Here at The Messenger, we’re committed to helping you fill your to-be-read list — and, eventually, your bookshelves — with the latest unputdownable works from authors across genres. Whether you want to start your year with a heart-stirring romance, a cozy whodunnit, or a reimagined classic, check out 16 upcoming releases we think you should look forward to in 2024.
1. Come & Get It by Kiley Reid
Genre: Literary Fiction
Release Date: January 30
From the award-winning author of Such A Fun Age comes a new story about a senior resident assistant who takes up an opportunity to earn more money from a visiting professor, a hustle that’s quickly jeopardized by “odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue.”
2. The Fury by Alex Michaelides
Genre: Thriller
Release Date: January 16
When ex-movie star Lana Farrar invites her friends to a fabulous getaway on her private Greek island, little does she know that one of seven of them will be murdered. Told by island guest and unreliable narrator Elliot Chase, The Fury takes readers through the ill-fated friendships between the other guests and the events that transpired over that unforgettable weekend.
3. A Love Song For Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
Genre: Romance
Release Date: February 6
Despite being born into a wealthy Atlanta-based dynasty, Ricki Wilde knows that another life outside her hometown awaits her. So when she’s presented with the opportunity to rent the bottom floor of a Harlem brownstone, she jumps at the chance to leave the city and fulfill her dream of opening a flower shop. It’s there in New York City, during the Harlem Renaissance, that she meets a mysterious stranger who changes her world in ways she never could have anticipated.
4. Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: February 20
Leslie Jamison, best known for her novels The Empathy Exams and The Recovery, is widely recognized as an author who tackles heavy subject matter while invoking a deep resonance in her readers. In her debut memoir, Splinters, she examines the new life she attempts to build as an artist and single mother healing from a recent divorce.
5. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
Genre: Literary Fiction
Release Date: February 27
In his first work since his PEN/Hemingway award-winning novel, There, There, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in three generations of a Native American family based in Colorado and California.
6. Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi
Genre: Literary Fiction
Release Date: March 5
Despite being expected to decline the invitation, Hero Tojosoa decides to spend a bachelorette weekend in Prague with her estranged friend Sofie. What Hero doesn’t know is the city likes to play tricks. The book she brought on the trip beings to change depending on the time it’s being read and the person reading it, which reveals new stories from Prauge citizens in the past and present. Uninvited guests also begin to attend to the bachelorette activities — including a third woman from Hero and Sofie’s pasts who brings their old conflicts to a head.
7. James by Percival Everett
Genre: Historical Fiction
Release Date: March 19
In his latest literary feat, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Percival Everett reimagines the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the focused narrative of Jim, the enslaved man who joins Huck on a journey down the Mississippi River.
8. Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
Genre: Science Fiction
Release Date: March 19
Annie Bot, who was designed to be the perfect girlfriend by a man named Doug, does her best to please her human owner. He loves that her AI makes her seem like more of a real woman — but when she explores more human traits, things like curiosity and longing, it makes their relationship much more difficult.
9. There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
Genre: Biography
Release Date: March 26
While growing up in the ’90s, poet and author Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed the meteoric rise (and fall) of some of the best basketball stars known in his home state of Ohio. His love of the sport has turned into the reflection that is There’s Always This Year, an incisive exploration “of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models.”
10. Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Mystery
Release Date: April 16
The Kentworthy family immediately caused a nasty stir with their move into the idyllic neighborhood of Riverside Close. So when the wealthy patriarch is murdered on his front doorstep, only a seasoned detective like Hawthorne (and his companion, writer Anthony Horowitz) can solve the case — and that’s because every neighbor in the gated community is a suspect.
11. The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Release Date: April 9
Set in the Spanish Golden Age, The Familiar follows the journey of Luzia, a servant who reveals her ability to perform small magical miracles to her poverty-stricken employer. When the mistress of the house demands she use her powers to engage Madrid’s wealthiest, what starts as an amusing game for Luzia quickly takes a turn for the worst. She’ll have to use all of her skills — and the help of an immortal familiar named Guillén Santángel — to survive.
12. Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
Genre: Memoir
Release Date: April 16
On August 12, 2022, acclaimed writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie was stabbed — almost fatally — before delivering a lecture in New York. Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder is his never before told account of the traumatic event, 30 years after a fatwa was issued calling for his assassination.
13. Funny Story by Emily Henry
Genre: Romance
Release Date: April 23
Daphne, a buttoned-up children’s librarian, and her new roommate, Miles, only have one wrong thing in common — which is that their exes are in love with one another. The roommates mainly avoid each other, nursing their pain alone, until deciding to form a friendship and a new plan. If that plan also involves misconstruing their summer adventures via online posts, then so be it. It’s all for show anyways… right?
14. The Stardust Grail by Yuma Kitasei
Genre: Science Fiction
Release Date: June 11
Maya Hoshimoto used to be the best art thief in the galaxy who returned stolen artifacts to the alien worlds from which they came. That is, until a botched job forced her into hiding. Still, despite her strange and consistent visions of the future, she’s now content to live as a graduate student of anthropology. But when an old friend comes knocking with a new job that promises to save a species from extinction, she can’t turn it down. Maya will have to be careful, contending with betrayal and other hunters — especially because the safety of her own home planet hangs in the balance.
15. Parade: A Novel by Rachel Cusk
Genre: Literary Fiction
Release Date: June 18
A middle-aged artist named G amasses critical success after painting ugly portraits of his wife upside down. In Paris, a woman is attacked on the street by someone who stops to contemplate the scene, much like an artist, before fleeing. At 22, a painter named G leaves her home country and her disapproving parents, only to face similar disapproval of her art from the man she marries. When a mother passes, her death creates a sense of freedom in her children, who are left to confront the legacy she left behind.
From the author of the Outline Trilogy comes a novel that exceeds the “limits of identity, character, and plot” by telling the story of G, “an artist whose life contains many lives.”
15. Bluff by Danez Smith
Genre: Poetry
Release Date: August 20
After two years of “artistic silence” during the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, Danez Smith has reemerged with a collection of poems which examine Smith’s role as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. Searing and resilient, Bluff is an “awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.”
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