The 23 Most Acclaimed Books of 2024

The acclaimed books on this list have earned multiple honors including; winning an award; making our bestseller’s list, or being selected for inclusion on prominent book club’s reading lists. This list will continuously evolve as we incorporate additional sources to help readers discover excellent books. Print the 2024 reading list, view of collage of 2024’s books, view the complete list from all the years, and enjoy ♥

Fiction – Nonfiction – Children’s – Poetry

23 Fiction Books

Deacon King Kong

The Vanishing Half

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

What A Woman’s Gotta Do

The Awkward Black Man

Glorious

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

Transcendent Kingdom

Everywhere You Don’t Belong

His Only Wife

It’s Not All Downhill from Here

The Freedom Artist

American Spy: A Novel

Speaking of Summer: A Novel

Blacktop Wasteland

Confessions in B-Flat

When No One Is Watching: A Thriller

They Tell Me Of A Home: A Novel

Telephone

Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature

Wild Seed (Patternist #1)

Black Sunday

Voices of the Harlem Renaissance: Originally Published as The New Negro an Interpretation

13 Nonfiction Books (top)

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

A Promised Land

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

Black Boy

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

Afropessimism

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America

14 Children’s Books (top)

Nana Akua Goes to School

Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box

Me & Mama

When Stars Are Scattered

She Was the First!: The Trailblazing Life of Shirley Chisholm

A Black Women’s History of the United States

Dream Builder: The Story of Architect Philip Freelon

King and the Dragonflies

Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks

Before the Ever After

Legendborn

I Am Every Good Thing

The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person

William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad

4 Poetry Books (top)

The Age of Phillis

Pale Colors in a Tall Field: Poems

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song

Fantasia for the Man in Blue