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It’s a new year and time to either pre-order or put those books on hold at the library!
What Books Should Be on Your List This Year?
We’re almost done with January and new books are being released. Have you been keeping track and adding books to your list yet? Let me help. Join me for my Most Anticipated Books 2024 List!
As a special freebie to accompany this list, I’m also offering a FREE 2024 Reading Log Tracker. So, get inspired by these anticipated books and download the tracker below to keep track of your reads this year!
My Most Anticipated Books 2024 List
The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan
This one is already out. It released January 2nd and I can’t wait to get my hands on it! It’s already been picked up as a Good Morning America pick.
Set in Malay, now Malaysia during WWII, this novel follows a mother, Cecily Alcantara, as she grapples with the fact that her family is in terrible danger. Her fifteen-year-old son has disappeared, she’s hiding her youngest daughter in the basement each day to avoid having her forced into service, and her oldest daughter works at a tea house with drunken Japanese soldiers each day.
Cecily questions each day if she is responsible for their struggles, she did not take a typical path in life and she wonders if her past has shadowed their future.
The Storm We Made details life during war time, the ambiguity of right and wrong when faced with survival and what it is like to live under the confines of a colonial power.
The Women by Kristin Hannah
Another of my favorite authors and an obvious add to my Most Anticipated Books 2024 List. What to say about Kristin Hannah? The Great Alone, The Four Winds, The Nightingale, need I say more? This woman wrecks me in the best possible way! And I love that each time she manages to find such entirely different time periods and topics to write about.
For instance, The Women now brings us to Vietnam. As usual, Hannah focuses on the strong empowered female protagonist in her story. So instead, of focusing on the drafted male soldiers sent to fight, she focuses on the sister of one who decides to join the Army Nurse Corps voluntarily.
I love the idea of seeing the turbulent chaos of the Vietnam War from a female perspective and the deft handling I’m sure Hannah will offer. February 6th cannot come fast enough. I’ll luckily be on vacation in the Dominican Republic that week. I know what I’ll be reading on the beach!
Queens of London by Heather Webb
This was another exciting add to my Most Anticipated Books 2024 list. Heather Webb really manages to nail the more opulent times in history. And yet, she offers a strength and depth to her female protagonists from these times. I originally found her while reading Meet Me in Monaco which was about Grace Kelly’s wedding and then I also read her Christmas story, Last Christmas in Paris which was a WWI story. Interestingly enough, both of those books were co-authored with Webb’s writing partner Hazel Gaynor. Whereas, Queens of London is written by Webb on her own.
She has other individually authored titles out that I’ve been meaning to check out like last year’s Strangers in the Night about Frank Sinatra. Unfortunately, it never made it off my TBR pile though. So this year, I’ll definitely push this solo title to the top!
Queens of London also comes out on February 6th and takes on the criminal world of London post WWI. However, instead of your usual hardened male outlaws, Webb introduces us to a gang of female gangsters from Britain’s first female crime syndicate along with a determined female detective on their tail.
The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang
This is another one I’m super excited about. I love Kate Quinn and she is treating us well this year with TWO new books being released! She’s got this one debuting February 13th and then she has The Briar Club coming out in July.
In case you don’t obsessively follow her like I do, she is the author of the fantastic books The Alice Network, The Rose Code, ooh and The Huntress, ok, do you see why I’m an obsessive fan lol? Everything she writes is just amazing!
As in most of her books The Phoenix Crown is another mystery/thriller type historical fiction. This one is a dual narrative, I suspect each written by one of the authors, and follows two very different women, Gemma and Suling, who are thrown together in San Francisco in 1906. They are each under the patronage of Henry Thornton, a railroad magnate, who collects rare Chinese antiques. His most extraordinary treasure? The legendary Phoenix Crown from the fallen Beijing Summer Palace.
But everything falls apart when San Francisco is rocked by an earthquake. Thornton has disappeared along with the crown. Until the crown suddenly reappears mysteriously at a costume ball in Paris five years later. Can Gemma and Suling get there fast enough to recover this precious treasure?
The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay
I’ve only read Katherine Reay’s romance style books in the past. I love that they are modern day spins on past classic tales. Dear Mr. Knightly and The Austen Escape. I honestly didn’t even realize she wrote historical fiction and The Berlin Letters will be my first foray into her catalog. It’s getting great reviews by advanced readers though and looks really interesting.
In The Berlin Letters, Reay tells an exciting tale of a female CIA code breaker who risks everything to free her father from an East Germany prison during the Cold War. The Berlin Letters debuts on March 5th.
Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray
This one was an obvious add to my Most Anticipated Books 2024 list for me. One, it’s about Frances Perkins who was pivotal to labor reform for women after the Triangle Fire. And two, I love Stephanie Dray! The Women of Chateau Lafayette was one of my favorite historical fiction books ever!
Becoming Madam Secretary is getting released March 12th and looks potentially even more exciting. Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century determined to make a difference. And she does just that, helping the children in crowded tenements and befriending politicians and activists in Greenwich Village.
However, when she meets young lawyer, Frankin Delano Roosevelt, she has no idea that life as she knows it has changed.They can’t stand each other at first, and yet their paths continue to cross. Little do they know they will go on to form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House and change the country forever.
Akmaral by Judith Lindbergh
Last, but not least is Akmaral by Judith Lindbergh. This one debuts on May 7th. Lindbergh is a newer author and I didn’t get to read her first book. But Akmaral really intrigues me.
It’s so far getting fantastic reviews by advanced readers.And I love that it’s a time period I know very little about and is so different from what you normally see on the shelves.
Before the Silk Road even had its name, nomads roamed the Asian steppes and women fought beside men. Like the other women from her clan, Akmaral is bound from birth to battle.
Talk about strong women! I can’t wait to find out more and learn about this ancient population history’s forgotten.
I hope you feel inspired and took down some books to preorder. What books are top of your list so far? Make sure you download your FREE Reading Log to keep track of your reads this year! Extra points if you send in a pic to share your progress! 😉
Did you enjoy this post? Make sure to check out some of my other Best Historical Fiction Posts and Book Lists below! Happy Reading!
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