![Hot off the press: your 2024 reading list starts here](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000385201052_17206968711010_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqwMvpkM2N8CIHoMgVq7rfOgtLaZLVIPrUA_hKEefRDgs.jpeg?imwidth=680)
The 75 hottest books of 2024 so far
From cosy crime to moving memoirs, our critics pick the perfect holiday reading, whatever your tastes
![Hot off the press: your 2024 reading list starts here](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000385201052_17206968711010_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqwMvpkM2N8CIHoMgVq7rfOgtLaZLVIPrUA_hKEefRDgs.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Jump to section
Fiction
James by Percival Everett
Mantle, £20
Forget everything you think you know about “21st-century retellings” and their ills. Percival Everett – one of America’s great modern writers – takes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, shifts the focus onto the slave “Jim”, and forges a grimly comic new masterpiece. JC
Read the full review of James.
Long Island by Colm Tóibín
Picador, £20
This sequel to Brooklyn opens with a blindside: Eilis, the protagonist of that book, now married for 20 years to Tony, learns that he has fathered an illegitimate child. Furious, she returns alone to Ireland – and re-encounters Jim Farrell, the man she left for Tony and America. It feels like the acme of Tóibín’s lustrous career. MN
Read the full review of Long Island.
My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld
Faber, £16.99
What if Humbert Humbert were a Dutch veterinary surgeon in the early 2000s? It may sound like an odd question, but it’s testament to the skill of Rijneveld, an International Booker-winner, that the answer is a ghoulish masterpiece. LK
Read the full review of My Heavenly Favourite.
Day by Michael Cunningham
Fourth Estate, £16.99
In Cunningham’s beautiful novel of middle-aged love, longing and sadness, we follow the lives of three haunted New Yorkers over three dramatic recent years. “Covid fiction” is mercifully rare, but it’s hard to imagine an example better than this. CA
Read the full review of Day.
![Michael Cunningham, author of Day](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000361425059_17206972872550_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq-IWLY18X4-CzgyIcjLEAj0k9u7HhRJvuo-ZLenGRumA.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
Virago, £16.99
Well, apart from this. The latest book from the cult US novelist, set amid the first wave of lockdowns, follows a nameless writer who finds herself trapped with a parrot and a friend’s feckless son. A layered and thoughtful piece, it’s plainly written, but has beautiful depths. EW
Read the full review of The Vulnerables.
Choice by Neel Mukherjee
Atlantic, £18.99
In Mukherjee’s philosophically intelligent and often beautifully written novel, we’re shown a triptych of interconnected tales in which, from Britain to India, people come to moral cruxes in their life. There are plenty of well-deserved jokes about publishing and academia, too. BM
Read the full review of Choice.
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
Daunt, £9.99
This debut novel, set at a two-day amateur boxing tournament for teenage girls in Nevada, is told with breathtaking skill. As the contenders go toe-to-toe, fighting for “a small plastic-gold cup”, Bullwinkel shows us all the intimacy and trickery that occurs in the sweat-slick ring. DR
Read the full review of Headshot.
Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee
Fourth Estate, £16.99
In 2022, McGhee quit her job as an assistant editor at a major American publishing house, went online, and denounced the industry’s elitism and backwardness in fiery terms. Her fury echoes through this fascinatingly odd novel, in which she depicts a man employed to enter workers’ dreams and make them more palatable to their employers. EW
Read the full review of Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind.
![A Eunuch's Dream (1874) by Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000361647116_17206974213330_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq_Q1N-FTyp3NpZtJnZ0dj55fhyHuANl8SSbAeQyxyAwM.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Overstaying by Ariane Koch
Pushkin, £10.99
An unnamed narrator in an unnamed European town takes in a house-guest on a whim. Soon, he’s howling, making sculptures and eating her socks – but she just can’t let him go. Koch’s debut is a bizarrely beautiful psychodrama about hospitality, control and domination. LK
Read the full review of Overstaying.
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry
Jonathan Cape, £20
This celestial-minded novel, published just after the sighting of a comet and a North America-wide solar eclipse, is quintessential Perry. A richly layered epic, it’s set in the fictional town of Aldleigh amid a broad cast who wrestle with faith, science and the vagaries of the human soul. MF
Read the full review of Enlightenment.
The Coast Road by Alan Murrin
Bloomsbury, £16.99
In small Irish towns, gossip is a currency and hypocrisy is rife, as one woman, returning from self-exile to reunite with her son, finds out. Set in the run-up to the 1996 divorce referendum, Murrin’s story has crispness, tenderness and observative power in equal measure. VR
Read the full review of The Coast Road.
Going Home by Tom Lamont
Sceptre, £16.99
Téo Erskine, 30, has a flat, a car and a steady job. But when he offers to babysit Joel, the two-year-old son of his old flame Lia, and she takes the chance to end her life, he’s suddenly a single father. Lamont’s debut is shrewd, heartfelt and witty, and his cast of Londoners feel intensely real. SMe
Read the full review of Going Home.
![Briefly Very Beautiful is Dineen's debut novel](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000379606935_17206974895220_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq-RpvcHkEPpt0rIYKvNdyWnpGmc-JZgR9rKXhWuR7Jn0.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen
Bloomsbury, £16.99
Environmental catastrophe, civil unrest, terrorism: the nation is on the verge. The climate is collapsing, and the heat is unbearable. In her disturbing and stylish first book, set in a dystopian version of a Britain-like country, Dineen follows one family’s desperate attempt to flee to the countryside. FB
Read the full review of Briefly Very Beautiful.
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
Canongate, £16.99
Welcome to Butte, a small town in 1890s Montana. Tom Rourke, local poet and opium addict, meets Polly Gillespie, a runaway with unspecified trouble behind her. Within a few pages, they’ve robbed his landlady and fled together. Barry’s wild first Western, 25 years in the making, heads off in pursuit. JW
Read the full review of The Heart in Winter.
Cleavage by Cleo Watson
Corsair, £20
The erotic lives of MPs were never so much fun. Watson, a former No 10 staffer, brings back the cast of last year’s Whips, adding a general election to stimulate the satirical sex and pantomime politics. And throughout it all, the principal bed-hoppers seem oddly recognisable. KK
Read the full review of Cleavage.
Early Sobrieties by Michael Deagler
Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99
Dennis Monk, 26 and prospect-free, has returned to his parents’ home outside Philadelphia – and stopped drinking. Over the course of his first year on the wagon, millennial life around him suddenly seems darker, more anxious and more revealing about the state of America than before. BM
Read the full review of Early Sobrieties.
![The Hangover, 1887-9. by Toulouse-Lautrec](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000380574040_17206975430950_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqbZ8LU-qv1sVXVl2BVMJBc2mfEaXzUGjZTlLbjM4Zpow.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The Last Sane Woman by Hannah Regel
Verso, £10.99
In this politically sharp debut, one frustrated woman finds another, as sculptor-cum-nursery assistant Nicola becomes entranced with the letters of Donna, a similar woman writing 30 years prior. But what does Nicola really want? KS
Read the full review of The Last Sane Woman.
Mary and the Rabbit Dream by Noémi Kiss-Déaki
Galley Beggar, £10.99
In 1726, a woman from Godalming called Mary Toft achieved notoriety when she purportedly gave birth to rabbits. For months, Toft had the press, and the Royal household, fooled. This first novel from the Finnish writer Noémi Kiss-Deáki is a sprightly tale inspired by, and intruding upon, the Toft case. LS
Read the full review of Mary and the Rabbit Dream.
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud
Fleet, £20
For her seventh novel, Messud has turned to her own history. We travel from Algeria, where her paternal grandparents were raised, to Connecticut, where Messud herself was born. Over nearly a century, the Cassar family go to war, move across continents and develop dementia and alcoholism: it has the richness of Balzac. APT
Read the full review of This Strange Eventful History.
Rosarita by Anita Desai
Picador, £12.99
Who are you? Desai’s first novel in a decade, written in the second person, turns brilliantly on this question, as “you” are approached by a woman claiming to have known your mother – and threatening to change everything you understand about your family history. GC
Read the full review of Rosarita.
![Rosarita by Anita Desai](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000382306986_17206976665590_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Ideas
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Allen Lane, £25
Few books seem as urgent this summer. Today, 95 per cent of teenagers own smartphones – yet the scale of the psychological and social carnage caused by these devices is only just becoming apparent. Haidt’s forensic book is a terrifying assessment of the crisis, and required reading for parents everywhere. LD
Read the full review of The Anxious Generation.
The Real Thing by Terry Eagleton
Yale, £16.99
Literature, like cinema and television, has come to neglect the true function of art: telling us something insightful about how we live today. So argues Eagleton, the veteran critic and theorist, in a rangy defence of realism, a form that may be unfashionable but can, in all its granular detail, “take the status quo to task”. SJ
Read the full review of The Real Thing.
Why War? by Richard Overy
Pelican, £22
Overy, one of Britain’s leading historians of warfare, seeks an explanation for the millennia-old persistence of such violent actions; his searches lead him into the fields of biology, psychology, ecology and anthropology. This book is full of wondrous nuggets: in 1,000 years of Chinese history, for example, 453 cold phases produced 603 wars, but 459 warmer ones led to only 296. JH
Read the full review Why War?
Trophy Lives by Philippa Snow
Mack, £14
Celebrities, argues Snow, one of our brightest young essayists, may be the greatest artworks of the 21st century. They self-fashion, play games with their images and change our relationship with how we see the world around us. In this superb book-length essay, which ranges from Mark Quinn’s bronze sculpture of Kate Moss to Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Snow asks who the rich and famous really are – and why we can’t stop caring. MN
Read the full review of Trophy Lives.
![Lithograph of a father instructing his children in geography](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000375309773_17206977648910_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRwTKpOIX4_EtgVqe9ADvI8wZgCewa-xkrckcIXHk6m8.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Father Time by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Princeton, £25
Why have biologists so neglected fatherhood? Thus begins a profound new study from Hrdy, widely seen as one of evolutionary biology’s most important thinkers since Darwin. With smoothness and authority, she demolishes old ideas of essential differences between the sexes, and shows how social change is liberating men’s desire to be child-carers. In 2021, almost one in five stay-at-home parents in the US were fathers; 30 years ago, it was closer to one in 10. AS
Read the full review of Father Time.
Hunt for the Shadow Wolf by Derek Gow
Chelsea Green, £20
This elegiac book traces the pawprints that wolves have left on Britain’s language, culture and landscape. It’s a bright tale of real creatures – shy, curious, affectionate – so misunderstood that they were exterminated in the 18th century. Gow, a dedicated rewilder, has studied them up close for years. Here, with poetry and passion, he argues that it’s time to bring them back. HC
Read the full review of Hunt for the Shadow Wolf.
Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
Virago, £25
How well do you know the Bible’s first book? Between detached commentary and entrenched literalism, Robinson takes a writer’s approach, treating it as a lively composition. The result is a brilliantly fresh reading of familiar stories, highlighting both small details and large-scale shifts in understanding. RW
Read the full review of Reading Genesis.
The City of Today is a Dying Thing by Des Fitzgerald
Faber, £16.99
Are “green cities” the future – or just a misleading idea? Fitzgerald, a sociologist by trade, takes an amusing and sceptical journey through the past and future of urban life, from the battles for trees in Sheffield to the failed Marble Arch Mound. DA
Read the full review of The City of Today is a Dying Thing.
![Fitzgerald compares Gaudí's Sagrada Família to 'a wreck dredged from the bottom of the ocean'](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000361410377_17206988606110_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwSX5rhseiWKOo9p9OQ-ymek.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The Vast Extent by Lavinia Greenlaw
Faber, £20
Novelist, sound artist, radio dramatist, librettist – Greenlaw is far more than merely a poet. The “exploded essays” in this fascinating book tackle a similarly impressive range of topics, from myopia and radium to storm clouds and whale-watching trips; thrillingly, they invite you to match their intelligence with your own. IS
Read the full review of The Vast Extent.
Quantum Drama by Jim Baggott and John L Heilbron
OUP, £25
Einstein thought quantum mechanics was absurd; his younger peers, from Niels Bohr to Wolfgang Pauli, felt just as strongly otherwise. This history of their dispute is at the crunchily technical end of pop science, but also its highest-quality peak. Never was the history of physics told with such an entertainingly dry wit. SP
Read the full review of Quantum Drama.
The Tomb of the Mili Mongga by Samuel Turvey
Bloomsbury, £20
It’s 10ft tall and eats humans; it’s the size of a child and lives on snails. No, you’re not reading an H Rider Haggard adventure, but zoologist Turvey’s account of how he, local guides and a few brave PhD students headed to a remote Indonesian island hunting for a legendary “wild man” – the Mili Mongga. AD
Read the full review of The Tomb of the Mili Mongga.
Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia
Picador, £20
“AI” has become an inescapable buzzword, but ignore the tech evangelists. As the Financial Times writer Murgia shows in frightening detail, such systems are already damaging ordinary people, from teenagers told they’re destined to commit crime to gig workers who mysteriously and unaccountably lose their jobs. TK
Read the full review of Code Dependent.
![A simulation of facial-recognition software, used widely across China, in Beijing](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000225508614_17206988161150_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Poetry
The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Verse tr Christopher Childers
Penguin Classics, £45
Childers has spent 10 years translating the entire ancient verse corpus. Was it worth it? Magnificently so. His translations of Horace, Pindar et al sing from the page in mellifluous rhyming stanzas, his learning is worn lightly, and he can be stealthily hilarious. By the time you’re done, you’ve practically read for a degree in classical literature. AES
Read the full review of The Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Verse.
Wrong Norma by Anne Carson
Jonathan Cape, £14.99
Carson’s books include verse novels, a poem-essay on Proust and a bundle of pamphlets designed to fall out of their box onto the floor in a random order. Reading these fizzingly intelligent short pieces – full of odd characters, from pet crows to Yoko Ono, and flitting between prose and verse “with an air of deep comedy” – it’s easy to see why she’s regularly tipped to win a Nobel Prize. TFS
Read the full review of Wrong Norma.
The Palace of Forty Pillars by Armen Davoudian
Corsair, £10.99
In this Heaney-esque debut book, Davoudian looks back on his childhood in Iran and Armenian family’s history from the distance of his life in America. It’s reflective in every sense, full of mirrors and doubles, recurring images (swans abound) and unusual perspectives; “all is dual”, he writes. It’s also the smartest use of metre and rhyme you’ll see today. TFS
Read the full review of The Palace of Forty Pillars.
Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo
Faber, £12.99
Last year, Britain lost one of its most talented young poets in an accident; he was just 27. This book, nigh-finished at the time of Odubanjo’s death, intertwines the known facts with conjecture about “Adam”, a young boy from Benin City, Nigeria, whose body was found in the Thames in 2001. The stories that unfold in these poems are aching, joyful and brilliantly agile. SMc
Read the full review of Adam.
![Gboyega Odubanjo, author of Adam, died in August 2023](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000383488523_17206987616730_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Politics
Keir Starmer by Tom Baldwin
William Collins, £25
From his difficult bond with his father, Rodney, to his student days living above a brothel – he offered the ladies free legal advice – this official biography, based on “100 hours of interviews”, offers a thorough account of our new Prime Minister’s life so far. BRS
Read the full review of Keir Starmer.
Bloody Panico by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Verso, £14.99
Never mind defeat: “destabilised by factionalism and apostasy,” argues Wheatcroft, the Conservative Party “faces death”. You don’t have to agree with his anti-Brexit disdain to find his savaging of Tory narcissism, incompetence and sleaze all too persuasive – and to doubt they’ll rediscover their brains any time soon. SH
Read the full review of Bloody Panico.
The Fall of Roe by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer
Manilla, £25
If you think abortion is just an American issue, wake up. From shadowy billionaires to furious activists, Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer’s book chronicles a long-running battle in US politics, and gives us a primer on how retrograde forces across the West might seek to join the fight. SMo
Read the full review of The Fall of Roe.
Vassal State by Angus Hanton
Swift, £25
Britain may already be under Uncle Sam’s thumb, according to this worrying study. Hanton explains why US companies are thriving at the specific expense of British ones, and how generations of politicians have contrived in our national decay. Time for our own Independence Day? TO
Read the full review of Vassal State.
![Abortion-rights activists on Capitol Hill in Washington, 2022](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000301413755_17206987123280_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The Incarcerations by Alpa Shah
William Collins, £30
Narendra Modi, recently re-elected prime minister of India, is a “fascist” in the making – or so contends the academic Alpa Shah, who presents chilling evidence of a plot, using draconian anti-terrorist legislation, to intimidate and muzzle anyone, whether lawyer or priest, who dares to stand up to the thin-skinned premier. AW
Read the full review of The Incarcerations.
Another England by Caroline Lucas
Hutchinson Heinemann, £22
The Left may win minds, but it’ll never win hearts as long as it rejects the poetry of collective identity. So warns the former Green MP, blending artistic and political analysis, and surveying England’s national plight with more intelligence than her Westminster-obsessed peers across the political spectrum. TS
Read the full review of Another England.
Biography
Knife by Salman Rushdie
Cape, £20
On a bright summer day in 2022, one of our greatest novelists was stabbed almost to death on a lecture stage in New York state. Yet, as Rushdie told this newspaper in April, as he watched his black-clad attacker heading towards him, he felt calm, merely thinking: “This is what’s happening. I’m about to die.” Fortunately, despite the brutality of the attack, Rushdie pulled through, and produced this literary tour-de-force: it’s part-memoir and part-essay on art, pain and love. EW
Read the full review of Knife.
![Salman Rushdie, author of Knife](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000353730878_17206986527140_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq8juO8C_Vdx2cT20LARTiblHmPOpeFd0SyQx9dn7kM_w.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Charles III by Robert Hardman
Macmillan, £22
Forget the lies you see in televisual dross such as The Crown – this glorious book reveals our real King. Hardman’s magisterial biography, full of detail about the sovereign, his Queen and the self-exiled Sussexes alike, will become nothing less than a crucial historical document of the early 21st century. SH
Read the full review of Charles III.
The Showman by Simon Shuster
William Collins, £22
Never has “special access” lived up to the billing so well. Shuster had been part of Volodymyr Zelensky’s circle before the Russian invasion, and stayed with the Ukrainian president through the harsh first months of the war. He charts Zelensky’s astonishing journey from populist outsider to hero of the democratic world. CF
Read the full review of The Showman.
A Very Private School by Charles Spencer
William Collins, £25
Spencer opens with a Hilary Mantel quotation: “I am writing in order to take charge of my childhood.” By the end of this searing book, it rings true. Recalling his time at Maidwell Hall prep school, the 9th Earl portrays its headmaster, the late Alec Porch, as a sadistic abuser with paedophilic tendencies. BS
Read the full review of A Very Private School.
Low Life by Jeremy Clarke
Quartet, £21.99
The second of The Spectator’s “Low Life” columnists – the first was Jeffrey Bernard, often unwell – Clarke was smooth, wry and frequently sloshed. He died last year of cancer; these whip-smart pieces cover his final decade, from diagnosis to the verge of the end. They may be among the most important pages on life and death you will ever read. NL
Read the full review of Low Life.
![Unflinching: author and journalist Jeremy Clarke in 2005](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000000251957_17206984787430_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq3VzmrpWZOlsxWy7l2G7Z-nFK-kr7myY_tzKcW4w5x5c.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Inside Out by Douglas Thompson
Ad Lib, £10.99
April Ashley was a one-off: 1960s model, party girl, and briefly an aristocrat’s wife. She had also been, as the tabloids revealed, one of the first Britons to change sex. In this jaunty biography, Thompson, a former Fleet Street correspondent who knew Ashley, dishes the dirt with evident fondness. LB
Read the full review of Inside Out.
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
Fitzcarraldo, £10.99
It’s an unexpectedly moving experiment: 10 years’ worth of diaries, kept by the essayist Heti, every sentence arranged in alphabetical order. Chapter I is a full 34 pages long; X is the only chapter missing; Q consists merely of “Quiet days, not seeing people, feeling fine.” Heti offers us a thrilling window into the turbulence of a keen literary mind. CA
Read the full review of Alphabetical Diaries.
All That Glitters by Orlando Whitfield
Profile, £20
Meet Inigo Philbrick, an ambitious, personable and ruthless young art dealer. It may sound like the premise of a satirical novel, but no: as his old university friend and business partner Whitfield recalls, Philbrick created a blur of champagne, private jets and luxury villas, while systematically defrauding his high-end clients out of millions. PH
Read the full review of All That Glitters.
Sociopath by Patric Gagne
Bluebird, £18.99
If you know 20 people, it’s likely that one of them is a sociopath. Charismatic, entertaining, manipulative, uncaring of social norms or other people’s feelings – you know the type. But Gagne, herself a diagnosed sociopath, reveals the reality behind that stock figure, and her eyebrow-raising life makes for a surprisingly funny memoir. SP
Read the full review of Sociopath.
!['Suddenly, I no longer felt like the only sociopath in the world': therapist and author Patric Gagne](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000371841798_17206982023490_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqPSGJeyftEP9WNF5nKPELKQb-gi4gCHrOghc-G18A7f4.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Life by Pope Francis tr Aubrey Botsford
HarperOne, £25
We’re already living through a “dispersed Third World War”. So says the Pope, recounting his past and discussing the future in a rangy biography, based on interviews with a journalist, that covers his radical youth, his love of tango, and his 34-year boycott of television. CH
Read the full review of Life.
History
Sky Warriors by Saul David
William Collins, £25
Britain had Winston Churchill to thank for the Red Devils, as our airborne infantry became known; it was our wartime prime minister who urged their formation in 1940. But as David shows, charting the long and brutal journey of these heroes through the Second World War, the casualties would be many, and often needless. JH
Read the full review of Sky Warriors.
The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Muntzer by Andrew Drummond
Verso, £25
Thomas Müntzer, renegade priest, made his rival Martin Luther look tame. In this gripping tale, a blend of psychodrama and social history, Drummond chronicles the rise and brutal fall of a 16th-century ideologue, and argues that one peasants’ rebellion in Germany, had it succeeded, would have changed the face of Europe forever. DB
Read the full review of The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Muntzer.
![Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi by Joseph-Benoît Suvée](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000376191432_17206964473620_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqtV-7-tYUVFB7msbCGUlJ_iOwwQH1iiegFd5INOxSjBk.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The Missing Thread by Daisy Dunn
W&N, £25
Never mind redeeming the odd historical woman. This sprawling book gives us a mainstream history of the ancient world – in its political, social and economic aspects – which pushes the Alexanders and Caesars to the sides. Dunn foregrounds, via lively pen-portraits, women both high- and low-born. HS
Read the full review of The Missing Thread.
Challenger by Adam Higginbotham
Viking, £25
There was the world before the Challenger disaster, and the world after: the change took 75 seconds. Higginbotham’s superb narrative history relates the events around that cold January morning in 1986, and the lives, from stifled whistleblowers to doomed astronauts, drawn into their orbit. AD
Read the full review of Challenger.
Vertigo by Harald Jähner
W H Allen, £25
Polarised, gullible, narcissistic, wild: does this picture of society sound familiar? Jähner surveys the brief life of the Weimar Republic, in all its Charleston-dancing, free-loving, money-burning madness, and hints at eerie parallels with the West today. JE
Read the full review of Vertigo.
The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides
Michael Joseph, £25
This rollicking book follows Captain Cook on his final, doomed journey. As the great navigator crosses the Pacific, visits Tahiti and heads north, sickness spreads and violence erupts. HMS Resolution’s voyage into hell is riveting stuff. DB
Read the full review of The Wide Wide Sea.
![Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, 1945](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000378577383_17206965528650_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqzPDZVAnxkOCx_pj0EK6q2vlZBRoezaD186OgGOZAjuQ.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The Stalin Affair by Giles Milton
John Murray, £25
Ever heard of the danger-loving diplomat who tamed Stalin? As Milton reveals, Archibald Clark Kerr, Britain’s ambassador to the USSR from 1942 to 1946, managed to charm everyone – including the genocidal dictator he described as a “possum”. KH
Read the full review of The Stalin Affair.
Judgement at Tokyo by Gary J Bass
Picador, £30
Japan’s version of the Nuremberg trials was held from 1946 to 1948; 28 of its wartime leaders stood trial. As Bass records, the courtroom was appalled by the testimony of rapes, cannibalism and extreme torture. This study is harrowing, but scrupulous throughout – it’s a landmark work. JH
Read the full review of Judgement at Tokyo.
Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers by Anne Somerset
William Collins, £30
Victoria was not given to moderation. Her dislike of vivisectionists, Russians and Gladstone (her own four-time prime minister) verged on the violent; even her favourite, Disraeli, compared her to a “spoilt child”. Somerset’s account of Victorian Palace/No 10 relations is exhilaratingly impressive. MD
Read the full review of Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers.
Arise, England by Caroline Burt & Richard Partington
Faber, £25
The Plantagenets are England’s longest-
reigning dynasty, at 331 years; but it was no golden age of peace. In this deft study, Burt and Partington cover the reigns of six kings, from prissy Richard II to paranoid John, and argue that in this brutal period, the seeds of the English state were sown. DB
Read the full review of Arise, England.
![Game of thrones: England's Edward I giving Normandy to France's Philip IV](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000368724486_17206967560020_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqrZpMtF3hnYhWgtpCJLioOR02onCnLnCOzyrYJZwEpU.jpeg?imwidth=350)
House of Lilies by Justine Firnhaber-Baker
Allen Lane, £30
Things were no calmer across the Channel. The Capetians, also one of Europe’s great medieval dynasties, came to define France in the four centuries prior to the Hundred Years’ War. Firnhaber-Baker guides us skilfully through a litany of saints, squabbles and holy wars. DB
Read the full review of House of Lilies.
The Eastern Front by Nick Lloyd
Viking, £30
It’s an oddity of British historiography that the Great War, kindled by events in eastern Europe, has been read through the prism of events in the west. Lloyd offers a masterful rethinking, meticulously laying out the effects of the fighting in central and south-eastern Europe. SH
Read the full review of The Eastern Front.
Supremacy at Sea by Evan Mawdsley
Yale, £20
The US Navy’s modern maritime pre-eminence began, or so this lively study argues, in the final years of the Second World War. We follow Task Force 58 – 16 aircraft carriers, 1,000 combat aircraft, an armada of escorts – dashing 3,500 miles across the Pacific to crush Japan’s carrier-borne air power. SD
Read the full review of Supremacy at Sea.
The Cleopatras by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Wildfire, £25
Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra was only one of a rowdy line. Llewellyn-Jones gives us nine others, and a whirl of internecine violence. Some Cleopatras were heroines, some were harpies; all have an extraordinary story to tell. TW
Read the full review of The Cleopatras.
![Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1887) by Alexandre Cabanel](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000374129824_17206981434470_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqqqsh6vk5W2U2XosiZSEQw4tVPglXK47FkgoxzvGXEDU.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The Illusionist by Robert Hutton
W&N, £25
In the midst of the Second World War, the Allies sought any possible means of hindering the Nazi machine. Enter Dudley Clarke, a colonel who wrote a new playbook on military subterfuge, from inventing fake spies to broadcasting false information – until he was almost disgraced in a bizarre cross-dressing incident. SH
Read the full review of The Illusionist.
Crime
Murder at the Monastery by Rev Richard Coles
W&N, £22
Canon Daniel Clement’s third outing sees him take a recuperative break at the abbey in which he once trained – only to find a hotbed of enmities, which lead to one brother being jammed into a power turbine. Coles’s feline wit and infectious enthusiasm for ecclesiastical trivia make for a moreish read. JK
Read the full review of Murder at the Monastery.
The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
Scribner, £16.99
Ill-matched honeymooners Evelyn and Richard find that danger lurks at the Greek island resort where another couple apparently sleepwalked into the sea and drowned the year before. One of our most inventive novelists, Thomas fashions here an ambiguous chiller worthy of Highsmith or du Maurier. JK
Read the full review of The Sleepwalkers.
![James Comey's second novel is 'a gripping read'](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000201501091_17206979777950_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRo0U4xU-30oDveS4pXV-Vv4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Westport by James Comey
Head of Zeus, £20
When a canoe is found abandoned with the body of a woman in it, former high-powered government lawyer Nora Carleton finds herself as the chief suspect. The second novel by James Comey, former head of the FBI, it drips with authenticity (which you might expect) and quality writing (which you might not). TR
Read the full review of Westport.
The Shame Archive by Oliver Harris
Abacus, £20
Here’s a novel to make the great and the good quake: it posits that MI6 keeps a “shame archive” of their sensitive secrets. Elliot Kane, Harris’s regular tough spook, investigates when the material falls into a blackmailer’s hands – as does a cabinet minister’s wife who’s determined to keep a lid on her past. JK
Read the full review of The Shame Archive.
Children’s
Finding Alfie by Michael Morpurgo
Scholastic, £14.99
For the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the author of War Horse has written this heart-rending tale of a painter trying to find out what happened to a friend of his late aunt – a young man who “went away in that boat, went to the war in France and never came home”. EB
Read the full review of Finding Alfie.
The Girl Who Wasn’t There by Jacqueline Wilson
Puffin, £12.99
Luna’s father has lost his restaurant business, but on an impulse has bought a romantic rural tower and moved the family in. But does it harbour a spooky secret – and is Luna’s parents’ marriage going to survive? This is Wilson at her chatty, lively and emotive best. EB
Read the full review of The Girl Who Wasn’t There.
![The Girl Who Wasn't There is Jacqueline Wilson's latest novel](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/11/TELEMMGLPICT000369349063_17206978369090_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
A Drop of Golden Sun by Kate Saunders
Faber, £7.99
Kate Saunders’s death last year, at the age of 62, robbed us of one of our best-loved voices. So what a treat to discover this joyful final book, in which a young girl in 1973 is cast in a musical film, and discovers all manner of childish and grown-up chaos on set. EB
Read the full review of A Drop of Golden Sun.
Shakespeare’s First Folio: All the Plays: A Children’s Edition ed Anjna Chouhan
Walker, £30
Hamlet cut to 12 pages? Henry IV Part I down to eight? Sounds brutal, but what’s remarkable about this wonderful abridged edition, gorgeously illustrated by Emily Sutton, is how much of the poetry shines through. Each of these bite-sized plays can be performed by a small group of children in under 20 minutes, making the Bard more accessible for young ones than ever. EB
Read the full review of Shakespeare’s First Folio: All the Plays.
To order these books at a discounted price, visit books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0808 196 6794
Contributors: Claire Allfree, Darran Anderson, Lynn Barber, Emily Bearn, Flora Bowen, Daniel Brooks, Horatio Clare, George Cochrane, Jessa Crispin, Saul David, Matthew Dennison, Lucy Denyer, Alex Diggins, Julian Evans, Madeleine Feeny, Colin Freeman, Simon Heffer, James Holland, Philip Hook, Christopher Howse, Katja Hoyer, Stuart Jeffries, Luke Kennard, Kara Kennedy, Jake Kerridge, Tom Knowles, Nicholas Lezard, Benjamin Markovits, Shane McCrae, Susie Mesure, Suzanne Moore, Megan Nolan, Tomiwa Owolade, Alex Peake-Tomkinson, Steven Poole, Terry Ramsey, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Ben Riley-Smith, Declan Ryan, Angela Saini, Ian Sansom, Tristram Fane Saunders, Lucy Scholes, Harry Sidebottom, Kate Simpson, A E Stallings, Tim Stanley, Boris Starling, Erica Wagner, Andrew Whitehead, Jeremy Wikeley, Toby Wilkinson, Rowan Williams