2024 Christmas Book Review Roundup

If you have a hard-to-buy-for book lover on your Christmas list, here is a vetted list of 34 books I’ve read this year that I can highly recommend!

Those of you who follow this blog know that I write periodic book reviews during the year. Where does the time go? I couldn’t possibly write reviews on everything I read this year, but here is a rundown of all the books I finished and a brief synopsis of each one. If there is an asterisk* next to the title, the link first takes you to my review; otherwise it will take you to Amazon. (Full disclosure: I earn about 35 cents if you buy a book from one of these links, at no additional upcharge to you. I have to tell you that in advance, just so you’ll know.)

Sorry, you’ll find no romance, sci-fi, fantasy (OK, or politics, or self-help, or religion, or business development, or…) on my list. You’ll have to go elsewhere for those recommendations.

Fiction and Mystery

1. Here One Moment, by Lianne Moriarty. A psychic goes to each passenger on an airplane and predicts how and at what age they will die. The rest of the book deals with the aftermath of these predictions in people’s lives. Author of Big Little Lies.
2. Listen for the Lie, by Amy Tintera. A woman is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend’s blood. Her friend is dead, but she has no memory of that night. 5 years later, the case is still unsolved, so a true-crime podcaster decides he will try to solve it himself. This one was by far the best audiobook production I’ve ever listened to.
3. Karla’s Choice, by Nick Harkaway. Author is the son of John le Carré; this book carries le Carré’s espionage/spy series forward with all our favorite characters, including George Smiley.
4. Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus. Life as a female scientist in the 1960s.
5. A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. Pulitzer Prize winner. “Growing up in the digital age” is the best summary I can think of. A series of disparate stories and characters that somehow come together in the end. I almost didn’t finish this one because I had no idea where it was going, but I persevered, and was glad I did in the end.
6. Eruption, by Michael Crichton and James Patterson. A volcanic eruption threatens to destroy the Big Island of Hawaii. Michael Crichton was the author of Jurassic Park. This manuscript was discovered by Crichton’s wife after his death, and finished posthumously by James Patterson.
7. The Glassmaker, by Tracy Chevalier. Author of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Focuses on generations of female glassmakers of Venice.
8. Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck. An illicit love affair set against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s.
9. James, by Percival Everett. National Book Award winner and shortlisted for the Booker prize. A reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of the slave Jim.
10. The Alternatives, by Caoilinn Hughes. Four sisters who were prematurely orphaned have all grown up and gone their separate ways. Now, one (the geologist!) has gone missing and does not want to be found. The remaining three come together in a search for her and the family connections they lost.
11. The Hunter, by Tana French. The author continues where she left off with The Searcher, deepening the connections of ex-Chicago cop Cal Hooper in rural Ireland with Lena and the other locals. I really like books set in Ireland; among other things, the audio version gets you a lovely accent to listen to for many hours.
12. Erasure, by Percival Everett. A hilarious book that has since become the movie American Fiction. A Black author who is experiencing writer’s block reluctantly writes a book that is completely outrageous as a spoof on another book that is getting, in his opinion, some undeserved attention. He also released James in 2024.
13. Birnam Wood*, by Eleanor Catton. Three disparate parties—an idealistic nonprofit organization, a landowner, and an American billionaire—intersect in lush New Zealand with explosive results.
14. The Silence of the Dead*, by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro. Three cold cases dating back 50 years come together for a detective in the Spokane, WA police department who starts asking the right questions.
15. Hidden in Shadows, by Viveca Sten. A former Olympic skier is found murdered in the forest surrounding a Swedish ski resort, and a female detective is on the hunt for the killer. I’ve read more than my share of crime novels set in Sweden. Not sure why, but the combination of freezing temperatures and Scandinavia seems to result in especially intriguing murder and mayhem. If you find you love the Swedish setting, you will also love the Jussi Adler-Olsen novels and especially his Department Q series.
16. The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore. Two teenagers go missing from a summer camp, both from the same family and 14 years apart.
17. The Second Stranger, by Martin Griffin. A front desk clerk at a Scotland hotel is closing up for the last time; she’s leaving the country the next day. A blizzard is howling outside. Two men arrive at the door, injured and asking for help, within 30 minutes of each other. Both claim to be the same man, a local constable, and that a dangerous prisoner has escaped.

Historical Fiction

18. The Other Einstein*, by Marie Benedict. A book about Mileva, the brilliant but overlooked first wife of Albert Einstein.
19. My Friends*, by Hisham Matar. Longlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. Libyan college students attend a political protest in London, only to end up living in exile for the next 30 years.
20. American Pastoral, by Philip Roth. Pulitzer Prize winner. The perfect couple try to raise a perfect daughter during the troubled 1960s and the Vietnam War. Yes, I’m terribly late in reading this classic. I’ve also just started reading The Human Stain by the same author, but didn’t finish it in time for this post.
21. American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson. An espionage thriller unusual for its Black female FBI agent who goes underground in Burkina Faso in the mid-1980s to bring down a Communist leader. Based on a true story.
22. The Great Divide, by Cristina Henriquez. Construction of the Panama Canal, who built it, and how it affected the people of Panama.
23. The Book of Lost Names, by Kristin Harmel. A forger finds a way to assist Jewish children escape during WWII, and also preserve their true identities. Based on a true story.
24. The Women, by Kristin Hannah. The author sheds light on the role of enlisted female nurses during the Vietnam War. People either love this book or they hate it; there doesn’t seem to be any in between.
25. Mornings in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa. The story of Palestine in 1948, told from the Palestinian point of view, as Israelis moved in to reclaim the territory after WWII.

Memoir and Memoir/True Crime

26. Wave, by Sonali Deraniyagala. A survivor of the 2004 Sri Lankan tsunami, who lost her parents, her husband, and her two sons, writes of their experience, her immense grief, and her attempts to rebuild her life.
27. There Is No Ethan, by Anna Akbari. Three women are snared by the same Internet predator/catfisher, and tell how they eventually caught him.
28. A Walk in the Park*, by Kevin Fedarko. True-story one-year trek through the Grand Canyon. One of the most amazing adventure stories I’ve ever read.
29. Liliana’s Invincible Summer, by Cristina Rivera Garza. Pulitzer Prize winner. A woman travels to Mexico City to investigate her sister’s murder there in 1990.
30. Rabbit Heart*, by Kristine S. Ervin. A daughter tells the story of her mother’s abduction and murder outside a shopping mall in Oklahoma City when she was 8 years old, and how she has grappled with the loss ever since.

Nonfiction and Nonfiction/True Crime

31. The Siege*, by Ben Macintyre. True story of the 6-day 1980 siege of the Iranian Embassy in London, which paralleled our own US hostage crisis in Tehran. The amazing account of how the British police and intelligence services freed the hostages.
32. Bark, by Lorrie Moore. Eight short stories that discuss things such as dating after divorce, raising teenagers, dealing with the illness of a dear friend…in other words, people coping with the passage of time and feelings of dislocation.
33. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama*, by Nathan Thrall. 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner. A school bus full of Palestinian schoolchildren crashes and burns just outside of Jerusalem, killing many of them. This is one father’s story of the search for his 5-year-old son.
34. The Witch of New York, by Alex Hortis. A story of the first American woman, Polly Bodine, put on trial for capital murder in the 1840s, and the dawning of tabloid justice in America.