The weather is improving and summer is almost here. That means it’s time to start planning your UK or foreign beach holiday and to stock up on your all-important reading material.
Here’s your rundown of seven of the best books released in 2024 so far, perfect for settling down with whether you’re at the beach, the pool, or on a long-haul flight.
1. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
In this intriguing novel set in the near future, our Cambodian English narrator is the minder (or “bridge”) for a nineteenth-century Royal Navy commander and polar explorer.
Commander Graham Gore is the “expat”, a historical figure lifted from his own time and brought to the future by the British government’s titular agency.
Covering themes of mortality and imperialism through everything from the Khmer Rouge to Auschwitz and 9/11, the novel is half speculative science fiction and half romance.
As the bond between the bridge and the expat grows, our narrator develops romantic feelings for Commander Gore while she also looks to uncover the truth about the ministry’s sinister extraction program.
2. Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor
Set on an isolated Welsh island in the lead-up to the second world war, O’Connor’s debut novel begins with a whale washing up onshore.
When two researchers arrive on the island shortly after, our narrator Manod agrees to act as their guide and interpreter. She helps them to understand the islanders’ customs and language but cracks soon emerge.
While the researchers want to document the islanders’ way of life, they are less equipped (or willing) to fit in and comply, creating tension between the islander’s isolated way of life and the march of progress.
3. My Friends by Hisham Matar
In 1984, shots were fired from the Libyan Embassy in London at demonstrators gathered outside on St James’s Square. A policewoman was killed while 11 protesters were injured.
In Matar’s sprawling meditation on friendship and the challenges of otherness and exile, three friends are drawn together by the real-life events of that day.
It takes our Libyan narrator Khaled Abd al Hady 30 years to begin to understand the fallout from the Embassy shooting.
In 2016, having dropped a friend off at St Pancras Station, he sets out on a nighttime walk that inevitably leads to St James Square. On the way, he’ll look back over the last three decades, and how his experiences have shaped his life and those of his friends.
4. In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
MacInnes’s Booker Prize long-listed epic may well be science fiction for readers who don’t like science fiction.
A microbiologist from Rotterdam sets out on a lifelong mission of discovery after being asked to join a voyage in the Atlantic Ocean. When the Endeavour crew discover an impossibly deep seabed chasm, those who swim above it experience illness, feelings of bliss, or both.
Soon after, astronomers discover a kilometre-long object travelling through the solar system on a collision course with Earth… until it promptly vanishes.
As our narrator Leigh begins work on the project hoping to explain this strange phenomenon, she must juggle her personal life and the relationship between her ailing mother and sister Helen.
In this mysterious novel of exploration and discovery – both galactic and personal – the answers, if they arrive at all, might not be what you expect.
5. Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
A mystery novel in the more classical sense, albeit with a twist, Spufford creates a noirish alternative Jazz Age.
A hardboiled detective, a powerful femme fatal, and an investigative journalist clash in the 1920s American state of Deseret. In this “what if” world, European settlers to the Americas brought with them the smallpox variant variola minor rather than the more deadly variola major. Rather than 90-95% of indigenous people being wiped out, Native Americans now thrive. And nowhere more so than in the Deseret city of Cahokia.
Sadly, though, the age-old problems of our world still exist, as real-life figures and the Ku Klux Klan intermingle and fight for control of this burgeoning alternative America.
6. This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud
This sprawling book, perfect for lazy holiday afternoons, follows three generations of French family, the Cassars.
Families of European descent who were born in colonial Algeria but who fled the Algerian revolution became known as “pied noirs”. The Cassars are pied noirs struggling to find their place in the world, outsiders everywhere, even as they cling to memories of an idealised Algerian homeland that never truly existed.
As the Cassar children travel the globe in search of love, the novel tackles huge themes of belonging and family and the lies we tell ourselves.
7. The Fury by Alex Michaelides
Michaelides’ career began with his multimillion-copy bestselling debut, The Silent Patient. He followed it with the impressive page-turner The Maidens in 2021.
Now he’s back with The Fury.
Lana Farrar (a former movie star) invites six friends to a private Greek island for a tropical getaway of fun and relaxation. The experience, though, quickly turns sour.
An unputdownable thriller of murderous twists and turns, this might well be the perfect beach read for your own summer holiday getaway.
