10 of the best books of 2024, according to these experts

Another year, another stack of great books to read. Jeffrey Brown talked with Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, and Gilbert Cruz, editor of The New York Times Book Review, to recap their highlights.

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"All Fours" by Miranda July

"You have a middle-aged female artist, she decides to take a road trip from LA to New York. Twenty minutes outside of town, she stops at a motel and decides to completely redo the motel and becomes obsessed with a younger man. It's a crazy start, but in the end, it's a very serious book about what it means to be middle-aged… what it means to be a parent and a mother, what it means to have desire and be desired."

— Gilbert Cruz

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"You Dreamed of Empires" by Alvaro Enrigue

"It takes place in what is now Mexico City, it was then called Tenochtitla, in 1519. Hernán Cortés has just rolled into town with all of his soldiers and he meets the Aztec Emperor, Moctezuma. You have these two cultures coming together, there's this threat of violence that hangs over the whole thing, but there's also comedy of manners element to the entire book."

— Gilbert Cruz

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"James" by Percival Everett

"It's a retelling, in a sense, of 'Huckleberry Finn' but from the point of view of Jim, the enslaved person in the novel. I usually am suspicious of these kinds of appropriations of classic texts through the point of view of a secondary character. This is alive. It is very much it's own novel. It's funny. It's heartfelt. It really makes you rethink 'Huckleberry Finn' in ways you can't even anticipate."

— Maureen Corrigan

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"Colored Television" by Danzy Senna

"It's about a woman who is mixed race, who is trying to write this epic novel about what it means to be mixed race in America. She's not having any success with the novel, so she decides to sell out… she goes to TV. "

— Maureen Corrigan

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"The Wide Wide Sea" by Hampton Sides

"'The Wide, Wide Sea' by Hampton Sides is about the third and final voyage of Captain James Cook. This is the journey that he took from England in 1776 to the South Pacific. It's one of those classic pieces of historical nonfiction that anyone who loves seafaring adventure will enjoy. But it also has that very necessary realization of what it means to have engaged in these imperialist endeavors. It has a modern understanding of history while also being incredibly detail-oriented and incredibly entertaining."

— Gilbert Cruz

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"Everyone Who is Gone is Here" by Jonathan Blitzer

"Blitzer, who is a staff writer at The New Yorker, has put together a history of a half-century of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. It focuses on three Central American nations, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and through administrations, Republican and Democrat, it sort of tells the story of how we've gotten to the point where we are today."

— Gilbert Cruz

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"A Wilder Shore" by Camille Peri

"It tells the story of the marriage of Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Stevenson and she is the star of the show in this telling. She was a woman who fled from an abusive marriage, went to Europe on no money, decided she wanted to be an artist, taking her three children with her, met Stevenson and we go on from there. It is an inspiring story about having a larger life."

— Maureen Corrigan

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"The Letters of Emily Dickinson" edited by Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell

"Three hundred new letters have been collected that we haven't seen before. It's the closest thing we're ever likely to get to an autobiography by Dickinson, and I tell you, you can't put it down."

— Maureen Corrigan

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"Karla's Choice" by Nick Harkaway

"John le Carre died in 2020. His son, Nick Harkaway, is also a writer… and he has written a new story starring George Smiley, one of the most famous spy protagonists of all time. [Harkaway] does just a remarkable job of not really mimicking his father's voice as much as inhabiting it."

— Gilbert Cruz

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"The Dog Who Followed The Moon" by James Norbury

"It's an illustrated inspirational book for adults, and it's really all about a dog who's lost and follows the moon and doesn't know where he's going to end up. For those of us who are feeling a little lost these days and unsure about about what paths to take."

— Maureen Corrigan