36 Exciting New Book Releases for 2024

Marie-Helene Bertino, author of several books, including the delightful novel Parakeet, returns with the story of a child born in Philadelphia who senses she is not entirely from Earth. As she grows older, she navigates the highs and lows of the human world while also receiving messages from her extraterrestrial family.

Bora Chung’s debut collection of stories, Cursed Bunny, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature. This is another fantastic collection, translated from Korean, that combines big topics such as technology, human absurdity, and mortality. And she does it in the most amazing ways.

Kiley Reid burst on the literary scene in 2020 with her debut novel Such a Fun Age. (Okay, so it technically came out on the last day of 2019, but you get the idea.) In her second novel, Reid is dishing up drama about the grand dreams and complicated relationships of a residential assistant at the University of Arkansas.

A new book from The New York Times bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America! Award-winning author Oluo discusses antiracist activism in America and offers advice on how people can affect positive, lasting change.

Katherine Arden, author of The Bear and the Nightingale, takes two tragedies of the early 20th century and weaves a fantastical, heartbreaking story. After the munitions explosion in Halifax, Canada, kills her parents, wounded World War I nurse Laura Iven receives word that her brother has also been killed fighting overseas. Not wanting to let go, Laura travels back to Belgium to find out what really happened to him.

Holy cats, it’s a novel from Kelly Link! Kelly Linnnnnnnnnnk! The Pulitzer-nominated author, bookstore owner, and chicken wrangler has several collections of stories, but this is her first novel. And it’s a doozy! It’s over 600 pages about three teenagers in a small town who are returned from the dead to be used in a magical game of good versus evil.

From the author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes Leslie Jamison’s examination of the end of a marriage: her own. She discusses how we lose ourselves in others, her love for her young daughter, her own parents’ relationship, and what it means to move on from something you didn’t imagine would happen.

In this Booker Prize-longlisted novel, a young microbiologist’s beliefs about science and the world are called into question when a large trench is discovered on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin, the award-winning author of We Cast a Shadow, has written a fantastic work of historical fiction this time around. It’s about Ady, a young enslaved woman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, who joins a group of spies working to undermine the Confederacy.

It has been over two decades since the release of Kirsten Bakis’s debut, Lives of the Monster Dogs, which has since garnered a cult following. Fans only have to wait a couple more months to get their hands on her new novel, a work of historical fiction. It’s set on an ominous island estate, with mysterious disappearances and strange happenings, where a woman must decide if her life is worth an advancement in her scientist husband’s work.

A new Tana French novel is always reason to celebrate! In this follow-up to The Searcher, retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper’s attempts at building a quiet life in the Irish countryside are threatened when his girlfriend’s long-lost father returns to town with trouble on his mind.

Tommy Orange’s debut novel There, There was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a huge success with readers and critics. He returns to the history of some of the characters in that book, following three generations of a family from the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to the present.

Gabriel García Márquez is the late Colombian, Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. This is his newly rediscovered novel about a happily married woman who travels for one night in August every year to take a new lover.

And this is the eagerly anticipated new novel from the author of the National Book Award finalist, The Leavers! It follows three close friends from their teenage years in the 1980s to their joys and disappointments as young adults to their future lives in the 2040s.

Hanif Abdurraqib has been reliably releasing amazing nonfiction every year or two now for a decade. He’s the author of such award-nominated books as They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us and A Little Devil in America. His new book is about growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, around the time of the rise of basketball star LeBron James. It’s a smart, thoughtful examination of home, role models, society, fame, and more.

Leigh Bardugo is the NYT bestselling author of the Grishaverse young adult series, which includes Shadow and Bone and the Ninth House series for adults. This is one of 2024’s most anticipated books, a new historical fantasy for adults set during the Spanish Golden Age

From the author of the excellent, anxiety-inducing novel Good Neighbors comes an even more delightfully horrifying story of family, classism, social niceties, and secrets. When Linda and her family gain entry into an ultra-exclusive neighborhood that will shield them from the dying rest of the world, it feels like their dreams have come true. But be careful what you wish for.

ALL THE HEART EYES. This is definitely one of the most anticipated books of the year…if not the decade. Since the release of the first volume of this incredible adult graphic novel several years ago, about a young child detective who feels like a monster, readers have been clamoring for the second part. And it’s finally happening!

The legendary author Salman Rushdie has written an account of being attacked while at a reading in August of 2022, more than three decades after Ayatollah Khomeini called for his assassination upon the publication of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was severely injured in the attack and is expected to testify at his attacker’s trial in January.

When young, deadly assassin Eveen the Eviscerator is assigned a new job, it seems straightforward. But there’s a complication she never could have expected, and when the whole job goes sideways, she finds herself on the run from the very people who hired her. This has Liberty’s early vote for her favorite book of the year! (Note: there are no dead cats in this book. It’s just a name.)

The amazing Amy Tan is probably best known for her novels, such as The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter. In this new book, she chronicles her new-found love of birdwatching, which started at the beginning of the pandemic, and shares some of the amazing illustrations she made of the birds she saw.

Stephen King needs no introduction: he’s one of the best-selling authors of all time. He has a new collection of twelve tales of terror releasing this spring, his first story collection in some time, many of which have never before been published.

R. O. Kwon, the author of the bestselling novel The Incendiaries, is back! At a fancy party, a young photographer who seems to have it all finds herself drawn to a stranger. When she breaks a familial promise by telling the alluring stranger about a family curse, she then starts to wonder as the days go by if the curse is now coming true.

The cover for the new Rufi Thorpe hasn’t even been shared yet, but it has already been announced that the book is being made into a film with Nicole Kidman and Elle and Dakota Fanning producing! It’s about a young woman who is trying to figure out her life while in college when she becomes pregnant, and her financial troubles snowball from there.

Yume Kitasei’s fantastic debut sci-fi mystery, The Deep Sky, was a Book Riot favorite. Now she’s back with another thrilling sci-fi adventure, this one about the galaxy’s best art thief and one last job to help save an alien civilization.

Julia Phillips is the author of the bestselling novel Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. This exciting new book is about two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island and a mysterious visitor in the woods.

Stephen Graham Jones has fast become one the the best, most beloved horror writers of our time. Hot on the heels of the conclusion of his Indian Lake Trilogy in March comes a new novel about a teenager in Texas in the 1980s who is cursed to become a killer.

From the bestselling author of The President and the Frog and Cantoras comes a new queer, feminist retelling of the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros. When Psyche’s father decides to get rid of her to appease Aphrodite, she is somehow spared from the monsters. Instead, she is discovered by Eros, who falls in love with her. And against the wishes of the gods, they continue their relationship.