We are back with our 5(ish) favorite reads (and games) of 2024!
We try very hard to keep it to five, but it’s simply not always possible. So, per staff member there may be more or less than five titles, but there can also be an A and a B list, memorable reads or just plain marvelous books.
We’re presenting our lists in bite-size chunks to make them more digestible, as there are more than 150 titles for you to sink your teeth into.
We hope to inspire you to try some of them in the new year.
Happy reading (and playing)!
The Book of Abba: Melancholy Undercover by Jan Gradvall
A must-read for ABBA fans.
Ross Poldark by Winston Graham
A classical one, nice to read by the Christmas tree.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
A story about a strong woman.
Het Vrouwenbrein by Iris Sommer
Doctors should keep themselves updated on the latest research results, and though women’s brains might be physically smaller than men’s, they work even better. How do we compensate for our smaller hardware? That’s the question Iris Sommer presents in this book.
Antarctica by Claire Keegan
The debut collection of stories from the author of Foster and Small Things Like These.
Jouke
Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
An original love letter to Agatha Christie and the whodunit genre, with two mysteries, four murders, an entourage of unlikable suspects, and red herrings aplenty. A creative book-within-a-book, with dual timelines.
The Only One Left by Riley Sager
Decades-old murder mystery? Check. Creepy mansion on a cliff overlooking the ocean? Check. Sympathetic and complex characters? Check. Enough plot twists to give you whiplash, but above all most entertaining.
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
An ominous mixture of ghost story and murder mystery, with vibes of The Shining and The Amityville Horror. A seemingly haunted house in a small New England town, dysfunctional family dynamics, and the thin line between madness and reality. No filler, this has a fast-paced and cinematic narrative, and is easy to devour in one sitting.
Dead Eye by Mark Greaney
This fourth book in the Gray Man series is the best entry yet. The author’s ability to blend fully-realized characters with vibrant Baltic and Western European settings and action sequences is impressive. An exciting cat-and-mouse game between Court “The Gray Man” Gentry and Russ “Dead Eye” Whitlock, a truly skilled and cold-blooded opponent.
The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre
Two storylines on two continents in two crime fiction subgenres – ‘little old lady cozy mystery solver’ and ‘hard-bitten detective’ – get braided and together swerve into a third thread to the story. Clever and complex, this one leaves an impression.
Thank you to my colleague Júlia for buddy reading this with me. :)
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
A science fiction horror story about protagonist Gyre, who is in need of some money to get off-planet. She signs up for an incredibly dangerous underground expedition that she is only marginally qualified for, but quickly discovers that the “surface team” consists of only one person (a terrible idea in itself), who has secrets of her own. These two unlikely and uneasy allies are forced to work together and figure out how much they can trust each other in order to both get what they want; in many ways, each is at the mercy of the other.
This book once again confirmed for me that spelunking is a hobby for people with a death wish, and also that I am a giant wimp who should not be reading scary books when home alone at night. But apart from those things, this is an incredibly compelling story, and I just couldn’t stop turning the page.
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
I read and loved Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy a few years ago, so I was very curious when this book came out. The setting is very different, though: while there are fantastical elements, it’s definitely more of a historical fiction novel. Set during World War I, much of the focus is on the terror and life-altering trauma of warfare.
The main character is a Canadian field nurse, who gets herself shipped back to the front to find her brother, who is presumed dead after an explosion in the trenches. I don’t know much about historical warfare, but the way this book is written feels very visceral and real. An impressive read that’s sure to stick with me for a while.
Winternight trilogy: The Bear and the Nightingale, The Girl in the Tower and The Winter of the Witch.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
This year’s winner of the Booker Prize! I haven’t read many Booker winners before (not on purpose, that’s just how it’s worked out so far – several are on my TBR, but I can’t seem to get around to them). I can’t really claim this as a Booker read either; I read it way back in January, well before the longlist was announced. But it’s a good book, and I’m glad it has won.
This novella is about six astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Anyone who knows me probably knows that I love novellas and I love space, so of course this was the perfect read for me. It’s a gorgeous, thoughtful, slow-but-intense story that feels incredibly real. I’ve obviously never been to the ISS and so have no idea how accurate all the tiny details are, but it seemed to me like the author must have done a tremendous amount of research. A beautiful book that I’m sure to go back to!
Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang
A colleague recommended this book to me by comparing it to Babel by R.F. Kuang (his exact words were “Holy hell, this is good – even more intense than Babel“), so of course I immediately had to get my hands on it. I was lucky enough to have access to an Advanced Reader’s Copy before the book was actually out, and I was pretty much hooked from the start.
The comparison with Babel is fair, especially given the focus on academia and the different treatments that people of certain races and genders receive. Elements of it also reminded me of The Betrayals by Bridget Collins and even The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. If those are books you liked, you should definitely try this one!
In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Li
I first read this novella in 2021 and enjoyed it well enough, but the timing wasn’t quite right and I found the book didn’t stick with me like I expected it to. But I’ve been trying to do more rereading, and I figured this one was due a try! The story is about Anima, an “extrasensory human”, charged with keeping watch over a city by means of the Gleaming: a telepathic network that allows its users to take over the consciousness and body of animals. But while Anima is devoted, things start to change when a mysterious outsider with a cabinet of curiosities and stories pays a visit.
This book somewhat reminded me of The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo, another favourite novella, where objects from the past also trigger stories. Clearly, I’m a sucker for an embedded narrative. This time around, I found myself much more susceptible to the – quite emotionally charged – story, and I’m so happy I gave it another try.
