NPR’s Best Books of 2024

NPR has published a list of “Books We Love” in 2024, compiled by NPR journalists and associated critics. The full list of 350 books includes an extensive Sci Fi, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction category, with numerous other works of interest on the list as a whole.

Sci Fi, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction

• The Bad Ones, Melissa Albert (Flatiron)
• Fledgling: The Keeper’s Records of Revolution, S.K. Ali (Kokila)
• The Cemetery of Untold Stories, Julia Alvarez (Algonquin)
• Nicked, M.T. Anderson (Pantheon)
• Glass Houses, Madeline Ashby (Tor)
• This Great Hemisphere, Mateo Askaripour (Dutton)
• The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo (Flatiron)
• Not a Speck of Light, Laird Barron (Bad Hand)
• The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey)
• Dead in Long Beach, California, Venita Blackburn (MCD)
• The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley (Avid Reader)
• Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan (Orbit)
• The Last Hour Between Worlds, Melissa Caruso (Orbit)
• Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
• The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint)
• Green Frog: Stories, Gina Chung (Vintage)
• The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom)
• Metal from Heaven, August Clarke (Erewhon)
• You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Riverhead)
• Cuckoo, Gretchen Felker-Martin (Nightfire)
• The Nightmare Box and Other Stories, Cynthia Gómez (Cursed Morsels)
• The Bullet Swallower, Elizabeth Gonzales James (Simon & Schuster)
• The Husbands, Holly Gramazio (Doubleday)
• Annie Bot, Sierra Greer (Mariner)
• The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking)
• Bride, Ali Hazelwood (Berkley)
• An Academy for Liars, Alexis Henderson (Ace)
• Blackheart Man, Nalo Hopkinson (Saga)
• Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You’re Too Scared to Watch, Emily C. Hughes (Quirk)
• Those Beyond the Wall, Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey)
• I Was a Teenage Slasher, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga)
• The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, Shubnum Khan (Viking)
• Real Americans, Rachel Khong (Knopf)
• Blood of the Old Kings, Sung-il Kim, translated by Anton Hur (Tor)
• A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Tor)
• The Stardust Grail, Yume Kitasei (Flatiron)
• Somewhere Beyond the Sea, TJ Klune (Tor)
• A Better World, Sarah Langan (Atria)
• The Book of Love, Kelly Link (Random House)
• Sheine Lende: A Prequel to Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger, illustrated by Rovina Cai (Levine Querido)
• Dragonfruit, Makiia Lucier (Clarion)
• House of Flame and Shadow, Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury)
• The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom)
• The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel (Knopf)
• Baby X: A Thriller, Kira Peikoff (Crooked Lane)
• Haunt Sweet Home, Sarah Pinsker (Tordotcom)
• The Lost Story, Meg Shaffer (Ballantine)
• Blue Lard, Vladimir Sorokin, translated by Max Lawton (NYRB)
• Cahokia Jazz, Francis Spufford (Scribner)
• Heir, Sabaa Tahir (Putnam Books for Young Readers)
• Horror Movie, Paul Tremblay (William Morrow)
• Pink Slime, Fernanda Trías, translated by Heather Cleary (Scribner)
• Not Quite a Ghost, Anne Ursu (Walden Pond)
• State of Paradise, Laura van den Berg (FSG)
• The Brides of High Hill, Nghi Vo (Todotcom)
• The City in Glass, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
• A Short Walk through a Wide World, Douglas Westerbeke (Avid Reader Press)
• Lunar Boy, Jes & Cin Wibowo (Harperalley)
• Ours, Phillip B. Williams (Viking)
• Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW)
• Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction, edited by Sonia Sulaiman (Roseway)

Other works of interest on the overall list include:

• Blood Test: A Comedy, Charles Baxter (Pantheon)
• The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Henry Holt)
• Last Date in El Zapotal, Mateo García Elizondo, translated by Robin Myers (Charco)
• James, Percival Everett (Doubleday)
• The Spamalot Diaries, Eric Idle (Crown)
• Phantom Orbit: A Thriller, David Ignatius (Norton)
• Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen (Dutton)
• The Kamogawa Food Detectives, Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood (Putnam)
• The Woods All Black, Lee Mandelo (Tordotcom)
• Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty (Crown)
• Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet, Molly Morris (Wednesday)
• Pages of Mourning, Diego Gerard Morrison (Two Dollar Radio)
• The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster, John O’Connor (Sourcebooks)
• Mina’s Matchbox, Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen B. Snyder (Pantheon)
• How to Solve Your Own Murder, Kristen Perrin (Dutton)
• Bear, Julia Phillips (Hogarth)
• Playground, Richard Powers (Norton)
• Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie (Random House)
• Do What Godmother Says, L.S. Stratton (Union Square)
• Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal (Tiny Reparations)
• What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life, Billy Dee Williams (Knopf)

For the full list, see the NPR “Books We Love” website. Details on the selection process and categories can be found on the “Books We Love” about page.

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