Den of Geek’s Best Books of 2024
Looking for gift ideas or something to escape into? Here are our writers’ picks of this year’s best books.
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A book is as flattering a gift as can be given. ‘Hey, you!’ It says, ‘I think you’re smart! Against all the odds and distractions, you have the power to tune your brain in to this special frequency that whooshes you right out of Starbucks or off the night bus or your couch cushions or wherever it is you’re sitting, and sends you straight into somebody else’s imagination. Dude. Dude. Amazing.’
And that’s before the actual book comes into it. Even ahead of your recipient turning to the back cover to see which specific story you’ve picked out for them because they are smart and cool and you know what they might get a kick out of, they’re already aglow with fellow feeling. If they read the book and love the book, then you’ve done it. Achievement unlocked. Ten out of ten. A perfect interaction.
We can’t buy you each the perfect book, but we can recommend the ones we hope you’ll get a kick out of. So that’s what our writers have done below, with our selection of favourites published in 2024. For last year’s list, see here.
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga Press)
Stephen Graham Jones is the undisputed champion of all things slasher. The author of over 25 books, much of his horror is an ode to the genre made famous in 80s grindhouse movies and the Scream franchise after that. He’s written books on the subject before –2024 also saw the publication of The Angel of Indian Lake, the Grand Guignol finale of his trilogy following final girl Jade Daniels. I Was a Teenage Slasher doesn’t retread the same ground and Jones gives the genre new life –and new extremely gory deaths –by writing from the perspective of the killer. 17-year-old Tolly Driver, growing up and going nowhere in 1989 West Texas, narrates his memoir about that cursed summer when events beyond his control transform him from a lonely headbanging outsider into a mass murderer. It’s a poignant, page-turning coming-of-age horror story painted in blood n’ guts and 80s hair metal. Tolly’s heartbreaking self-awareness, rich in irony and infused with Jones’ evocative recreation of a very specific place and time, will have readers wanting to puke, sob, and question what they know of justice. – Theresa DeLucci
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Hodder & Staughton)
Time travel exists. It’s here, don’t worry about it, the government’s handling it. In Kaliane Bradley’s excellent debut sci-fi novel (she’s also a terrific writer of short stories), the powers that be launch a project not too dissimilar to the plot of Doctor Who serial “The War Games” and bring a handful of people from various periods of English history to 21st century London. To help “the expats” assimilate, they’re each paired with a local known as a “bridge” who’s there to interpret the finer points of hygiene, air travel and YouTube, and to explain why 18th century sexual mores and racial slurs aren’t currently the vibe. Our narrator is a bridge paired with 1847, aka real-life Arctic Explorer Graham Gore, who was lost along with his crewmen in the Franklin expedition of that year. Gore is buttoned-up and scathing about many aspects of modern life, but his enjoyably quick tongue and sense of irony endear him. As does the fact that he’s a total snack.
This is a deathly clever story not only filled with great writing and wry observations on modern life, Englishness and otherness, but also with a proper mystery plot and a pretty hot love story. It’s the complete package, in other words, something the BBC recognised when it ordered a six-part TV adaptation before it was even published. – Louisa Mellor
I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue (William Morrow)
The premise of Natalie Sue’s sardonic debut nails the surreality of office work, where the stakes can swing from mundane to life-altering. Burnt-out Supershops employee Jolene Smith gets put on probation after it’s discovered that she appends scathing postscripts (in white text) to her emails. This questionable behavior lands her in sensitivity training with new HR analyst Cliff Redmond but also, through an IT glitch, grants her access to all of her co-workers’ emails, DMs, and other sensitive interoffice correspondences. Suddenly Jolene can eavesdrop on everyone she not-so-secretly hates, only to discover that they loathe her equally.
While Jolene is tempted to go full Office Space and burn it all down, Sue instead plumbs the pathos of this awkward situation, forcing Jolene to confront the consequences of her quiet quitting while also linking back to a traumatic adolescent loss. It’s one of the best recent meditations I’ve read on how elder Millennials have been shaped to have a toxic relationship with work, while hitting upon what’s kept us in these jobs: the people, from flirty romances to the co-workers we’d initially written off who it turns out are in the trenches alongside us. – Natalie Zutter
The Gods Below by Andrea Stewart (Orbit)
There are few fantasy authors creating worlds and magic systems as fascinating or complex as Stewart (author of the critically acclaimed Drowning Empire trilogy). Now, in the first of a new trilogy, she creates a post-apocalyptic setting where mortals burned magical forests to create their civilization until it fell apart. A god has promised the world will be remade, one realm at a time, for the cost of half the lives of the populace; those who remain are transformed. Hakara is determined that she and her sister, impoverished though they are, won’t face either price—but when the pair try to flee into another realm as refugees, only Hakara gets through, leaving young Rasha to fend for herself. Ten years later, Hakara accidentally swallows a god stone and realizes that she can use magic she thought only available to the gods. Determined to be reunited with her sister, she joins rebels in a fight against their supposed savior deity, unaware that her transformed sister has joined that deity’s church and taken on the mantle of a godkiller. Stewart delights in twists, and the complicated politics, with sisters on opposite sides of a rebellion, makes it unclear who to root for—when truly, readers will want to root for them all. This is a strong series opener from one of the must-watch fantasy voices currently writing. – Alana Joli Abbott
Red Dead’s History by Tore C. Olsson (St. Martin’s Press)
Who says video games can’t be educational? Certainly not history professor Tore C. Olsson, who uses Rockstar Games’ epic Western Red Dead Redemption II to teach a university course about the post-Civil War South. In this well-researched and easily digestible book, history buffs and game fans can follow Arthur Morgan’s misadventures through the lens of real American history. Red Dead is both praised for its depiction of this unique era of industrialist tycoons, mercenary Pinkertons, and the birth of Jim Crow, and forgiven for its mythmaking around the Wild West. Fans will come away appreciating the depth of Rockstar’s creative storytelling while learning that America’s true history was often even more violent. The audiobook is particularly perfect for Red Dead fans as it’s narrated by Roger Clark, the voice and performance actor for Arthur Morgan, who wears his vocal cowboy hat one more time. – TD
All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whittaker (Orion)
Like those by Tana French (Dublin Murder Squad) or Jane Harper (The Dry, Exiles), a crime mystery by Chris Whitaker is a non-negotiable thing. Read it and your time won’t have been wasted. Whitaker’s plots are meticulous, his dialogue skips along without ever tripping over itself, and his American settings are vividly drawn – no mean feat considering that he’s an Englishman who lives in the Home Counties instead of Missouri or Montana. The real draw though, are his characters. In Whitaker’s prize-winning We Begin at the End, you lost your heart to 13-year-old Duchess, and in All the Colours of the Dark, the same goes for Patch and Saint, the children whose lives become irretrievably marked by an abduction.
Spanning several decades, All the Colours of the Dark is Great Expectations-like in scope (and twice its usual size, at 656 pages), and similarly shows how a boy grows into a man, making mistakes and righting them as best he can. It’s a mystery thriller that ticks all the crime fiction boxes, while also being a thoughtful, even romantic novel about the lengths people will go to for love. Unputdownable. – LM
A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon (HarperVia)
Award-winning South Korean novelist Park takes on the magical girl genre with a light tone—but a darkly pointed commentary—in this short novel about finding a place in the world. In debt and so disillusioned with her life that she’s ready to end everything, the 29-year-old narrator is saved by destiny in the form of magical girl Ah Roa, a clairvoyant who believes the narrator is the Magical Girl of Time. The only hope for the planet, in the midst of the climate crisis, is for the Magical Girl of Time to save them. But though the narrator at once believes that she could have this meaning to her life, she also stumbles through activating her own powers, frustrated when the talisman that’s supposed to help her takes the form of a credit card. What kind of magical girl is she, anyway? With manhwa-style chapter illustrations and tropes that could be drawn from the familiar comics genre, a lot of the style of the novel hearkens back to the popularity of Sailor Moon, but it also acknowledges a stark reality where those who gain the power of magical girls are the ones who face the greatest risk of harm and trauma. Park pictures a world on the brink of collapse, with no one paying the price—and shows what it might take for a millennial to not only survive, but to capture her own dreams and make her life worth living. – AJA
The Unmothers – Leslie J. Anderson (Quirk)
Folk horror for horse girls! This debut novel from award-winning poet Leslie J. Anderson is a slow-burn mystery with deeply unsettling shocks. In the aftermath of her husband’s untimely death, a grieving journalist gets sent to a rural town to investigate a strange local story: a human baby has been born to a horse. The townspeople are suspiciously, deeply wary of outsiders for some reason… and then corpses of man and beast start to pile up. It’s enough weirdness to make any hero question their sanity and readers will follow suit, snared by Anderson’s careful plotting. Stories of female rage and pregnancy horror feel especially topical this year and The Unmothers touches on these topics with originality and gorgeous, ominous prose. – TD
Haunted Ever After by Jen DeLuca (Berkley)
After years of transporting us to Maryland’s Willow Creek Renaissance Faire, Jen DeLuca whisks us south to Florida—specifically, the haunted town of Boneyard Key, with punny businesses (Hallowed Grounds) and a year-round ghost tour. But this goes beyond mere kitsch; Boneyard Key’s residents legitimately live alongside spectral citizens with unfinished business. This might range from former coffee shop owner Elmer texting new proprietor Nick Royer about the banana bread, to whatever otherworldly force is stopping new homeowner Cassie Rutherford from charging her damn laptop at home—even if it does lead to a meet-cute with grumpy Nick.
DeLuca does an excellent job establishing Boneyard Key’s unique setup so matter-of-factly that we’re in on page one, never letting the premise take itself too seriously; yet it’s not all frothy fun, either. Cassie’s paranormal house pranks begin escalating into real danger and a disturbing possession subplot that’s a grave metaphor for the toxic behaviors of past relationships that we unwittingly allow to haunt our new connections. Not to mention the book thoughtfully builds on the romance genre’s commentary on tourists, who treat Boneyard Key and its residents as flavors of the (spooky) month before going back to their real lives, versus those willing to put down roots, even if that soil is haunted. Good thing there are more Boneyard Key adventures to come! – NZ
So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole (Little, Brown)
After the war is over and the chosen one who saved the world has returned home, life goes on. But in Cole’s gorgeous debut fantasy, a YA novel that’s the first in a duology, the war never truly leaves those who fought it. Sisters Faron and Elara freed their island nation from an empire that uses dragons in warfare. Faron, as the Childe Empyrean, is the only person who can directly channel the power of their gods; though the war ended when she was 12, she still carries their abilities, not sure how to balance the liar she believes herself to be with the saint her island sees. Elara, a gifted summoner who can use the strengths of relatives who have died, is determined to join the island’s army, to serve her purpose as a soldier and be her own person instead of merely her sister’s shadow. When Elara accidentally bonds with an enemy dragon, the queen allows her to go to the empire’s dragon rider academy in hopes of learning new information about their former enemy. Faron is determined to stop at nothing to break her sister’s bond and bring her home—nothing, that is, except killing her sister, as the gods order. Cole balances a story that is, at its heart, about the love between two sisters, with themes of loyalty, colonialism, the costs of war, and gods who are too divine to have empathy for humans. – AJA
How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang (Avon)
There is nothing cute about the ways in which Helen Zhang and Grant Shepard meet: Not when her mother drives him away from the funeral for Helen’s sister Michelle, for whose death their hometown blames him. Not 13 years later, when he shows up in the writers’ room for the adaptation of Helen’s bestselling YA dark academia book series, worsening her imposter syndrome. And especially not when prolonged time in the room—sharing instant intimacies with other screenwriters in order to make the best possible TV show—ignites a forbidden attraction between them. This romance isn’t cute, but it’s hot, and it’s dark, and it’s so raw you know everyone is going to get hurt in potentially irreversible ways.
It’s also a love letter to Hollywood, with Kuang affectionately rendering the eccentric rhythms of a writers’ room while reminding us that these are ordinary people with extraordinary talents. From a key confrontation at their star-studded premiere to the quieter but equally charged moments visiting holiday house parties in their hometown, Grant and Helen experience almost a fanfiction AU of their adolescence, as if the Prom King and the Brain had gone steady. But there’s still room for Michelle’s ghost between them, and it’s up to them as adults to decide how to build a relationship around that forever empty space. Helen is a fascinating heroine, satisfyingly prickly yet often called on her shit. The subplot involving her strained relationship with her parents adds extra stakes beyond the genre-typical misunderstandings. This is just such a nuanced love story where neither person is entirely right, but that doesn’t mean that what’s between them is wrong, either. – NZ
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly (Penguin Books)
I’m not sure I’ve loved any literary siblings more than this hapless pair. Greta and Valdin Vladisavljevic make Pride and Prejudice’s Bennet sisters look like romantic relationship pros, and the Brothers Karamazov seem happy-go-lucky and well-adjusted. Picture the meandering inner monologues of Mark and Jez from Peep Show, but queer, Māori-Russian, and living in present day Auckland.
Rebecca K Reilly’s debut novel was originally published in New Zealand in 2020, but only made its way to the UK in 2024 so qualifies for celebration here. It’s the story of two academically gifted but reality-impaired twentysomethings trying to carve out a space for themselves in their big, clever, international extended family, and grow into what will become their adult shapes. It’s very funny, totally all over the place in terms of plot, and occasionally extremely wise. More importantly than that though, Greta & Valdin will keep you such excellent company while you’re let into their alternating first-person narration, that you’ll miss their beautifully weird inner voices when they’ve gone.- LM
We Also Recommend…
– This Will Be Fun by E. B. Asher – A cozy romantasy about getting the adventuring party back together.
– My Family – The Memoir by David Baddiel – A candid, funny, truthful and involving account of the life of Baddiel’s mother, her obsessions, and of losing his father to dementia.
– Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud – A captivating cosmic horror novella about an asylum that tampers with inmates’ memories using lunar spider silk.
– The Tower by Flora Carr – An excellent, atmospheric debut historical novel imagining Mary Queen of Scot’s 1567 year of confinement in Lochleven castle.
– Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley – A frank, darkly funny and insightful memoir about friendship and loss.
– The Diablo’s Curse by Gabe Cole Novoa – A standalone sequel to 2023’s The Wicked Bargain, this is a YA pirate fantasy with an LGBTQ cast.
– A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez – A terrific selection of horror short stories about haunting from the talented Argentinian journalist and writer.
– Funny Story by Emily Henry – Another wonderful romance from the author of Beach Read, Book Lovers and You and Me on Vacation.
– Joyful Recollections of Trauma by Paul Scheer – A series of essays about coming to terms with the past and finding joy by The League comedian and actor.
– Mystery Lights by Lena Valencia – An atmospheric and genre-bending debut collection of speculative short stories set mostly in deserts in the American Southwest.