Best Debuts of 2024, as chosen by the Amazon Editors
There’s nothing like discovering a new author—it’s one of the best parts of reading, and one of the best parts of our job as Editors. As a team we read thousands of books, and there’s nothing quite like the thrill of reading a debut novel.
I’ll just say: it’s been a banger of a year for debut novelists. Our #1 Debut Novel of the year (and #5 pick overall) is Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!—a fever dream of a coming-of-age story that reminded us of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. Whether you love historical fiction, thrillers or mysteries, rom-coms, or heart-pounding and laugh-out-loud novels, we’ve got the debuts for you. Here are some of our favorites, but be sure to check out the full list of the Best Debuts of the Year So Far and, of course, our full feature of the top 100 Best Books of 2024.
Poet Kaveh Akbar makes his dazzling fiction debut with an unforgettable main character who reminded us of the voicey, charismatic, and undeniably addictive hero of Demon Copperhead (yes, I just compared this to a Pulitzer Prize-winner). Also named a Best Book of the Year So Far by the New York Times, Martyr! is both laugh-out-loud funny and deadly serious—a coming-of-age story and a portrait of a young Iranian-American man wrestling with what it means to have a life of value. After tripping through college on various concoctions of booze and drugs, a newly orphaned and sober graduate, Cyrus Shams ventures to New York City in pursuit of an Iranian artist who he hopes will fuel his creative writing project and give meaning to his life. Electric and unique, with a voice that feels shot from a cannon, Martyr! is a book you’re going to hear about for a long time. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
How do I even describe this book? It’s a time travel-spy thriller-government conspiracy-love story, and it’s also so much more. I’ve never read anything like it, and I loved every second. It’s near-future London, and a time travel device has been discovered by a top-secret government agency. The operatives bring back “expats” from different times in history when they would not have survived (to avoid disrupting the future) and pair them with “bridges”—people to help them acclimate to current times. The story follows Arctic explorer Graham Gore and his bridge over the course of a year as he adjusts to modern-day life. This genre-bending novel explores humanity in all its frailty and potential, and how love can alter the course of history in ways we never expect. It’s a fantastical debut that’s funny, riveting, heartbreaking, and unputdownable. I want everyone to read this book. —Abby Abell, Amazon Editor
You know the old adage, There’s a thin line between love and hate? If you blink you might miss when the shift happens in this surprisingly sensual debut, a story that also mines the collateral damage history leaves in its wake. It’s 1961 and Isabel lives alone in the family home located in a rural Dutch province. That is, until her brother brings his girlfriend, Eva, to stay while he’s away on business, upending Isabel’s ordered existence. Soon, things start disappearing—things a less fastidious hostess might miss: a spoon here, a bowl there…But Isabel does notice, and Eva is no ordinary thief, and once the reasons behind her actions come to light, neither will be the same. With The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden has woven an intoxicating historical mystery with a cautionary tale about desire; the price of giving in to it, or not. —Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor
It’s one thing to have to keep a daughter secret, quite another for that secret to live so close you can catch glimpses of her life, glimpses that sometimes lead you to worry…. This is a heart-wrenching reality that Charles Lamosway understands all too well, and while the decision whether or not to reveal Elizabeth’s parentage propels the plot, this gem of a novel truly is more about the journey than the destination. Charles was raised on the Penobscot Reservation, a community he loved, but wasn’t a citizen of (his mother married a full member of the tribe). Morgan Talty deftly mines the emotional alienation Charles feels, and makes the reader question, along with him, if a wrong decision was made for all the right reasons. And that is a running theme: flawed characters you’d physically shake if you could, but who you can’t help but root for anyway, because they’re all trying to do what’s best for their loved ones, when what is best isn’t always clear. Fire Exit is a melancholy but quietly powerful story about taking care of your tribe, however you find them. —Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor
For a book that looks “cozy,” this novel— one of the strongest debuts we’ve read in a long, long time— deals with some heavy themes, namely domestic violence, repressed trauma, and even workplace bullying. But it does so in service of an utterly endearing main character, and with a sure, sensitive hand when it comes to empathy, humor, and hope. Lenny Marks is a teacher who lives alone, cycles everywhere, and has 36 copies of The Hobbit but few close friends. When a letter from the parole board—which Lenny stubbornly ignores—threatens to bring her painful past into her present, the walls she’s built up begin to crack little by little. As Mayne cleverly lets Lenny reveal a breadcrumb trail of clues that build to an understanding of just what she’s been through, readers will find themselves loving this quirky introvert and feeling very protective of her choices. Fans of The Maid or The Good Sister should not miss this exceptional novel. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor
What would you do if you had a book that could take you anywhere in the world? If you think about it, that’s the whole point of books, after all—words on a page that have the power to pull you into the story they tell. The best books pull you in and never let you go, and in the case of The Book of Doors, you will be enthralled. In a novel where the very source of magic is books themselves, Brown tells the riveting story of Cassie, a simple bookseller in New York City, who comes into the possession of a book that can take her anywhere in the world. Not only will it take her to places she never imagined she’d go, but it also forces her on an adventure that will span spacetime and confront the age-old ideas of good and evil. —Ben Grange, Amazon Editor
August Thompson captures coming of age in a sleepy New England town with pitch-perfect loneliness, despair, and humor. Theron’s life is jolted into full color when he meets his new manager at his job at the hardware store. Where Theron is quiet and shy, Jake is confident and assured. Over the course of the summer, everything shifts and, as the reader the pit in your stomach will only grow with the reality of what the opening line means for these two young men: “it will take three car crashes to kill Jake.” The devastating rawness of Theron’s internalized homophobia and the grief he feels is palpable. An achingly beautiful novel that confronts the discomforts of teenagers, sexuality, drugs, booze, and love. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
Rita Bullwinkle is a force to be reckoned with and so too are the young women she profiles in this taught, pacey, and all-together knock-out novel of a boxing tournament. Longlisted for the Booker Prize, a finalist for the Center For Fiction’s First Novel Award, and named one of Barack Obama’s favorite summer reads, Bullwinkle’s debut has been turning heads all year, which is why we’re thrilled to include it on our list and—hopefully—follow the long arc of her career. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
Harriet Constable’s first novel is a riveting swirl of art, talent, desperate ambition, loyalty, and betrayal. Readers will savor the descriptions of music, feel outrage at the exploitation of women’s talent, and marvel at this lesson in hidden history. When eight-year-old Anna Maria Della Pietà—a real life 17th century violin prodigy who sees musical notes as colors—catches the eye of Antonio Vivaldi, the music master in the orphanage where she grows up with the daughters of other Venetian prostitutes, she is given permission to have ambition. As she becomes his colleague and muse, he dangles opportunities she desperately wants, but it becomes clear that in both art and loyalty, the line between advantage and taking advantage may be very fine indeed. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor
A poetic knockout, Ours conjures memories of reading Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer, and Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend. With a dash of magical realism, Williams unveils a multigenerational story of formerly enslaved men, women, and children, who live together in a town called Ours—a town that does not appear on any map—thanks to the powers of the town’s creator, Saint. But, as time ticks by, this idealistic safe haven becomes vulnerable and threats lurk everywhere—as Williams writes, “freedom didn’t mean safety...and if there’s anything more shockingly unpredictable than freedom, it’s love.” And with that line, the novel ignites—smoking out the stories of those that live in Ours and beyond. Supported by a cast of characters that you won’t soon forget, and exquisite sentences throughout, Ours is at once saturated in majestic myth, an interrogation of slavery’s legacy, and the complications of community, friendship, and the very notion of freedom. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
Provocative, chilling, and hypnotic, Sierra Greer’s story of an AI companion, and the man who owns her, probes at the complexities of humanity, empathy, power, and freedom. Ownership of another human is clearly abhorrent, but is ownership of a human-like creation, capable of many of the characteristics that make us human, any less so? There are deep, thoughtful questions here, and my emotional response to AI Annie—her thoughts, fears, curiosity, and yearnings—made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Annie Bot feels more like prescience than sci-fi, and this suspenseful, piercing read is one I’ve wanted to talk to others about from the moment I turned the last page. —Seira Wilson, Amazon Editor
A book you can read in two days, The Storm We Made tells the story of a family in Malaya during the Japanese occupation during WWII—and just how far they’ll go to protect one another, their country, and fight for what’s right. If you loved All the Light We Cannot See, or are a fan of Kristin Hannah, Vannessa Chan’s debut is for you. Taking on WWII history and the place of women in society—rarely are they the spies that Chan imagines for the matriarch of this novel—and the legacy of war, The Storm We Made is both an epic read and an intimate one. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
Swift River is a debut so assured, wise, and knowing, it’s scarcely believable that it’s a debut. As a little girl, some of Diamond Newberry’s happiest moments were spent in the back of her dad’s car while he drove their little family around. These days, his old car sits rotting in the yard of their dilapidated house, a symbol of the decay that’s befallen this family since the dad disappeared. But Diamond has a plan, and she is such a wonderful character, readers will root for her, cry for her, laugh with her, and make her dreams their own. Her voice is memorable and vivid, and through her Chambers deftly explores topics from generational trauma to fat shaming, bigotry, the pull of family, survival as an act of will, and the power of love in this unforgettable novel. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor
Black River is a debut, and a startlingly good murder mystery set in a small, remote village, hours away from Delhi. It opens with two shocking murders, the second the more devastating because the victim is an eight-year-old child, Munia, who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. Likewise, Mansoor, an itinerant Muslim man whose presence in a mostly Hindu village is enough to make him the prime suspect. Can the understaffed, under-resourced local Sub-Inspector Ombir Singh deal with interfering officials from Delhi and solve the case before the enraged town lynches the only suspect? Religious intolerance, the tensions of city versus country, and mob rule versus cool heads, add layers of suspenseful nuance to a clever plot which combines commentary on modern-day India with a must-read mystery. —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor
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