The best books of 2024

James by Percival Everett

Award-winning novelist Percival Everett retells the story of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the character readers will recognize as Jim, here introducing himself as ”James.” Retellings of classic works of fiction have become a subgenre of their own over the past decade, but Everett’s James stands alone as a bonafide masterpiece built from the clay of its predecessor.

Hear from one of Kobo’s own booksellers on why it was the best book they read this year on our annual Staff Picks episode of the Kobo in Conversation podcast.

The Women by Kristin Hannah

Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a nursing student who ships out to follow her brother when he’s drafted to fight in Vietnam. From the author of The Nightingale, this is a story of a woman up against the odds and out of her element, who discovers that after the fighting ends you never quite get back home.

The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan

A thrilling tale of espionage set in 1945 Malaya and featuring Cecily, a woman whose ambition to become more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat brings everyone she loves to the brink of destruction.

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants returns with this inspiring book that asks us to see the world not through the lens of scarcity and competition but instead as a network of relationships rooted in reciprocity and gratitude.

The Manicurist's Daughter: A Memoir by Susan Lieu

When Susan Lieu was eleven, her mother died from complications arising from a cosmetic surgery procedure. With the loss of her mother, she also lost her strongest link to her Vietnamese heritage and family history as refugees. In this memoir, she explores a number of questions—about the surgeon whose apparent incompetence cost at least one life, about the family that refused to speak of the circumstances of Susan’s mother’s death, and what compelled her mother to go under the surgeon’s knife in the first place.