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The New York Times Announces its Best Books of 2024

Here are the top 10 books of 2024, fiction and nonfiction, according to the New York Times. How many have you read?

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Last week, The New York Times shared their list of the 100 notable books of 2024, and now they have announced their picks for the 10 best books of 2024. The list includes five fiction and five nonfiction titles. As for how these titles got chosen, the introduction says, “Ultimately, we aim to pick the books that made lasting impressions: the stories that imprinted on our hearts and psyches, the examining of lives that deepened what we thought we already knew.”

Here are The New York Times‘s best books of 2024.

Fiction

cover of You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer

All Fours by Miranda July

Good Material by Dolly Alderton

James by Percival Everett

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer

Nonfiction

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here cover

Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz by József Debreczeni, translated by Paul Olchváry

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer

I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante

Reagan: His Life and Legend by Max Boot

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides

Some of these titles are familiar: James by Percival Everett, All Fours by Miranda July, and Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar have been popping up in many different “best of” lists, and James has also racked up several of the biggest literary awards. There’s less consensus about the best nonfiction of 2024.

Read the write-ups of each of these books at The New York Times. They have also linked their full reviews for each title.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.

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