New Book Releases 2024: Our top fiction picks by month
Buckle up bookworms. In terms of new book releases, 2024 has much to offer. This list will have your reading pile groaning with excitement and you might just need a bigger bookshelf.
You might also enjoy our Best Books of 2024 List and New Book Releases in 2025.
Now there are a lot of highly anticipated books lists out there, but who has time to read them all, right? Realistically you cannot read every new book 2024 has to offer, you want to zero in on the best novels. So we’ll be exploring the publishing horizon for you, gathering together the most promising fiction titles, and curating a diverse selection of 2024’s new release books bi-monthly that’ll satisfy any reading appetite.
So, grab a steaming mug of your go-to beverage, and dive into our guide to the best books coming out this year. Get ready to discover your next favourite author, revisit old friends with fresh stories, and lose yourself in worlds you never knew existed. Happy reading!
Top New Book Releases 2024
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Noteworthy New Book Releases, November & December 2024
After the brutal cliff-hanger of Isabel Ibanez’s What The River Knows (Secrets of the Nile #1) I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Book 2, Where The Library Hides. 1885, Egypt. Inez Olivera is left reeling after the shocking events that concluded Book 1, her uncle issues an ultimatum about her inheritance. With her heart on the line, Inez might have to bind her fate to the one person whose secret plans could ruin her. More details: Book | Audio | My Review of Book 1
Beth Revis’ Full Speed to a Crash Landing (Chaotic Orbits Novella Trilogy #1), a high-octane sexy space heist, was a delightfully fun and tautly executed thriller, and title #2, How To Steal a Galaxy (which I have just read) is another delicious morsel of high-wire banter and romantic suspense. Readers learn more about feisty lead Ada’s backstory and the broader state of society, and are left with bated breath, taunted by what lies ahead for Ada and Rian in the finale, Last Chance to Save the World. Thankfully, that is scheduled for quick release in April 2025, so now is definitely the time to dive into this series. More details: Book | Audio | My Review of Book 1
I still have very fond memories of Midge Raymond’s first full-length novel My Last Continent (2016) so am keen to read her December new release Floreana, a reimagining of a true historical story. On the Galápagos Islands, the lives of two women—a century apart—converge in startling ways in a historical novel of desperate love, secrets, and deception. Read more: Book Details and My Full Review
Katie Holt’s debut romantic comedy novel Not In My Book is described as The Hating Game meets Beach Read. Rosie, an idealistic and passionate Peruvian-American leaves her Tennessee hometown to pursue her dream of making it in New York as a writer. But her plan is derailed when she ends up in class with her arch-nemesis and ex-crush, Aiden Huntington—an obnoxious yet handsome (of course!) literary fiction writer who has no patience for the romance genre, or for Rosie. Read more: Book Details and My Full Review
Top Picks of the New Book Releases, September & October 2024
I have selected 6 top fiction release picks for September and another 6 out of the many new releases scheduled for October. I discuss each title in this video. For more detail on each novel and my full reviews of those I read, see the links provided below.
September New Book Releases
October New Book Releases
Most Anticipated Fiction, July & August 2024
I managed to narrow this list down to just 9 top fiction picks for July and August across a diverse range of genres. I discuss each title in this video. For more detail on each novel and my full reviews of those I read, see the links provided below.
July Book Releases
August Book Releases
New Release Fiction, May & June 2024
I am a Shari Low convert after loving One Christmas Eve (an ensemble drama worth reading any time of the year!), and her new release One Long Weekend sounds like another warm and fuzzy must-read. Three days. Four broken hearts. Just one weekend to make them whole again. Read more: Book Details and My Review
No one does ‘romance in the real world’ like David Nicholls (One Day, Sweet Sorrow) and so high expectations come with any new book he releases. A mid-life love story on a long walk in inclement English weather, You Are Here is a novel of first encounters, second chances and finding the way home. Read more: Book Details and My Review
Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel The Ministry of Time is a highly ambitious modern genre mashup that asks the question – what happens if you put a disaffected millennial and a Victorian polar explorer in a house together? A time travel romance, a speculative spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an exploration of the nature of truth and power. Read more: Book Details and My Review
Bestseller Kevin Kwan (Rich People Problems) is back with Lies and Weddings, another audacious comedy of manners centering on a forbidden affair that erupts volcanically amid a decadent Hawaiian tropical wedding. A globetrotting tale spanning Hawaii, Marrakech, the glitzy bachelor pads of LA and the inner sanctums of England’s oldest family estates. More details: Book | Audio
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While I’m not sold on the cover art colour choices of my next two picks, the romantic comedies to be found within sound too good to miss.
Ashley Poston (The Seven Year Slip) has found another fun way to mix romance and fantasy in A Novel Love Story. After her car breaks down on the way to a book club retreat, Eileen Merriweather, a professor of literature, finds herself caught up in a fictional town she knows well because it is the setting of her favourite romance series. More details: Book | Audio
Katherine Center’s 2024 book release The Rom-Commers features aspiring screenwriter Emma and rom-com tragic who lands the opportunity to work with one of her idols Charlie Yates on the rewrite of his latest rom-com. But, the script is terrible, his focus is elsewhere, and he has fallen out of love with the genre. More details: Book | Audio
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The master of the high-concept murder adventure mystery Stuart Turton (The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, The Devil and the Dark Water) is back with The Last Murder at the End of the World. Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the island 122 villagers and 3 scientists, living in harmony until one of the scientists is killed and the fog starts creeping in. More details: Book | Audio
Ram Murali’s debut locked-room mystery Death in the Air is being described as ‘The White Lotus meets Knives Out meets Crazy Rich Asians’. When Ro Krishna, American son of wealthy Indian parents, leaves a high-profile job under mysterious circumstances, he checks into a spa for the global cosmopolitan elite nestled in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. A colourful cast of characters join him, including a murderer. Read more: Book Details and My Review
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This June 2024 new release, Secrets of Rose Briar Hall is historical suspense novelist Kelsey James’ (The Woman in the Castello) Gilded Age gothic homage to ‘Gaslight’. Ellie Turner, a wealthy young newlywed in early 20th-century New York is isolated within her opulent, yet ominously empty mansion by the charismatic and controlling new husband plotting to undermine her sanity… Read more: Book Details and My Review
In Emiko Jean’s new mystery thriller, The Return of Ellie Black (also being sold as The Next Girl), Detective Chelsey Calhoun’s life is turned upside down when she gets the call Ellie Black, a girl who disappeared many years earlier, and two years prior to her own sister’s disappearance, has resurfaced in the woods of Washington state. More details: Book | Audio
Top Book Releases, March & April 2024
For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, Kristen Perrin’s How to Solve Your Own Murder is a wonderfully engaging mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate… Now, it is up to her great-niece Annie to catch the killer. Read more: Book Details and My Review
Nova Jacobs (The Last Equation of Isaac Severy) is back with new novel The Stars Turned Inside Out. The discovery of a suspicious death at a famous Swiss physics laboratory sparks a mystery that merges science, philosophy, and the high-stakes race to unlock the fundamental nature of our universe. More details: Book | Audio
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Lovers of Ninth House and Hell Bent can rejoice, Leigh Bardugo has released a new adult historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age. According to Booklist, The Familiar is a romance with maddening chemistry, an artfully built world, side characters with their own deep backstories, and a plot full of dark twists and spiderweb connections. And I agree — this is a must-read. Read more: Book Details and My Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue meets Life of Pi in this debut from Douglas Westerbeke, A Short Walk Through a Wide World. Described as a dazzling epic, it charts the incredible, adventurous life of one woman Aubry Tourvel as she journeys the globe trying to outrun a mysterious curse that will destroy her if she stops moving. More details: Book | Audio
Cristina Henríquez (The Book of Unknown Americans) and her new novel The Great Divide, explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers—those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course during the construction of the Panama Canal. More details: Book | Audio
In Xochitl Gonzalez’s Anita de Monte Laughs Last, a rising star in the art world is found dead in New York City 1985. Then, in 1998 outsider Raquel, an art history student becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, and finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist. More details: Book | Audio
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Sophie Wan’s debut Women of Good Fortune is a funny female-led heist novel set against a high-society Shanghai wedding. A reluctant bride and her two best friends, each with their own motives and fed up with the way society treats women, forge a plan to steal all the gift money on the big day. More details: Book | Audio
Tracey Garvis Graves’ new release The Trail of Lost Hearts is a life affirming journey where two lost souls, heartbroken thirty-four-year-old Wren Waters and psychologist Marshall Hendricks find each other in the wilderness, along with the unexpected courage to love again. More details: Book | Audio
More highly anticipated new romance novels in March & April 2024:
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New fiction from Australian authors, March & April 2024
In her fiction debut The Work, Bri Lee explores the intersections between art, life, power and privilege. Lally has invested everything into her gallery in Manhattan and the sacrifices are finally paying off. Pat is a scholarship boy desperate to establish himself in Sydney’s antiquities scene. When they meet at New York’s Armory Show their chemistry is instant – fighting about art and politics is just foreplay. Find out more >>
Sanctuary is a new standalone thriller from bestseller Garry Disher (Consolation, Day’s End). Grace is a thief. She was taught by experts. But it’s a solitary life, always watchful, always moving. Grace walks into Erin Mandel’s rural antiques shop and sees a chance for something different. A normal job. A place to call home. But someone is looking for Erin too. Find out more >>
New Books 2024, January & February
In Hannah Richell’s new novel The Search Party, a Cornwall glamping retreat turns deadly when a storm traps reunion guests, ignites old secrets, and one vanishes, forcing everyone to confront the darkness within and fight for their families. This multi-perspective thriller explores the fragile bonds of friendship and the desperate choices we make for those we love. Recommended for fans of Lucy Foley and Agatha Christie. Read more: Book Details, My Review & Book Club Questions
A literary collaboration from bestselling historical fiction authors Kate Quinn and Janie Chang, The Phoenix Crown, is set in 1906 San Francisco and follows two women, a soprano and a Chinatown embroideress. Their lives, intertwining with that of their patron, a charming railroad magnate with an extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques, are thrown into turmoil when an earthquake strikes and he disappears, setting them on a quest for justice. Read more: Book Details and My Review
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In Gareth Brown’s debut fantasy novel, Cassie, a New York bookseller is gifted The Book of Doors, granting her the power to travel anywhere. Soon, she and friend Izzy embark on fantastical adventures, but others crave what Cassie now possesses. Suddenly they are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is, it seems, is Drummond Fox, a man with his own secret library who is fleeing his own demons. More details: Book | Audio
The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a new historical novel with a speculative twist from Katherine Arden, bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale. In Flanders, Belgium late in the Great War, a soldier Freddie awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier. Meanwhile discharged combat nurse Laura searches for her soldier brother Freddie, believed dead despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise. More details: Book | Audio
In 2010, Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair, Early Riser) published his cult-classic literary fantasy novel Shades of Grey, set in a world where social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. That is until he falls in love with Jane, a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper. Now 14 years later he is releasing its highly anticipated sequel, Red Side Story. More details: Book | Audio
The Tainted Cup is the first book in a new fantasy adventure series from Robert Jackson Bennett. A high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Called in to investigate is Ana Dolabra and her assistant Din. His job is to act as his superior’s eyes and ears–quite literally, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home. More details: Book | Audio
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More highly anticipated January/February 2024 book releases:
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Also check out these 2023 Book Releases You May Have Missed and our Best Books of 2023.
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