These year-end lists reflects the things I have enjoyed reading apart from evaluation and awards committees, and, in the age of AI, it really highlights the value of individual curation. Does anyone else have my exact same taste -- middlebrow, thriller, Anglophile being some commonalities? Maybe not, but these are the sorts of books I recommend whole-heartedly to friends and colleagues.
Long Island Compromise (2024) by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
This was my book of the year, and it may be my book of the decade, in that (spoiler!) I am trying to embrace Carl Fletcher's giddy dying realization that every other day of his life he was not being kidnapped. I am a fangirl.
Good Fortune (2023) by C.K. Chau
There is little I love as much as a solid Austen re-telling, this one is set in early-oughts Manhattan's Chinatown, with winning Elizabeth and Darcys.
Angolophilia
The Other Half (2023) by Charlotte Vassell
The In Crowd (2024) by Charlotte Vassell
These two are the first of, I really hope, a whole series featuring the ambiguously positioned DI Caius Beauchamp, that read like procedurals but are concerned with the upper crust. So much froth, class intrigue, and a lovely overlap of milieu between the first and second books.
Whips (2023) by Cleo Watson
I am so thrilled about the Rivals-associated Jilly Cooper revival, and this is a great, slightly naughty read if you are out of Rutshire novels. Young women finding their way in the world, including Westminster and the City.
Wives Like Us (2024) by Plum Sykes
Sykes' riotous take on social-climbing in the Cotswalds is full of name dropping and designer labels, but I think the inter-group politics holds in almost any community.
Past-Present-Past
Same as It Ever Was (2024) by Claire Lombardo
The Chicago suburbs are the backdrop for this novel about two women's lapsed friendship, which rings true in both past and present.
School Days (2022) by Jonathan Galassi
A boarding school book that follows classmates through a "me too"-type case decades after the fact, with strong characterization and interesting, never predictable twists and turns.
Un-real Estate
An obsession with house holding punctuates some 2024 favorites.
Caledonian Road (2024) by Andrew O’Hagen
The protagonist is a high profile writer with lots of outgoings and a sitting tenant, in stark contrast to his son, a globetrotting DJ. The post-covid particulars and gentrification make for something that feels really of the moment.
Come and Get It (2024) by Kiley Reid
Millie, like so many of my favorites this year, is a little adrift, working as an RA at the University of Arkansas, where she meets a visiting professor who uses her access to study the college girls' rituals and expenditures (which make me worry it won't age very well -- already, inflation has upended many of the references). All Millie really wants is a little house in Fayetteville, and to keep her job with the university. This sophomore effort is super-strong, and it is lovely to read something so deeply place-based that is not about Manhattan or London.
Entitlement (2024) by Rumaan Alam
Alam's Brooke is one of those people who lives in the orbit of the wealthy without being particularly well-resourced herself. When she becomes the protege of a philanthropic millionaire, she hopes to effect change, but things are never that easy. With one of those ambiguous endings English teachers love.
Royal-adjacent
Murder in Mustique (2020) by Anne Glenconner
Anne Glenconner's own story is fascinating, and this mystery is informed by her own experience as very 1970s hostess to royalty and the glitterati on one of the most exclusive, if undeveloped, of Carribean islands. Wonderfully atmospheric.
A Haunting at Holkham (2022) by Anne Glenconner
Holkham is Glenconner's family stately home, and this mystery is set in wartime, with a titled young woman returning a familiar place now functioning as a military installation. Fans of Downton will love it.
A Most Intriguing Lady (2023) by Sarah Ferguson
Sarah, the Duchess of York, channels a Victorian-era Dorothy Sayers in this novel about a sleuthing Duke's daughter. Fun.
Thrillers
Swiped (2024) by L.M. Chilton
An app-based dating-turned-killing spree based around a coffee van, with a British seaside setting. When Gwen becomes the suspect after her online matches are killed, she takes things into her own hands.
The Guest (2024) by B.A. Paris
Two couples' long-standing friendship is upended when one couple splits over the revelation of an affair and an illegitimate child. A story of secrets and lies, where no one is completely innocent.
The Last Word (2024) by Elly Griffiths
The third of Griffith's Harbinder Kaur novels, and the supporting Brighton-based characters of Edwin and Natalka steal their scenes. A solid procedural with a literary bent, centered around a literary retreat and a string of authorial murders.
Next of Kin (2021) by Kia Abdullah
I had not read Abdullah until Those People Next Door (2023), and her plotting is strong, but this one in particular stuck with me. Two sisters share a criminal case, a genetic disorder, and jealously and avarice.
Nonfiction with voice
Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up (2024) by Abigail Shrier
Sbrier's topics may be controversial, but her research and writing are impeccable. This one tackles the industry that has become mental health, and asks some salient questions, especially about whether we are pathologizing young people through mindfulness and social emotional learning.
The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading (2023) by Dwight Garner
Garner's textured autobiography is studded with incredible moments of both food and books, and his low-key recollections reveal his own writing talent. His Southern upbringing, his travails, his modesty are just lovely. This is one I found in last year's Best of lists...
The Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta--and Then Got Written Out of History (2023) by Howell Raines
This is a life's work around the often-overlooked North Alabamian resistance to the confederacy, pulling together threads from every important work of Southern history I know. Raines does not really get the strange institutions that are archives, but his back-and-forth reckoning with the historical record is well done.
Kitty Kelly's The Last Star was the first celebrity biography I ever read, and it lead to a thorough preteen sacking of the genre at my public library. I read this after seeing the Sam Mendes's The Motive and The Cue, which stoked my interest, and it does such a thoughtful deep dive into a complicated relationship between two iconic and really interesting people, and the writing itself is glorious.
