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What Book Should You Read Next?

Finding a book you’ll love can be daunting. Let us help.

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By The New York Times Books Staff

• Published April 16, 2023 Updated Sept. 4, 2024

Fiction | Nonfiction

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At The New York Times Book Review, we write about thousands of books every year. Many of them are good. Some are even great. But we get that sometimes you just want to know, “What should I read that is good or great for me ? Well, here you go — a running list of some of the year’s best, most interesting, most talked-about books.

Give me a ferocious drama about family and art

The Hypocrite , by Jo Hamya

On an August afternoon in 2020, an aging British author arrives at a London theater to watch his daughter’s latest play — only to learn it’s a thinly veiled fictionalization of an argument they had on a Sicilian holiday years earlier. This sharp and agile novel is an art monster story and a dysfunctional family saga that explores the ethics of creating work inspired by real life. (Join the discussion of the book in the Book Review Book Club .)

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I want to catch up on the book of the summer

All fours , by miranda july.

The unnamed heroine of July’s gaspingly explicit comic novel plans a cross-country road trip, only to stop 30 minutes from home. There she lavishly redecorates a motel room and begins an odd but passionate affair with a younger man who works at a rental-car agency.

How about a deliciously escapist, spicy romance?

The pairing , by casey mcquiston.

In the latest queer romance from the author of “Red, White and Royal Blue” and “The Last Stop,” Kit and Theo — who haven’t seen each other since their brutal breakup — find themselves on the same European food tour, with stops in France, Italy and Spain. To display just how much they’ve moved on, the two exes, both of whom are bisexual, start a hookup competition.

I like my plots straight out of the horror section of the video store

I was a teenage slasher , by stephen graham jones.

Jones’s viciously clever new novel turns a gruesome murderer into “your friendly neighborhood slasher.” Tolly Driver decides to crash a party thrown by the cool kids — the same kids who, a few years back, caused the death of another student. When this dead student reappears as a zombie at the party to enact gory revenge, some of his monster blood splatters into a cut on Tolly’s forehead, turning our narrator into an unstoppable, superhuman killing machine.

Give me a thrilling new take on an American masterpiece

James , by percival everett.

In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own and with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.

I want a great American book full of humanity

The heaven & earth grocery store , by james mcbride.

McBride’s latest opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the remains’ connection to one town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history. But rather than a straightforward whodunit, McBride weaves an intimate tale of community.

I want to read a book everyone is (still) talking about

Demon copperhead , by barbara kingsolver.

Kingsolver’s powerful novel, published in 2022 and now available in paperback, is a close retelling of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield” set in contemporary Appalachia. The story gallops through issues including childhood poverty, opioid addiction and rural dispossession even as its larger focus remains squarely on the question of how an artist’s consciousness is formed. Like Dickens, Kingsolver is unblushingly political and works on a sprawling scale, animating her pages with an abundance of charm and the presence of seemingly every creeping thing that has ever crept upon the earth.

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How about a wrenching story that puts heroic women at the center?

The women , by kristin hannah.

The best-selling author of “The Nightingale” follows a San Diego debutante who works as an Army nurse during the Vietnam War. “Hannah’s real superpower is her ability to hook you along from catastrophe to catastrophe, sometimes peering between your fingers, because you simply cannot give up on her characters,” our reviewer wrote.

I’d like a moody, mesmerizing crime novel from a master

The hunter , by tana french.

For Tana French fans, every one of the thriller writer’s twisty, ingenious books is an event. This one, a sequel to “The Searcher,” once again sees the retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, a perennial outsider in the Irish west-country hamlet of Ardnakelty, caught up in the crimes — seen and unseen — that eat at the seemingly picturesque village.

Give me a smart romantic comedy that avoids cliché

Good material , by dolly alderton.

Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old man struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.

I’d like a deeply personal memoir by a trailblazing public figure

Lovely one , by ketanji brown jackson.

“My march to this shining moment has sometimes been a steep and emotionally grueling climb,” writes Jackson, the first Black woman named to the Supreme Court, in a packed but fast-moving memoir that nevertheless emphasizes the “blessings” that sustained her: dedicated parents, encouraging teachers, cheerleading roommates, loving daughters and her college boyfriend — now husband — whose “partnership, which made this possible, is everything.”

Give me an entertaining history of American style

Empresses of seventh avenue , by nancy macdonell.

In lively prose and rich historical detail, MacDonell tells the story of the group of women who, during the 1940s, turned New York into a world fashion capital. Cut off from Europe’s great houses by World War II, homegrown designers, journalists and retailers created an American look — and a business — that was uniquely suited to the moment: accessible, youthful and modern.

How about a deep dive into an unexpected topic that I won’t be able to put down?

Frostbite , by nicola twilley.

Twilley, a food and health reporter, travels the length of the cold chain in her engrossing new book, talking up the people who fill our shipping containers and cheese caves. “Frostbite” combines lucid history, science and a thoughtful consideration of how daily life today is both dependent on and deformed by this matrix of artificial cold.

I want to spend my weekend obsessing over a musical icon

Traveling , by ann powers.

This is a highly personal, warts-and-all consideration of Joni Mitchell, whose comeback after a 2015 aneurysm and appearance at the 2024 Grammy Awards have only burnished her exalted reputation in the pantheon of modern singer-songwriters. The book mixes accounts of the stages of Mitchell’s career and close readings of her lyrics with digressions about Powers’s own experiences, memories and opinions.

I’d like a nuanced look at the U.S.-Mexico border crisis

Everyone who is gone is here , by jonathan blitzer.

This timely and instructive history, from a New Yorker staff writer, situates the immigration crisis as the outcome of a long and vexed entanglement between the United States and its southern neighbors.

I’m ready to hear about one of the most shocking moments in recent literary history

Knife , by salman rushdie.

In his candid, plain-spoken and gripping new memoir, Rushdie recalls the attempted assassination he survived in 2022 during a presentation about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Rushdie lost an eye, but he has slowly recovered thanks to the attentive care of doctors and the wife he celebrates here.

Teach me about a forgotten chapter of American history

Madness , by antonia hylton.

Hylton investigates the hidden history of Crownsville Hospital, a segregated asylum on 1,500 acres in Anne Arundel County, Md., that operated for over 90 years. The story has resonance today — particularly regarding America’s continuing failure to care for Black minds.

I want an unflinching account of motherhood from one of our best personal essayists

Splinters: another kind of love story , by leslie jamison.

Jamison, who has previously written stylishly about her experiences with addiction, abortion and more, here delivers a searing account of divorce and the bewildering joys of new motherhood, cementing her status as one of America’s most talented self-chroniclers.

I want a revelatory biography of someone I thought I knew everything about

King: a life , by jonathan eig.

The first comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades, Eig’s book draws on a landslide of recently released government documents as well as letters and interviews. This is a book worthy of its subject: both an intimate study of a complex and flawed human being and a journalistic account of a civil rights titan.

I need something to help me through a hard time (and that might even make me laugh)

Grief is for people , by sloane crosley.

This memoir follows Crosley, who is known for her humor as she works to process the loss of her friend, mentor and former boss, Russell Perreault, who died by suicide.

Honestly, I really like reading about animals

What an owl knows: the new science of the world’s most enigmatic birds , by jennifer ackerman.

There are some 260 species of owls spread across every continent except Antarctica, and in this fascinating book, Ackerman explains why the birds are both naturally wondrous and culturally significant.

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