Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles — fiction and nonfiction — to consider for your December reading list.
While December remains a sleepier month for new book releases than other times of the year, December 2024 offers quite a few terrific titles, so many that it was difficult to choose among them. On this list we’ve got novels about ancient Greece, near-future North America and Cold War-era Cádiz, plus nonfiction peeks inside a woodshop, the mind of a Beatle and the making of a classic film. Happy reading, and remember: Books make the best gifts!
Fiction
Private Rites: A Novel
By Julia Armfield
Flatiron: 304 pages, $28
(Dec. 3)
(Flatiron)
Isla, Irene and Agnes Carmichael are sisters, the progeny of architect-to-the-rich Stephen, whom they all despise. All three are also queer and living in a dystopian version of London where climate change has forced residents to travel by water taxi. When the women gather for their father’s funeral, they learn he has a nasty surprise for them in his will. Not since Jane Smiley’s “A Thousand Acres” has Shakespeare’s King Lear had such a strong treatment.
The Voyage Home: A Novel
By Pat Barker
Doubleday: 288 pages, $29
(Dec. 3)
(Doubleday)
The final volume of Barker’s “Women of Troy” trilogy is narrated not by enslaved princess Briseis but by her friend Ritsa. Ritsa becomes a kind of babysitter to King Priam’s daughter Cassandra, as Agamemnon takes them all back to Greece. The all-seeing and never-believed Cassandra knows that she and her captor will both perish there; her conversations with Ritsa reinforce the author’s attempts to show women’s fates during wartime.
Woo Woo: A Novel
By Ella Baxter
Catapult: 272 pages, $27
(Dec. 3)
(Catapult)
Skewering the art world in fiction is almost a tradition — think of “Cat’s Eye” by Margaret Atwood, and now, Ella Baxter’s second novel. Conceptual artist Sabine believes she’s about to launch her career-making exhibition, when the ghost of artist Carolee Schneemann, an unkind online comment and other eerie moments shake her confidence. Suspense builds as Sabine and others wonder what’s real and what’s performative, because either might threaten her life.
The Way: A Novel
By Cary Groner
Spiegel & Grau: 304 pages, $29
(Dec. 3)
(Spiegel & Grau)
Groner’s novel has more depth than the video game and TV show “The Last of Us,” even if they sound similar. Will Collins, 50-something and a devout Buddhist in a Colorado community, receives a message about a possible cure for the virus that has decimated the United States, and sets out for California with his cat and his raven and a team of mules pulling his truck. He takes custody of 14-year-old Sophie, and the unlikely caravan attempts to outrun violent extremists.
Gabriel’s Moon: A Novel
By William Boyd
Atlantic Monthly Press: 272 pages, $28
(Dec. 3)
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