Marjorie Allison Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine is always moving, delightful, and thought provoking. And it’s a great book for discussing genre—is it a novel? Is it a collection of short stories?

David Banash Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by the historian Yuval Noah Harari. The book is a disturbing meditation on the overwhelming power of stories to shape everyday realities and a chilling vision of a world in which non-human actors create, control and manipulate stories for their own ends.

Dan Barclay Orbital by Samantha Harvey. This book is the most recent winner of the Booker Award in 2024. The prose in this book satisfies readers like eating your favorite, calorie-rich comfort food with the added bonus of various unexpected flavors appearing in every chapter. It’s a contemplative rush. Told from the perspective of the astronauts and cosmonauts living for a single day on the international space station, this book is a reflection on the resilient, yet fragile, beauty of life on Earth.

Ashley Beardsley Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses. A dystopian horror novel that makes processing humans for meat seem all too plausible. The best part is that there is no sweet resolution at the end. Bazterrica leaves you disturbed.

Rebekah Buchanan James by Percival Everett. A retelling of Huck Finn from the point of view of Huck’s sidekick Jim. The winner of the National Book Award and one of the most brilliant retellings of a classic text I’ve read.

Amber Butcher The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. I really liked it because it opened my eyes to the perspective that you have to enjoy every fleeting moment in your life because you never know when it’s going to be gone. The whole premise of the book is to never regret anything and take chances so that you won’t have any regrets. I really loved it

Ainsley Eskridge The Rose Bargain by Sasha Peyton Smith, a historical romantasy and the first of a duology by Sasha Peyton Smith. This book was such a cute and fun pleasure read, perfect for Spring! It has a Bridgerton-esque feel as it follows human debutantes who compete to marry the fae prince of England. Rather than the women being pitted against each other, they are all incredibly well-developed, and each has their own reasons for entering the dangerous competition, becoming allies and friends with each other along the way. This book is my favorite new release and was truly written for the girlies!

Everett Hamner I resist calling any book “best” because there are too many diverse audience needs to consider, and what’s “best” even for me is a constantly shifting calculus. That said, I’ve now read Richard Powers’s Playground four times, and that’s twice as many readings as I’ve given any other 2024 novel. I think it will be impacting humanity’s sense of what counts as meaningful life for a long time

Emma Henderson Find Layla by Meg Ellison is one book that really stuck with me, It is a touchstone for so many different children who might feel unheard, unvalued. I plan to include it on my bookshelf for my students in the future.

Jael Henning Monstrilio by Gerado Sámano Córdova. Everyone already knows about my newfound love of John Williams, but I haven’t spent nearly enough time talking about Monstrilio, a novel which struck me with its complexity and depth of emotion. Beyond the fuzzy subjectivity of the feeling it evokes, it is remarkably well-crafted. I’ll give it the biggest compliment I can: It succeeds in having multiple POVs.”

Taylor Holan The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. This book changed the way I view life, specifically the simple things that often get overlooked. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed 5 stars.

Bill Knox Jim Courter’s Reflecting Pool. This is the last (so far) in our former colleague’s series about fictional private detective Barry Pool. Involving the rich, the radical, and the religious, the novel blends investigation, vigilante guilt, and unexpected self-redemption.

Katya Kozhuhova Careless People: A Cautionary Take of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wyn-Williams. A former Facebook insider shares embarrassing anecdotes about Mark Zuckerberg. Yes, the title is exactly the Gatsby quote you’re thinking of. The author is hilarious, plus Meta tried to sue the publisher.

Barb Lawhorn The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy. Levy sings of the hard work of writing and teaching and solo-mothering and the absolute and terrifying joy of freedom and solitude after many years of marriage. I just reread it (it was an unexpected gift from my father, who does not typically give gifts beyond time and presence, during the pandemic), wondering how it would reach me in this particular now and oh, reading-friends, I savored it, pressing the wings of the open book to my chest many-a-times, just like I did as a child, to get them words closer to my kick-drum heart.

Dan Malachuk Charles Taylor, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. A new word like “gaslighting” or “rizz” doesn’t designate an existing thing so much as create it, enriching our lived experience: this is Taylor’s contention—especially about poetry’s ability to connect us to the cosmos—in what may be the culminating book of this nonagenarian philosopher.

Amy Patrick Mossman The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. This nonfiction work written by a theoretical physicist densely weaves together science (particle physics, dark matter and energy, cosmology) and the sociocultural context in which the work of science is conducted, phenomena are named, and knowledge is produced. Prescod-Weinstein invites you to slow down and spend time with curiosity and awe, traveling the myriad connections she maps between space, time, the universe, and humanity.

Mark Mossman Top of my list this year is Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time: in Search of a Common Paradise, a memoir of restoring a English garden but also a deep meditation on the garden in art, literature, and everyday life. Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind was a close second for me.

Carter Myers Wicked: The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of The West by Gregory Maguire may not—in my eyes—be a 5/5 star read. But it is by far the most thought-provoking piece of prose that I’ve consumed over the last 365 days. Using Baum’s OZ as a jumping-off-point, Maguire crafts his own unique world, tackling the problems of today using characters crafted one-hundered-years ago. I adore this adaptation style. It made for a thrilling read!

Lydia Quattrochi My favorite book over the past year has been Sula, by Toni Morrison. With searing prose, Morrison portrays 1920s Medallion, Ohio, eventually focusing on the lives of two girls, Nel and Sula, as they grow into women. Theirs is a friendship that can withstand the most devastating blows imaginable—until, one day, it can’t. This book slowly sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go.

A. J. Rocca The Just City by Jo Walton.The gods gather lovers of Plato’s Republic from across time and put them all in one place to see if they can put Plato’s dream of a truly just city into practice. And, of course, the usual suspects mess it all up: pride, myopia, resentment, and lust. The novel is a fantastic example of critical utopia, where fallible human beings struggle against these constant bugbears of our nature to try to build a better world.

Mattie Rose Angela Davis: An Autobiography. The famous activist Angela Davis was involved in the civil rights movement. I love how authentic and raw Davis is in her book. And, I loved how she also took accountability in the beginning of the book before telling her perspective on what she went through. I definitely recommend it!

Nick Rush Emily St. John Mandel’s Last Night in Montreal was as often as disturbing as it was absorbing. Yet, I couldn’t put it down. I questioned much about my own life after finishing this melancholy novel.

Bill Thompson Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons. I’ve read many wonderful books this year. It’s hard to pick one or even five. This was the year I discovered Stella Gibbons’ work. I’ve read three of her books this year and been charmed, amused and impressed by all of them, most recently, Nightingale Wood, a novel worthy of Austen in its lack of sentimentality, arch comedy, acute observation, and fluid handling of plot. Chariton’s Callirhoe, an Ancient Greek novel, was a source of diversion, charm, bizarre plot twists, the heroine is buried alive, the hero pulled down from a cross while being crucified to be interviewed about his girlfriend, and that’s only in the beginning.

Alisha White The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson. This is a fascinating historical fiction about the real Pack Horse Library Project and the Kentucky Blue People.