What must you put in your New Year studying checklist? Top authors from Ian Rankin to David Nicholls choose their favorite books of 2024

From a love letter to the crime novel and a dystopian UK to a taut political thriller, our writers pick this year’s most spellbinding reads…

Sir Ian Rankin

The Cracked Mirror

by Chris Brookmyre

You can always depend on Chris Brookmyre to surprise you – no two books of his are the same. The Cracked Mirror starts off looking like a homage to Agatha Christie (note the title), with a little old lady investigating minor misdemeanours in a rural village. 

But then we switch to the hard-boiled streets of the USA and a maverick cop with a thirst for violence. Soon the two are thrown together, leading to absurdist flashes and heavy artillery in the English countryside. The twists are outrageous but Brookmyre, the master puppeteer, takes the reader with him. 

A love letter to the crime novel and an ingenious reinvention of the same, this is a winner from beginning to end.

• Midnight And Blue (Orion £25, 352pp) by Ian Rankin is out now

Carys Davies

Shy Creatures

by Clare Chambers

Like her previous novel Small Pleasures, Clare Chambers’ Shy Creatures is a delight. She is so good at writing about suburban life in the middle of the last century, and her portrait of a particular time and place is as enjoyable as the unravelling of the mystery at the novel’s heart: the discovery of William Tapping, a mute man who has been living hidden from the world for nearly three decades. At the local psychiatric hospital, Tapping comes under the care of thirty-something art therapist Helen Hansford who, when she is not busy having an affair with one of the hospital’s doctors, sets out to unravel Tapping’s past.

Chambers’ elegant and precise prose is a joy, and in Helen she conjures with excruciating sharpness the everyday humiliations of being a mistress and the feeling of not being quite at home in changing times – not to mention the utter awfulness of English food in the 1960s.

• Clear (Granta £12.99, 160pp) by Carys Davies is out now

Clare Mackintosh

Day One

by Abigail Dean

Abigail Dean’s debut, Girl A, was a global bestseller, and she proved she’s no one-trick pony with her follow-up, Day One. It’s a brutal yet beautiful account of a school shooting, and Dean gives us a glimpse into the aftermath of one terrible day told through multiple perspectives, although the primary narrative comes from two troubled voices.

Teenager Marty gradually releases her secrets to us as she relives each hour, while conspiracy theorist Trent is obsessed with finding the truth. The result is a novel that focuses not on the shock factor of the shooting itself, but on the legacy of guilt, lies and grief. A compelling and heartbreaking story that stayed with me long after I turned the final page.

• Other People’s Houses (Sphere £16.99, 400pp) by Clare Mackintosh is out February 2025

Joseph O’Connor

The Garden Against Time

by Olivia Laing

Colm Toibin is such a wonderful writer, not so much describing characters as incarnating them on the page, so you believe in them completely and care about them. His novel Long Island was a major 2024 highlight.

As a student, I wandered into a gig by John Cooper Clarke. I’ve adored his poems and performances ever since. He’s sometimes seen as a punk rock Pam Ayres; others sense Bob Dylan. But he’s a totally original writer, words blazing with sardonic humour and wisdom. His 2024 collection WHAT is brilliant.

My book of the year is The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing, a truly remarkable work about gardening, the outdoors, storytelling, mental health, the freedom to be found in nature, and much more besides, written by an author of breathtaking skill.

• The Ghosts Of Rome (Harvill Secker £20, 384pp) by Joseph O’Connor is out January 2025

Conn Iggulden

A Stroke Of The Pen

by Terry Pratchett

As Terry Pratchett began as a novelist, he was also producing short stories for the Western Daily Press under the name ‘Patrick Kearns’.Those lost stories are collected here. On the theory that a book of the year should be one that gives joy, this is like slipping into a warm bath.

They are early works, before Discworld. Yet his joy in names is there, in ‘Even Moor’, ‘Horace Breezeforth’ and ‘Constable Biddle’. The voice is his, reminding me of the vast pleasure his books gave. As he once said: ‘Build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.’ This book brings back memories of a warm and funny man taken far too soon.

• Nero (Penguin Michael Joseph £22, 416pp) by Conn Iggulden is out now

David Nicholls

Glorious Exploits

by Ferdia Lennon

Ferdia Lennon’s debut Glorious Exploits is about ancient Athenian prisoners of war putting on a play. This might sound inaccessible, but the book is funny, original and very moving. I also loved Richard Flanagan’s combination of history and memoir, Question 7, Alan Hollinghurst’s epic Our Evenings, Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry Of Time and Samantha Harvey’s Booker-winning Orbital.

• You Are Here (Sceptre £20, 368pp) by David Nicholls is out now

Samantha Harvey

James

by Percival Everett

Not a very left-field or original choice but James, by Percival Everett, was one of my reading highlights this year. It’s an adventure story whose ironic, almost absurd Voltaire-esque tone invites you to laugh, and leaves the laugh hollow when the register suddenly switches to unbearable violence or loss. It’s multiple books in one, and asks you to be multiple readers.

I also loved Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro, a wildly daring book about the relationship between a self-styled ‘prophet’ living in the American South and a young woman he rescues from sex trafficking. The novel is both epic and tender, utterly contemporary and also timeless. Quatro is inventive with form and voice and always provocative and questioning, as well as upending what we think we know about people, faith, morality and mercy.

• Orbital (Vintage £9.99, 160pp) by Samantha Harvey is out now

John Boyne

Heart, Be At Peace

by Donal Ryan

Donal Ryan’s Heart, Be At Peace is a worthy sequel to The Spinning Heart, the novel that brought him to the attention of the reading public (and the Booker judges). Returning to the many voices of that book, Ryan describes how Irish small-town life can often be defined by unfulfilled aspirations and complex family relationships. For me, he is the greatest current Irish writer, and this deservedly won at the recent Irish Book Awards.

In non-fiction, I loved Conor Niland’s The Racket. Ireland’s most successful tennis player recounts his years scrapping for ranking points and the exhilaration of qualifying for all four Grand Slam tournaments. It’s a memoir drenched in passion for his sport, love for the family that supported him and deserved pride in his achievements.

• Fire (Doubleday £12.99, 176pp) by John Boyne is out now

Alice Feeney

All The Colours Of The Dark

by Chris Whitaker

All The Colours Of The Dark is like stepping inside a future classic. From the first page you know you are reading something special, cleverly crafted and beautifully written. Every sentence, every word, has been carefully thought about before earning its place. The story of Patch and Saint is one you won’t forget. It will linger in your heart and mind. Some might say this is an epic crime novel, others a spellbinding love story. I think most would agree it is a masterpiece. If you read only one book this year, make it this one.

• Beautiful Ugly (Macmillan £16.99, 320pp) by Alice Feeney is out January 2025

William Boyd

Question 7

by Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan’s fractured, patchwork memoir, Question 7, is beautifully constructed, mesmerising and quietly powerful. Ostensibly about his memories of his father and his mother, it manages to weave in all manner of subjects: the bombing of Hiroshima, the love affair between Rebecca West and H.G. Wells, Flanagan’s own near-death experience. The disparate parts form an utterly absorbing whole.

Hanif Kureishi’s Shattered – his searing account of the awful accident that left him a tetraplegic – is a stunning testimonial to his habitual, unflinching honesty and remarkable courage.

Julian Evans’s Undefeatable: Odesa In Love And War is at once a brilliant portrait of the Ukrainian city and the author’s emotional connection with it, and a reminder of the dark consequences of Putin’s insane, hubristic war. An important, moving, humane book.

• Gabriel’s Moon (Viking £20, 272pp) by William Boyd is out now 

Nicholas Sparks

Impossible Creatures

by Katherine Rundell

It’s not often I recommend a children’s book, but Impossible Creatures is one that readers of all ages will enjoy. It follows a boy who teams up with a girl from a secret world populated by mythical beasts, to figure out why they are vanishing. Full of big ideas, exciting action, real emotions (the kind that I like to explore) and beautifully descriptive sentences, this is the sort of book that turns young readers into lifelong ones. It’s also a book adults will delight in, with its timeless charm, largely because it will transform them to their own childhood and remind them why they fell in love with reading in the first place.

• Counting Miracles (Sphere £22, 368pp) by Nicholas Sparks is out now

Tom Parker Bowles

Steak

by Tim Hayward

Steak is, perhaps, food writer Tim Hayward’s meaty masterpiece. Beautifully written, exhaustively researched and exquisitely designed, it covers everything from hard science, recipes and technique, to the world’s best butchers, restaurants and chefs. Not just a bible for all things beefy, but a paean to the manifold pleasures of the flesh.

Box Office Poison, by film critic Tim Robey, is a history of Hollywood through its flops. But this is so much more than a list of megabucks disasters – it’s as much a love letter to under-appreciated classics as it is a brilliant evisceration of utter turkeys. Robey is a fine writer, with a profound and passionate knowledge of his subject. In terms of pure enjoyment, this is a box-office smash.

• Cooking And The Crown (Aster £30, 240pp) by Tom Parker Bowles is out now

Elif Shafak

The Haunted Wood

by Sam Leith

This history of childhood reading is brilliantly constructed, well-researched and beautifully written, a wonderful book for anyone who believes in the magic of stories. From the tales of Aesop through to Roald Dahl and the present day, Leith shows how many children’s authors were ‘writing from a wound’, such as J.M. Barrie, who created Peter Pan. The Haunted Wood is a great book with deep knowledge, empathy and wisdom, reminding us that the stories we read as children shaped us and shaped our societies.

• There Are Rivers In The Sky (Penguin £18.99, 512pp) by Elif Shafak is out now

Val McDermid

Gliff

by Ali Smith

A new book from Ali Smith is always a cause for rejoicing. But after the extraordinary tour de force of the Seasonal Quartet, which became a quintet with Companion Piece, I did wonder what she could do to stand alongside such an achievement.

I needn’t have worried. Gliff was my book of 2024, a year that saw many stand-out novels. It’s set in a fictional universe, a future-adjacent dystopian UK as imagined by Kafka. The title is a Scots dialect word that means a moment in time, a shock of fright, a shimmering trace or a glimpse, and each of these meanings has its place in an atmospheric story.

• Past Lying (Little, Brown £9.99, 512pp) by Val McDermid is out now

Dan Jones

The Eagle And The Hart 

by Helen Castor 

It has been a golden year for books about the Middle Ages. The best – indeed, one of the finest historical biographies I have read – was this book about Richard II and Henry IV. It narrates the tangled tale of two royal cousins – one born to be king but incapable of doing the job (Richard II, played by Ben Whishaw in TV’s The Hollow Crown), the other born to do the job but cursed by his own actions in seizing England’s crown. 

Helen Castor brings this world alive thanks to her deep understanding of the norms of 14th-century England and a priceless human intelligence: her book is both a taut political thriller and an infinitely nuanced character study. Written with equal verve was Juliet Firnhaber-Baker’s House Of Lilies – a family history of the Capetians, who ruled France from 987 until 1328. 

• Henry V (Apollo £25, 464pp) by Dan Jones is out now