As we head toward the end of a year that has been tough for many, it’s important to take stock and look ahead. There are plenty of reasons to be cheerful and feel optimistic for 2024 and plenty of things to add to your to-do list for the 12 months ahead.
From new travel destinations and concerts to films and books to enjoy, there is always something new on the horizon.
In the latter field, particularly, there is plenty to look forward to, with an abundance of great books due out in 2024.
Across fiction and non-fiction, a range of established and newer authors are telling vital and enthralling stories. Here are just five highly anticipated titles to keep an eye out for.
1. The Fury by Alex Michaelides
A multimillion-copy bestseller, Alex Michaelides’ debut novel, The Silent Patient was released in 2019. It was labelled “the definition of a page-turner” and the “perfect thriller”.
It quickly became a record-breaking phenomenon, a TikTok sensation, and is soon to be a major film. It was followed by The Maidens in 2021.
On 1 February 2024, Michaelides will release his third novel The Fury.
A former movie star, Lana Farrar, invites six friends to a private Greek island for a rest-filled holiday. But nothing on the island (or in the books of Michaelides) is quite as it seems and a murderer may yet lurk among them.
Expect intricate plotting, tight pacing, and a likely twist or two as this hugely anticipated isolation thriller unfolds.
2. Ours by Phillip B Williams
The award-winning, Chicago-born poet Phillip B Williams releases his debut novel, Ours, in February.
Set in the mid-1800s, the novel follows a conjure woman called Saint (and her silent travelling partner) as she visits and destroys plantations in the South, using violence and magic to liberate the enslaved.
Saint creates a town for those she frees. She calls it “Ours”.
Invisible to the world beyond, Ours is protected by magic and guarded against dangers and violence from without. Until that is, two strangers inexplicably cross the border into Ours.
The arrival of Frances and Joy will set off a chain of events that could bring about Ours’ salvation or its destruction.
3. Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez
Anita de Monte Laughs Last is the follow-up to Gonzales’ best-selling debut, 2022’s Olga Dies Dreaming.
In that book, Gonzales used her past career as inspiration – as a wedding planner for ultra-rich New Yorkers in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis.
This time around, we follow two women’s stories. Anita de Monte is up and coming in the New York art world of the 1980s until she is found dead, or possibly murdered, in 1985.
More than a decade later, Anita’s story is all but forgotten until an art student named Raquel finds and then becomes interested in Anita’s work.
Travelling between the two time zones, the novel interweaves the stories and lives of these two women, raising important questions about who we remember and why, and who gets to leave a legacy.
Anita de Monte Laughs Last is due to be released on 5 March 2024.
4. Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles
Amor Towles is the bestselling author of Rules of Civility (2011), A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), and The Lincoln Highway (2021).
Table for Two: Fictions, comprises six New York City-based short stories and one novella.
While the shorter works are set around the year 2000 and stand alone, the novella takes readers back to the Golden Age of Hollywood with a beloved character from one of Towles’ previous novels.
In Rules of Civility, Evelyn Ross left New York City and headed for Chicago. “Eve in Hollywood” follows her exploits – from various perspectives – as she continues west in the late 1930s, taking in the movie sets and dive bars of Los Angeles.
This stylish and witty new collection is due out in April.
5. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
Larson’s work combines fact and fiction to create meticulously researched page-turners surrounding key events and people from history.
In The Devil in the White City, he combined the story behind the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair with the life and crimes of H H Holmes, America’s first modern serial killer.
Thunderstruck, meanwhile, interweaved the story of Dr Crippen’s “perfect murder” with that of Marconi as the latter attempted to invent the telegraph.
April sees the release of Larson’s The Demon of Unrest. It tells the story – through diaries, secret communiques, and plantation records – of the five months between Lincoln’s election and the start of the Civil War.
After a tight election race, Lincoln would find himself in power but battling to avert a war that would go on to cost the lives of 175,000 Americans.
