canvas for a demanding painter, makes sales at Art Basel, and lets a performance artist sit on her face.
Along the way, Bosker doesn’t hesitate to ask the questions many are afraid to broach — what makes that art? And does this person have a trust fund?
Sociopath: A Memoir
Patric Gagne, PHd (Simon & Schuster)
Gagne grew up knowing she was a bit off and had a penchant for mischief — picking locks, stealing cars for joyrides — but it wasn’t until a college psych class that she realized that she was a sociopath.
The diagnosis typically conjures monsters with no regard for the feelings of others, but Gagne finds more complexity in it when she realizes that she did truly care for her childhood sweetheart.
She renders her fascinating journey in suitably cool, precise tones, but the book is not just about being a sociopath; it’s about being — or loving — anyone who is a bit different, and the ways we can and can’t control who we are.
Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story
Leslie Jamison (Little, Brown and Company)
Jamison portrays the dissolution of her marriage after the birth of her daughter, and building a new life, with exacting, beautiful prose.
Divorce, motherhood and grappling with one’s identity after having a child are all well-trod subjects, but in Jamison’s kitchen, the ordinary ingredients come together in ways that are unexpectedly filling.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press)
Haidt’s book isn’t just Important with a capital “I,” it’s also an engaging, witty read.
While two key tenets — no smartphones for kids until high school, no social media until age 16 — in the book have received a lot of attention, there is much more here than just those Cliff’s Notes.
Haidt’s call to make every other birthday a key milestone, and his ideas for adding risk to kids’ offline lives, are especially interesting and useful.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
Rushdie recalls and reflects on the 2022 stabbing that took his eye — and almost took his life — with great clarity.
“So it’s you. Here you are,” the writer, who’s lived under threat and fatwa for decades, remembers thinking as a man in black rushed the stage in Chautauqua, New York, where he was giving a lecture.
Toward the end of the book, he spends 30 pages on an imagined conversation between himself and the extremist who attacked him.
But there are also moments of levity. Rushdie remembers fretting about ruining his nice Ralph Lauren suit even as he was bleeding out, and he advises readers to avoid catheters if at all possible.
Earth to Moon: A Memoir
Moon Unit Zappa (Dey Street Books)
In the ’80s, would-be nepo baby Zappa seemed to have it all — a hit song (“Valley Girl”), a career as an MTV VJ, and, with wild musician dad Frank, the coolest family in Hollywood.
But, as she reveals in this surprisingly touching and heartbreaking memoir, nothing was like it looked from the outside.
You’ll cheer her on and breathe a sigh of relief when she finally makes it through the other side alive, even as she reveals her family is still estranged.
The Friday Afternoon Club: A Memoir
Both a gold-dusted tale of growing up in Hollywood and a recount of a brutal murder, Dunne’s memoir jumps nimbly between night and dark.
The actor/filmmaker writes in a wonderfully cheeky style about his formative years in a famous circle that included his dad (journalist Dominick Dunne), aunt and uncle (novelist John Dunne and his formidable wife, Joan Didion) and beloved best pal Carrie Fisher, with plenty of other star-studded cameos along the way.
His recounting of his younger sister Dominique’s death, and the tragedies that followed, is absolutely wrenching.
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Adam Higginbotham (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster)
At nearly 600 pages, this exhaustively reported tome provides a comprehensive look at the systemic failures that led up to the Challenger space shuttle tragedy, beginning with the Apollo 1 launchpad explosion in 1967.
Along the way, it delves deep into the human element and the seven astronauts who lost their lives on that fateful day in 1986.
Cher: The Memoir: Part One
She may require just one name, but her memoir needs two parts (and no less than three ghostwriters).
The first installment, released to much anticipation, does not disappoint as she dishes on her rocky childhood and, captivatingly, her troubled marriage to Sonny Bono — who, Cher writes, burned her clothes and stole her money.
The New Menopause: Navigating Your Path Through Hormonal Change with Purpose, Power, and Facts
Mary Claire Haver (Rodale Books)
Haver’s #1 New York Times bestseller has dramatically shifted the conversation around women in midlife, made her a minor celebrity, and sent shockwaves through the medical industry.
Full of useful tips and advice backed up with solid research, it’s this year’s game-changing health book.
The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis
George Stephanopoulos (Grand Central Publishing)
The “Good Morning America” co-anchor gives a deeply engaging, trivia-filled look at the history of the presidential control room that John F. Kennedy established — in a onetime West Wing bowling alley — after the Bay of Pigs invasion.
It would go on to become a crucial venue during monumental events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, as well as the place where President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty would stride through on their way to the swimming pool.
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion
Satow paints a chic, loving portrait of the golden era of American department stores and the captivating women behind three of the top ones — Lord & Taylor, Henri Bendel, and Bonwit Teller.
This entertaining, deeply researched shopping spree shows how the big stores were far more than mere places for 20th-century women to buy clothes.
Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion
Nancy MacDonell (St. Martin’s Press)
This fascinating read draws an unexpected — but thoroughly convincing — connection between the war and the rise of American style.
In the early 20th century, most American designers were anonymous interpreters of Parisian looks.
It wasn’t until 1940, when the Nazis invaded France and cut it off from much of the world, that New York designers developed a unique style, paving the way for quintessentially American labels such as Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, and the like.
More: A Memoir of Open Marriage
Molly Roden Winter (Doubleday)
The Park Slope mom’s story of opening up her marriage has been a lightning rod atop a pricey Brooklyn brownstone.
Winter has faced criticism for her parenting, her economic privilege, whether she really wanted to open up about her relationship, and much more.
But her memoir succeeds where it matters most: She replays the events of her life with vivid details and shocking honesty. Sometimes, it’s cringey, other times it’s titillating, but it never feels as though she’s holding back.
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