My Most Anticipated Books of 2024

My list of books to read continues to expand and there are lots to look forward to in 2024. All publication dates where known apply to the United Kingdom only.

Wellness by Nathan Hill is published in January. I really enjoyed Hill’s debut novel The Nix and his second book is another 600+page doorstopper about a couple who meet in Chicago in the 1990s. Another second novel out in January is Come and Get It by Kiley Reid set on a university campus in the United States.

Published in May by Bluemoose Books, Ghost Mountain by Ronan Hession has been described as a fable about a mountain that appears suddenly and will hopefully match the success of Leonard and Hungry Paul and Panenka. Due in June, Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal is about a London vet who takes up a fellowship on a tiny remote island.

You Are Here by David Nicholls is due in April, nearly five years since his last novel Sweet Sorrow. I am also rereading ‘One Day’ this month ahead of watching the Netflix adaptation which is out in February. Also returning with her first new novel since 2018’s Melmoth, Enlightenment by Sarah Perry is about two unlikely friends in the 1990s connected by the mystery of a missing 19th century astronomer.

Later in the year, The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami is the Japanese author’s latest novel translated by Philip Gabriel and will be out in the autumn. A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet is due in October and will be the Scottish author’s third detective novel.

My most anticipated memoir is My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss which will be out in August and is about the author’s relationship with food and illness, which are common themes in her novels. Knife by Salman Rushdie is sure to be newsworthy when it is published in April as the author recounts the knife attack he survived in 2022.

Elsewhere in non-fiction, Impossible City by Simon Kuper is about Paris in the 21st century, and will be out in April shortly before the city hosts the Olympic Games in the summer. The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke is about how two families are connected by a heart transplant and will be published in September. For political nerds, The Unusual Channels by Sebastian Whale is also due in the autumn and will look at the inner workings of the whips’ offices in the Westminster Parliament.

A few of my favourite authors haven’t published new work in several years. Sarah Waters, whose most recent novel The Paying Guests was published in 2014, has reportedly been working on a new book. Donna Tartt, last heard from in 2013 with The Goldfinch, is famous for her decade-long gaps between novels, so here’s hoping that 2024 is the year her fourth book finally appears…