Reading enthusiasts know there's nothing like finally getting your hands on (or receiving a Libby notification for) a book you've been waiting months (or years) to read and then diving in head-first. Lucky for us lit-obsessed editors at Marie Claire, 2024's publishing slate is stacked with buzzy releases, from the returns of several beloved female authors to glossy new tell-alls. For the impatient, many of our picks for our year's best reads have already hit the shelves (including a debut novel by a member of the MC team!). From chilling thrillers and steamy romances, to engrossing memoirs and self-help inspiration, read on for our most anticipated books of 2024.
"I'm such a sucker for twisty thrillers with complex female protagonists—as you'll learn later down this list, when I ran out of new books in the genre, I wrote one myself—and Stacy Willingham is among the very best of them. This book has it all: a college campus rocked by a sudden tragedy; female friendship tested to the brink; and twists you won't see coming. Willingham gets better with each book, and this is my favorite yet." - Jenny Hollander, Digital Director
"This new release from Kaveh Akbar is about many things—addiction, family, the immigrant experience, and sobriety—but above all, it’s a beautiful meditation on how one man finds meaning. Guided by the spectres of his ancestors, newly sober Iranian-American Cyrus Shams spends the novel exploring his family’s past in order to make sense of his own life." - Gabrielle Ulubay, Beauty Writer
"I’m a die-hard Sarah J. Maas fan and have been counting down the days till this release since that cliff hanger in the last book. I’m not the only one either—BookTok can’t stop talking about this series and it absolutely deserves all of the hype. While I don’t want to spoil the magic that is this series, I will say that is has everything you could want in a fantasy romance book: complex characters, heart-pounding romance, lavish world building, and so many twists and turns. I’m expecting all of this and more in the latest installment." - Brooke Knappenberger, Associate Commerce Editor
"Chung's 2022 short story collection Cursed Bunny shook me to my core with its exploration of female autonomy among societal expectations, told through fantastical and horrifying metaphors, often involving bodily functions. (I wasn't the only one awed by the collection, judging by its inclusion among the 2023 National Book Award finalists for Translated Literature.) The South Korean author publishes her follow-up set of stories this year, also translated by Anton Hur, which promises to include "a variety of possible fates for humanity" that will definitely keep me up at night. - Quinci LeGardye, Contributing Culture Editor
"Is it weird to call your own book a "most anticipated"? Sure, but I'm really proud of this one, so bear with me. This thriller—my first novel!—follows Charlotte "Charlie" Colbert, a magazine editor who witnessed a massacre at her elite graduate school a decade earlier. When one of Charlie's former classmates decides to make a film about what really happened that night, Charlie is forced to confront the "black holes" in her memory and decide, once and for all, how far she'll go to hide the truth. Called "an undeniable page-turner" by Booklist and "a twisty, thrilling story" by Town and Country, I'm hoping this one keeps you up late." - JH
"I'm admittedly a bit picky when it comes to romance, but Tia Williams is a go-to author for epic love stories that give me all the feels, from Jenna and Eic's forbidden love in The Perfect Find, to Eva and Shane's fateful second chance in Seven Days in June. Her next novel takes tells a tale of magical realism in Harlem, NYC, where Ricki Wilde flees to escape her famous Atlanta family and start her own flower shop. Soon, she meets a handsome stranger named Ezra “Breeze” Walker, and their instant connection leads her down an extraordinary path. - QL
"If a female journalist is writing a book, I'm adding to cart and pre-ordering. Savannah Guthrie anchors The Today Show on NBC as one-half of its first female co-anchor team, and this book takes us inside her mind on the day she was named co-anchor (and, if you'll remember, not Ann Curry) in July 2012 alongside Matt Lauer; he later left amidst controversy in 2017. She writes about the times life didn't work out the way she wished it would (and how that's okay) and how her faith has sustained her through the highs and lows of life." - Rachel Burchfield, Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor
"This book is dedicated to 'the 80 percent of women who don't believe they're enough, the 75 percent of female executives who deal with imposter syndrome, and the 91 percent of girls and women who don't love their bodies.' Those statistics are staggering—and sad. After laying it all out there in her memoir, Believe IT, the cofounder of IT Cosmetics and the first ever female CEO of a L'Oréal brand, is back in her second book to talk about all of us and our worthiness journeys, while sprinkling in some of her story as well. At the crux of the book is how to stop doubting yourself out of your own destiny and how to use self-worth as a tool to success in every way: internally, externally, emotionally, socially, relationally, and financially." - RB
"When Xochitl Gonzalez published her New York Times bestselling novel Olga Dies Dreaming, she charmed millions of readers and took the literary world by storm. Now, she’s written a new novel called Anita De Monte Laughs Last, which is told through the perspectives of two distinctive, unforgettable characters. The first, Anita de Monte, is a rising star in the New York City art world in 1985, but she is found dead before she can achieve lasting success. The second, Raquel, discovers Anita’s tale while in college, and finds that the deceased artist’s story is eerily, uncannily similar to her own." - GU
"Morgan Parker got her start in publishing poetry, including the gorgeous collections Magical Negro and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, but I've been eagerly awaiting more prose from the author since her debut YA novel Who Put This Song On? made me feel so seen as a former lonely Black girl growing up in white suburbia. Her first nonfiction book, a memoir-in-essays, examines her own lifelong loneliness due to America's cultural treatment of Black people throughout history. If you know me IRL, expect every conversation to start with 'You should check out this book' for the rest of the year." - QL
"As the Prince and Princess of Wales debate on where to send their eldest, Prince George, to school (boarding school or not? That's the question du jour), Princess Diana's only brother, Earl Charles Spencer, is releasing a memoir about his traumatic boarding school experience. Sent away at age eight, he writes about the 'culture of cruelty' at the school he attended in his youth and provides 'important insights into an antiquated boarding system.' He also reportedly speaks to his schoolboy contemporaries as well as references his own letters and diaries from the time period to reflect on 'the hopelessness and abandonment he felt.' Through this book he reclaims his childhood, and we all get to bear witness to the journey." - RB
"This book appears to be a memoir, with a twist. Part personal journey, part exploration into mental health, it cites psychologists, psychiatrists, scientists, and thought leaders on how to understand why we think and feel the way we do, and why this may be holding us back. I have long been compelled by the First Lady of Canada, and I'm interested to see how she navigates talking about her divorce from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which is still ongoing, in the book's pages. (They separated last year after 18 years of marriage.)" - RB
"Seven years after her moving debut Goodbye, Vitamin, Khong returns with a multigenerational saga about a Chinese American family, as its members try to define their own lives against the forces of fate and history. In 1999, broke media intern Lily Chen meets and falls in love with Matthew, her boss's wealthy nephew. Later, in 2011, 15-year-old Nick Chen (raised by Lily as a single mother in Washington state) sets out to find his biological father. The Washington Post compared the novel to Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow , so I'm expecting an immersive story I won't be able to put down." - QL
"As someone who spends entirely too much time on X/Twitter, I can't wait to get my hands on Russell's history of Black visual culture, from early 1900s photographs to today's memes. In her latest book, the author of Glitch Feminism argues that Black images have always been central to shaping American culture, from the photographs of Emmett Till, to the televised broadcasts of civil rights protests, to pop culture moments like Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' to citizen-recorded images of police brutality." - QL
"For their latest release, Emezi, the genre-spanning author of works including You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty and The Death of Vivek Oji, takes on the thriller genre as a group of people are sucked into the underbelly of a Nigerian city. When Kalu attends an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend—fresh off a break-up from his long-time girlfriend—he makes a decision that plunges their lives into chaos, as they desperately try to escape a looming threat." - QL
"I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of this mystery thriller, and now I'm recommending it to every Bachelor fan I know. The novel follows Julia Walden, an advanced synthetic robot designed to compete on the latest season of The Proposal and win the heart of lead Josh LaSala. It flashes back and forth between her time on the reality show and 15 months later, when Julia and Josh are married and raising a newborn among a hostile community in small-town Indiana. When Josh goes missing, and Julia becomes the prime suspect, the Synth takes the investigation into her own hands." - QL
"Emily Giffin's books come out in a cadence of about once every two years, and I have this (annoying) habit of buying the new book the day it comes out, tearing through it at lightning speed, and then having to wait 730 days for my next hit. I've loved Giffin's work for decades, from her debut Something Borrowed, which was later made into a film starring Ginnifer Goodwin and Kate Hudson, to her last book, Meant to Be, which (spoiler alert) is a fictionalization of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's love story. Next up is The Summer Pact, which centers around "a group of friends [who, in the wake of a tragedy] make a pact that will cause them to reunite a decade later and embark upon a life-changing adventure together." If Giffin is writing it, I'm going to be reading it." - RB
"I'm a sucker for literary novels about women being young and messy in NYC, and this already-acclaimed novel gives major Luster vibes. (Raven Lelani even blurbed it.) The unnamed narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman struggling to reconcile her ideal life with her lived reality; her inheritance and her homeland are both unreachable, as she makes a living teaching middle school and participating in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags. As she slowly becomes obsessed with purity and cleanliness in an attempt to regain control, the woman "spectacularly" unravels." - QL
"I loved Obuobi's debut On Rotation (a #ReadWithMC pick!), and I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of her sophomore novel, Between Friends and Lovers. I devoured this book, which stars the surefooted Dr. Josephine Boateng—known to her countless Instagram followers as Dr. Jojo—and Mal, an overnight sensation thanks to his first novel (he isn't exactly sure how to deal with that yet). Mal might just be the person who can finally break down Jo's walls...but to do that, she'll need to let go of her longtime best friend and long-hidden crush, Ezra. If you delight in complex, charming love stories, this one's for you." - JH
"Rip Tide is many things: a deep-dive into the perils of trying to escape your past; a poignant depiction of sisterhood and the ways it evolves; and the tantalizing idea of coming home again. When a body washes ashore in the beach town of their childhood, sisters Kimmy and Erin, both of whom recently returned to Rocky Cape, must wrestle with the ghosts they believed they'd left behind at the shore: both the ones they're eager to revisit, and the ones they can't face." - JH
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