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When mornings are frosty and the leaves turn, there’s nothing as cozy as curling up in your favorite chair with a deliciously engaging novel. Read on to explore my Fall Reading List 2024.
My Fall Reading List 2024: So Many Books, So Little Time
One of my long-running fantasies is to have unlimited time for reading. I’m sure a lot of bibliophiles out there share my dream.
However, living in the real world means making choices about how to spend my time. Figuring out which books to read in the time I have can be a challenge. There are just so many to choose from, especially this year. The fall 2024 crop of books seems especially plentiful and tempting.
While I certainly haven’t had time to crack open all the season’s new novels, getting a chance to read early copies of upcoming releases is one of the perks of my job. That means I’ve had a chance to read quite a number of fall books well before publication.
And since recommendations from other readers is my primary method for deciding what to read next, I thought I’d share some of what’s on my fall reading list 2024.
THE STARLETS by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne
Oh, how I loved this book! Not only is it one of my favorite books of the fall, it’s one of my favorite books for all of 2024. Told in a fun, fast-paced, cinematic style, this 1958 story of two rival starlets who must join forces when a dead body appears on the set is a mystery, an international caper, and a buddy book rolled into one delightful, page-turning package. This is the best brand of escapist fiction, penned by a duo of incredibly skillful writers. I just adored it!
Summer, 1958. Vivienne Rhodes thinks she’s finally landed her break playing Helen of Troy in Apex Pictures’ big-budget epic, A Thousand Ships, an anticipated blockbuster meant to resurrect the failing studio. Naturally, she’s devastated when she arrives on the remote Italian island of Tavalli and finds herself cast as the secondary character, Cassandra—while her nemesis, the fiancé-stealing Lottie Lawrence, America’s supposed “sweetheart,” is playing the lead role instead.
The tension on set, though, turns deadly when the ladies discover that members of the crew are using the production as a front for something decidedly illegal—and that they are willing to kill to keep their dealings under wraps. When the two women find themselves on the run and holding key evidence, Vivienne and Lottie frantically agree to work together to deliver the proof to Interpol, hoping to protect both their lives and their careers.
Staying one step ahead of corrupt cops and looming mobsters, the archrivals flee across the seas. Their journey leads them into Monaco’s casinos, Grace Kelly’s palace, on a road trip through the Alps—even onto another film set, before a final showdown back on Tavalli, where the lives of the entire cast and crew hang in the balance. Vivienne and Lottie finally have the chance to be real heroines—to save the day, the film, maybe even each other—but only if they can first figure out how to share the spotlight.
WHO LOVES YOU BEST by Marilyn Simon Rothstein
If you’re in need of a good laugh (and who isn’t these days), this is the perfect book for you. The main character, Jodi, is a hilarious nearly seventy-year-old podiatrist whose sharp-witted observations and inner monologues had me laughing out loud. But beyond the humor, it was refreshing to read a book whose central character is a woman of a certain age. And as a grandmother myself, the journey Jodi takes find her own path, weighing the pull of family against all she still wants to achieve, definitely struck a chord.
For Jodi Wexler, a Florida doctor with a flourishing practice, only one thing’s missing: the chance to spend more time getting to know her eight-year-old granddaughter, Macallan.
When Jodi’s restauranteur daughter asks her to watch Macallan in the Berkshires while she takes care of some business out of town, Jodi can’t say yes fast enough. Neither Jodi’s podiatric patients nor her just-fired, suddenly retired husband can keep her away. But when Jodi arrives, she discovers she’s not the only grandma at Lisa’s house. Lisa’s mother-in-law, Di—a hard-nosed real estate agent—has moved into the house. What’s more, there’s Grannie Annie, the twenty-seven-year-old girlfriend of Lisa’s oddball father-in-law. They’re not the only surprises. Lisa’s marriage is faltering even as her new restaurant is taking off.
As the competition for Macallan’s attention among the three “grandmas” increases, Lisa drops a bomb about her life that changes everything. Under pressure, and determined to help her daughter, Jodi must choose her next step. Her decision surprises everyone—Jodi, most of all.
THE BOOKLOVERS LIBRARY by Madeline Martin
Though the flood of WW2 novels has slowed to a trickle recently, a few terrific books set in that era are still being released. This is one of them. The book opens with a dramatic and pivotal scene from the past of the main character, Emma, and got me immediately invested in her story. The problems she faces as a single mom, the community that forms around her, and the mystery of the disappearing books kept me there. For an avid reader like me, the fact that this is a book about books was icing on the cake.
In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job. She and her beloved daughter Olivia have always managed just fine on their own, but with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she’s left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots’ Booklover’s Library to take a chance on her with a job.
When the threat of war in England becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In the wake of being separated from her daughter, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbors and coworkers, and a renewed sense of purpose through the recommendations she provides to the library’s quirky regulars. But the job doesn’t come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing and the work at the lending library forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.
As the Blitz intensifies in Nottingham and Emma fights to reunite with her daughter, she must learn to depend on her community and the power of literature more than ever to find hope in the darkest of times.
THE FABLED EARTH by Kimberly Brock
Lovers of Southern literary will adore Kimberly Brock’s latest. The writing is lyrical and lovely, and the Cumberland Island setting is so vivid that I could practically see myself walking alongside the characters, eavesdropping on their conversations. A fateful night in 1932, a once-in-a-century storm, and a legend that might turn out true is the backdrop for a riveting dual timeline tale with twists and turns that kept me guessing, and turning pages. This is a story to savor, and to get deliciously swept up in, and a perfect fit for my Fall Reading List 2024.
1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America’s finest families who come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide, a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.
1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend—and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost—someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.
Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape. Two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect where a folktale meets the truth to reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along.
