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Access Our
Most Anticipated
Books of 2025!
Each year, BookBrowse subscribers vote on the books that will make up the annual Top 20. Our 2024 list features an eclectic mix of writing and genres, covering books we’ve included in our twice-monthly e-zine as well as write-in nominations. Now, we're excited to bring you the awards for the highest-rated titles across four categories: Top Fiction, Top Nonfiction, Top Debut, and Top Young Adult.
Paperback Nov 2024. 448 pages
Published by Vintage
Although The Frozen River is a novel, the protagonist is a fictionalized version of the real-life Martha Ballard whose diary informs the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1990). Martha's stories of attending births and delivering babies are some of the best scenes, allowing Lawhon to demonstrate her talent for capturing dramatic events while also developing full, well-rounded characters, even when they only appear for a few pages. The Frozen River is Martha Ballard's story, developed down to the finest details in a way that A Midwife's Tale, given its purpose as a work of academic literature and its source's brevity, could not be. For fans of historical fiction, the novel is an excellent path to A Midwife's Tale and other stories, historical or fictional, set in the late 18th century. (Maria Katsulos)
Hardcover Apr 2024. 592 pages
Published by Crown
In the aftermath of the 1860 presidential election, the divided United States began to collapse as South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed by another six Southern states. Among the countless contentious points between the Union and the fledgling Confederacy was the existence of a 75-man Federal garrison in Charleston Harbor that would become the flashpoint for civil war. In The Demon of Unrest, Erik Larson weaves a gripping tale of America's slow-motion lurch toward war, placing the reader inside events as they unfold. Covering the dicey days leading up to war, Larson's account is cinematic in scope, intimate in detail and charmingly written. Even more importantly, the parallels of 1861 with the electoral riots of 2021 make this book an urgent call to learn from history's mistakes. This is narrative history at its best: instructive, timely and utterly enthralling. (Peggy Kurkowski)
Hardcover May 2024. 400 pages
Published by Berkley Books
A mother and three daughters are left behind when the more powerful members of their Nationalist family flee to escape Communists during the revolution. The story is told from the perspective of the oldest daughter, Li Hai, and the author does an astonishing job of capturing the thoughts of an adolescent girl dealing with both inconceivable trauma and everyday concerns (Kathleen L). If a book taking place during a war can be called enjoyable, this is it. I say enjoyable based on the mother/daughter relationships, the three-dimensional characters and the rising above the circumstances, which almost makes the reader forget the horrors in favor of the power of the storyline (Marie M). Chung's writing is descriptive without being overly expansive. Daughters of Shandong was a real pleasure to read and I hope Chung continues to write (Laurie B).
Hardcover Aug 2024. 288 pages
Published by Kokila
Following four generations of Filipino men, Randy Ribay's young adult novel Everything We Never Had is a story of how our pasts shape our futures and how generational patterns can affect a family for better or worse. This is very much a character-driven novel. Although each timeline has its own small plot, there is no overarching storyline. Rather, the narrative focuses on the typical complexities of father-son relationships compounded by cultural expectations, racial prejudice, and the desire to find one's place in the world. Enzo's story is particularly interesting because it takes place during the lockdown phase of the COVID pandemic; readers will have lived through the events of this time themselves and can see how one family is forced to grapple with personal, relational, and societal problems that are no longer possible to ignore because of social isolation. (Jordan Lynch)
