LibGuides: Best Books of 2024: Home

Introducing the Best Books of 2024

We’re celebrating the best of 2024 – best books, that is! Browse below by category (fiction or nonfiction) and format (print or electronic) to see more than 250 titles that appeared on 17 year-end best books lists.*

Click on any book cover image to check current availability and/or place holds. Bentley students, staff, and faculty can access the titles on the e-books and digital audiobooks lists with a Bentley email address and password. Happy reading!

Fiction (E-Books)

Nonfiction (E-Books)

The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House

Charlie Hustle: The Rise of Pete Rose and the Fall of Baseball

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves

The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie

Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music

The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

Sharks Don't Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist

Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World

Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling

Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport

Fiction (Print): A-L

Flint Kill Creek: Stories of Mystery and Suspense

Just Another Epic Love Poem: Nothing Ruins a Friendship Like Falling in Love

Fiction (Print): M-Z

Nonfiction (Print): A-L

Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq

AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference

American Zion: A New History of Mormonism

Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora

At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi

Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life

Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me

The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement

Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis

By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

Catherine de' Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We'll Win the Climate War

Chinese Enough: Homestyle Recipes for Noodles, Dumplings, Stir-Fries, and More

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI

Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV

Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation

Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!)

The Eastern Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918

The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

Everything to Play For: How Videogames are Changing the World

The Everything War: Amazon's Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power

Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America

Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap

From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir

Good Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide

A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America

The Heart That Fed: A Father, a Son, and the Long Shadow of War

Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King

Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World

Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich

Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net

Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler

I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine

In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face-to-Face with the Idea of an Afterlife

Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation

Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York

LatinoLand: A Portrait of America's Largest and Least Understood Minority

Life after Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House

Nonfiction (Print): M-Z

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives - And How We Break Free

Missing Persons: Or, My Grandmother's Secrets

The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World

The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions

Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness

My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present and Future

New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service

One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy

The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports

Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity

Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals

Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022

Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World

Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon

Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank

The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist's Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life

'A Seditious and Sinister Tribe': The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate

See Me Rolling: On Disability, Equality, and Ten-Point Turns

She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street

The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right

The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World

Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade

The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History

The Taft Court: Making Law for a Divided Nation, 1921-1930

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together

A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives

We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance

When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day

Audiobooks

Sources

*Sources consulted: Audible, AudioFile, Barnes & Noble, Bloomberg, Booklist, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, The New York Times, NPR, Publishers Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Best Books Display Archives

Take a look back at our previous Best Books displays!