Staff Picks: Best of 2024
With the end of the year fast approaching, we’ll be taking up ample shelf space to celebrate our favorite books from 2024. Here’s a little starter set—stay tuned for many more to come.
* CHRIS *
Sipsworth
by Simon Van Booy
“An absolutely charming, warm, and life-affirming story about a small community coming together to find meaning in the smallest things. Beautifully written, stocking-sized, and exactly the kind of book we all need this holiday season.”
This Other Eden
by Paul Harding
“Ringing with truth and vitality, Pulitzer-winner Paul Harding's slim-but-profound novel illuminates a small, dark, forgotten corner of American history, where freedom, beauty, and cruelty collide spectacularly and tragically.”
* MICHAEL *
The Night Ends with Fire
by K.X. Song
“The Night Ends with Fire follows Meilin's journey in the Three Kingdoms' military, having disguised herself as a man and enlisted to escape her oppressive father. In this stunning retelling of the legend of Mulan, K.X. Song examines the scope of what it means to be at war—with one's country, with one's inner demons, and more.”
- Michael
Blackouts
by Justin Torres
“A book that is structurally and visually unique, Blackouts chronicles the friendship between two queer men of different generations. Justin Torres beautifully displays the duo's often divergent perspectives on their community's history.”
* CARA *
Long Island Compromise
by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
“When American-dream poster child Carl Fletcher is violently kidnapped and held hostage for six days in 1980, his family is forever changed. Long Island Compromise is a thrilling saga spanning decades about wealth, greed, the ego of legacy and the comedic dread that comes with being part of a dysfunctional family.”
Everyone in this Room Will Someday be Dead
by Emily Austin
“Gilda, an aimless and chronically anxious atheist who is obsessed with death, finds herself working as a church receptionist where she quickly becomes consumed by the mystery surrounding her predecessor’s death. Everyone in this Room… is a funny, weird, beautiful reminder of what makes life worth living.”
* SIERRA *
The Woods All Black
by Lee Mandelo
“Nurse Leslie Bruin arrives at his assigned rural township to find a hateful congregation hellbent on making ‘mannish women’ like him and Stevie, an unruly local, behave. And the rumors of a sinister force emanating from the woods are probably fake...right? A glorious, gut-wrenching novella set in 1920s Appalachia, The Woods All Black lays bare how prejudice, power, and survival make monsters of us all.”
American Rapture
by CJ Leede
“Sophie, a devout Catholic high schooler, is finding it pretty difficult to stay pure amidst the ongoing plague that drives people mad with lust. Gripping, hysterical, and perfectly perverse, American Rapture deftly chronicles a uniquely American apocalypse with CJ Leede's trademark wit.”
Did we pique your interest?
Drop us a note to special-order any of these books, and we’ll set aside a copy for you to pick up at the shop.
