Another year, another Best Books list. We’ve spent the last 12 months speaking with authors, from pop star-turned-poet Marina Diamandis, to novelist R.O. Kwon. We have dissected the memoirs of former first wives (Hillary Clinton, Melania Trump), and chronicled the literary dramas that set group chats and Slack channels aflame. (See: Honor Levy, Blake Butler.) We have excerpted brilliant books, including those penned by VF editors, contributors, and friends: Griffin Dunne’s The Friday Afternoon Club, Lili Anolik’s Didion and Babitz, and Molly Jong-Fast’s new introduction to David Friend’s The Naughty 90s among them. In short, we have read, and read, and, read. And in addition to all of those, we just must add a few more. Here, the can’t-miss books of 2024.
Before all of America was unwittingly trapped in a hellacious, never-ending episode of The Surreal Life, reality TV occupied an unusual place in the cultural landscape. It was a bold new medium built on formats as old as the radio broadcast, a curiosity and a boogeyman and a tantalizingly modern experimental entertainment all at once. New Yorker writer and Pulitzer winner Emily Nussbaum explores every facet of the genre in her scrupulously researched and reported book, which traces the contemporary reality show from its midcentury origins in fabulously popular but morally dubious programs like Candid Camera and Queen for a Day to the seismic premieres of An American Family, The Real World, Survivor, and beyond—ending, where else, with the first season of The Apprentice. Much like a Bachelor hopeful clutching a single red rose, I couldn’t put it down. (Random House) —Hillary Busis, senior editor
Lev Grossman’s latest novel begins where most Arthurian fantasies end: with the death of the storied king who gave his name to the era, and a motley crew of surviving Round Table members who have no idea what to do next. They’re spurred into action by Collum, a young wannabe knight with humble origins and a preternatural talent for sword fighting. Just as he did in the Magicians trilogy, Grossman creates a fully absorbing and believable world populated by intriguing spins on well-established fantasy archetypes. The novel feels both classic and contemporary, and progressive in a refreshingly low-key way. A TV adaptation is already in the works; maybe it’ll be the Game of Thrones followup we deserve. (Sorry, House of the Dragon.) (Viking) —HB
Not many books will actually make you laugh out loud. Even fewer are capable of stirring the full gamut of reactions stoked by this profane collection of linked stories, focused on a parade of losers so disgusting, pathetic, and/or misanthropic that they don’t even like each other. The terminally online Tony Tulathimutte has an eye for detail—I’m still impressed that a male author would describe a woman as being so depressed that she “doesn’t bother to move her tampon string out of the way when she pees, so she just walks around all day with a damp string”—and a talent for creative perversion; the book’s climax, as it were, is a story called “Ahegao, or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,” in which a sad virgin lays out an excruciatingly comprehensive and ridiculous sexual fantasy. But don’t take my word for it. Try this text from my brother (who, full disclosure, went to school with Tulathimutte): “I almost shit my pants laughing.” (Morrow) —HB
One of those rare fiction debuts that introduces a voice both thrillingly original and fully formed, Martyr! feels like a new classic of angsty, reflective millennial literature. Kaveh Akbar’s semi-autobiographical novel dances around place and time and between perspectives, in the construction of an intimate family saga anchored by massive existential questions. With as much richness found in the hero’s journey of sobriety as his mother’s mysterious fate, as much dark comedy found in a medical actor’s rebellion as the bittersweet dynamic between father and son, the book feels both generous and pointed, finding its way toward sharply political conclusions with an urgency that never turns didactic, but resonates as piercingly personal. (Knopf) —David Canfield, Hollywood correspondent
“Writing the memoir was really a revelation for me, because I had always thought I was just lucky,” Ina Garten told my colleague Keziah Weir of Be Ready When the Luck Happens, Garten’s long-awaited account of her fascinating life published in October. “In the process of going back—and I mean, literally physically going back—to Washington and spending time there, I realized that while I was working in the White House, I was teaching myself how to cook. I was buying old houses and renovating them and learning how to do construction and bank loans and things like that. I was also, at night, going to business school. And I think to myself, now, how exactly did I do all that? But I did it because I thought it was fun.” From Garten’s difficult childhood to meeting Jeffrey, her husband and steadfast champion of more than half a century, to honing her business acumen and coming into her own, in the Hamptons, Paris and wherever else she set foot, Garten’s story is a masterclass on confidence, perseverance and the power of having someone in your corner. In these pages, Garten beautifully reflects on all she has created: an empire built on self-belief. (Crown) —Maggie Coughlan, editor, style and culture
With Black Meme, Legacy Russell, chief curator of New York-based experimental art institution the Kitchen, continues her meditations on technology and Blackness. Given the topic of “meme,” readers might anticipate this work to focus its scope on the advent of the Internet through the present. But as its subtitle nods to—A History of the Images that Make Us—Russell expands the aperture to begin this journey through images with Lime Kiln Field Day, a 1913 silent film and the oldest surviving feature with an all-Black cast. In predating the actual Internet with a reference like this Russell seamlessly reminds readers that the questions posed by the meme and greater contemporary digital language are long-standing points of discussion. Black Meme makes clear we are an image based world and the foundational force shaping our understanding of this is Blackness. That acknowledgement naturally then brings forward questions of agency and authorship. Russell expertly explores and guides readers through the many quandaries therein allowing us to arrive on the other side, eyes wide and taking in the many, many sights (screens) almost as if for the first time tasked with better queries for our AI-powered-hyper-visible world but still with familiar demand: Reparations now! Free the Black meme! (Verso) —Arimeta Diop, editorial assistant
You loved Scarface? Narcos? Cocaine Cowboys? Cartel Land? This is the latest literary-non-fiction installment in that arcane cocaine genre–told by the desperadoes themselves. T.J. English, best known for his magnum opus, Havana Nocturne, digs into the lives and crimes of the 1980s coke kingpins of Miami, who somehow managed to clean up the trafficking biz and turn it into yet another Great American Market. Throughout this deeply reported, multi-layered book, the swank mixes with the dank. In the end, as Bob Dylan named one of his ‘80s songs: “Everything Is Broken.” (Morrow) —David Friend, editor of creative development
This slender, powerful study of freedom and morality by Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me has been one of the most controversial books of the year, but it is duly important. Coates puts a personal lens on the Black diaspora by traveling it, from Dakar to the mid East to the American South; his writing from and on Palestine nearly broke the so-called discourse. But the section on censorship and book banning in South Carolina (which Vanity Fair excerpted) underscores the narrative’s necessity: “The cradle of material change is in our imagination and ideas. And whereas white supremacy, like any other status quo, can default to the clichéd claims and excuses for the world as it is—bad cops are rotten apples, America is guardian of the free world—we have the burden of crafting new language and stories that allow people to imagine that new policies are possible.” (One World) —Claire Howorth, executive editor
I’ve already written about why I felt The Barn was essential reading in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 election—the narrative is both an investigation into the horrifying murder of Emmet Till and a cultural examination of white power, white supremacy, in the 20th and 21st century south, from the perspective of a white Mississippian trying to come to terms with his own lineage. I’ve since recently read the Erik Larson bestseller, In the Garden of Beasts, about 1930s Berlin—which Larson published in 2011, before the rise of Trump—and I strongly believe that the more all-too-recent history we read, the better we may fare as humankind. There is a direct line here. (Penguin Press) —CH
Another Word for Love contains a page-length sentence. That is, Carvell Wallace‘s memoir is overflowing with lyrical language and blunt truths and questions left unanswered. The writer’s short chapters offer vignettes of his childhood with a single mother, his lessons in masculinity as a queer, Black man, and his attempt to identify love, in all of its forms. This book is for anyone (all of us?) searching for the same. (MCD) —Audrey Fromson, research manager
I recommended Percival Everett‘s James to VF readers in May. Six months later, my opinion has not changed—and what’s more, the judges of the National Book Awards agree! Everett’s novel won the top prize for fiction at the annual ceremony on November 20. Everyone I’ve spoken to who has read this book has also loved it. It’s rare to find such critical consensus around a work of contemporary fiction, but then it’s rare, in my experience, to come across such a polished gem as James. (Doubleday) —Radhika Jones, editor in chief
Once All Fours began to dominate group chats around New York, I picked up the book and prepared to roll my eyes. Too much hype! But instead it was chaotic, joyous, and terrifying in all of the best ways. A totally refreshing take on what everyone seems to ask of women—and what we dare ask of ourselves. (Riverhead) —Alyssa Karas, global director of audience development
Elitist and legend in his own mind, the mononymous Lawrence, auteur behind the bands Felt, Denim, and Go-Kart Mozart, is one of the great British pop eccentrics of the last fifty years. A curmudgeon of the highest order, seemingly ennobled by failure, he was once described by The Guardian as “the greatest pop star that Britain never had.” While Felt famously produced ten singles and ten albums of feathery, minimalist pop that were adored by melancholic fans of bands like The Cure and The Smiths, they failed to score a major hit and would always remain a cult act. In 1997, an advance issue of “Summer Smash,” a single by his follow up band, Denim, became Radio 1’s Single of the Week. They might have ridden it to Brit Pop glory were it not for Princess Diana’s sudden death. EMI scuttled the release. And so it went. Journalist Will Hodgkinson spent a year trailing Lawrence on walks around the suburbs of London. In Street Level Superstar, the resultant endearing portrait, he comes across as equal parts Bartleby and Sisyphus: a self-sabateur whose singular pursuit of pop success, though undone by his myriad obsessions, remains as steadfast as ever. (Nine Eight Books) —Eric Miles, visuals editor
Originally published in 1980, Suzanne and Louise tells the quixotic story of two sisters as documented through images and text by their great-nephew, the French writer, photographer, and filmmaker Hervé Guibert. The sisters have a peculiar relationship. Both are single in their old age, living together in a hôtel particulier in Paris’s 15th arrondissement. Suzanne, the elder, controls the finances, and Louise, the younger, plays the role of her humble yet tyrannical maid. Considered a “photo novel”, Guibert’s text is akin to prose poetry–fragmented, distilled, lyrical–and his photos are equally as intimate. The black-and-white images fall somewhere between snapshots and loving portraiture, showing their long gray hair, their statues of Christ and flowers arranged as altars, their dog’s large leather muzzle. All of this adds up to an imperfect account of their past lives and current fixations, and Guibert’s non-linear attempts at characterizing Suzanne and Louise. Additionally, the book is as much about the great-aunts and Guibert’s collaboration with them as it is about the limits of language and photography. It shares many of the same concerns as Guibert’s quasi-memoir Ghost Image (1981), a meditation on photography’s philosophical relationship to the passage of time, mortality, and desire, which would make a great double-feature read. (Magic Hour Press) —Madison Reid, associate visuals editor
The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta is perhaps best known for his work documenting the inner workings of Trumpworld, but for his second book, he turned his gaze to a group of the past and future president’s most stalwart supporters. Though an overwhelming majority of American evangelicals have voted Republican for the last few electoral cycles, the flock’s embrace of Trump has caused a crisis in a variety of Protestant denominations. Jumping off from his own experience as a pastor’s kid from Michigan, Alberta skillfully surveys the landscape of modern Christianity’s relationship to politics and empathetically confronts some of its most controversial figures. (Harper) —Erin Vanderhoof, staff writer
On holiday in Italy, a British novelist dictates his new manuscript to his seventeen-year-old daughter, Sophia. Years later, she has written a play based on the experience—which he, in The Hypocrite’s present, is watching for the first time. Jo Hamya’s slippery, excellent exploration of sexual politics, creative appropriation, and family dynamics dips between the novelist’s experience of watching a fictional version of himself on stage, a simultaneous conversation between Sophia and her mother over lunch, and flashbacks to Sophia’s experience of the trip that inspired the play. It’s stylish and thoughtful and, as a story so thoroughly interested in perspective, lands its ending with all the force of a sharp knife hurled at a bullseye. (Pantheon) —Keziah Weir, senior editor
I recently wrote about Lauren Elkin’s cleverly constructed, psychologically acute study of marriage, secrets, and time, so I’ll keep this short: read if you enjoy Éric Rohmer films, the converging narratives of a Nicole Krauss novel, long city walks, a little Lacan. (FSG) —KW
Here, a unicorn: a propulsive, well-written novel about a couple in which both parties enjoy the other’s company. Thirty-somethings Asya and Manu live together in a foreign city; they’re renters, but they’re ready to buy an apartment. They chat with their neighbors and friends (two of whom provide some romantic angst), survey local real estate, navigate relationships with their faraway parents, Asya films interviews with visitors to a nearby public park. The book feels a little like a magic trick. Through pitch-perfect observations, droll and intimate interactions, through attention and care, Aysegul Savas has conjured a page turner. (Doubleday) —KW
Through a gothic estate, ghostly encounters, and devastating body horror, Clare Beams (with whom I share a literary agent) has crafted a harrowing, beautiful novel that interrogates questions of motherhood, wifedom, and the powers and limits of medical intervention. Smart and spiky Irene, who has suffered multiple miscarriages, turns to a mysterious Berkshires-based husband-and-wife medical team working on experimental treatments for women prone to pregnancy loss; upon Irene’s discovery of a walled garden imbued with apparent mystical powers, it becomes clear that something strange is afoot. A little bit The Secret Garden, a dash of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, all Beams. —KW
I read this swampy, surreal novel in one wonderful vacation weekend. It made a cross-country flight whiz by in moments. I found myself carrying it into the bathroom to read while brushing my teeth. In it, a ghostwriter stuck in Florida during the pandemic receives a strange assignment from her shadowy employer. Her sister goes missing. Sinkholes and portals—physical and emotional—keep yawning open, the past threatening to bubble to the surface, the future always just out of reach. The book keeps tacking on more strangeness, from a virtual reality device that at times behaves more corporeally real than virtual, to a little girl who sees ghosts out her window, to an expanding belly button—and yet there’s something very natural about it all. Our world is bizarre. If a virus could shut it down for a year, why shouldn’t one’s navel suddenly become deep enough not only into which to gaze, but to tuck a tube of chapstick? (FSG) —KW
Ugh, a government office gig, how boring, right? Not when that bureaucratic business entails acting as a sort of buddy (albeit one who also observes and reports every move) for what The Ministry of Time’s near-future government officials dub “expats.” Where have these people relocated from? Another time, of course. Bradley’s debut novel follows the adventures of the civil servant narrator and Commander John Gore, a member of Sir John Franklin’s doomed real-life expedition to the Arctic in 1847. With elements of time travel, romance, thrillers, and contemporary fiction, it’s hard to imagine how the novel would work, let alone be funny and thought-provoking simultaneously, but here we are. When thinking about history, sometimes we wonder how we’d explain atrocities like terrorism or genocide to our forefathers. Less often do we wonder what it would be like to smoke pot with them or teach them how to use the internet. The Ministry of Time does both with care and humanity. (Avid Reader Press) —Kase Wickman, reporter, culture & society