It’s that fun time when all the ‘Best Books’ lists start emerging. Here’s a round up of some of the Best Books of 2024 if you’re looking for Christmas present inspiration or holiday reading but first here are our most popular books in 2024 based on issues from the Mallinson Library, Wellington College.

Top Ten Most Popular Books 2024

1. The Territory (Book 1) by Sarah Govett
2. Scythe (Book 1) by Neal Shusterman
3. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
4. Lockwood and Co: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
5. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
6. The Inheritance Games (Book 1) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
7. Long Island by Colm Toibin
8. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
9. A good girl’s guide to murder (Book 1) by Holly Jackson
10. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Our Top Ten most borrowed books are all Fiction. Here’s the non-fiction list:

Top Ten Most Popular Non-Fiction

1. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez
2. Bounce: The myth of talent and the power of practice by Matthew Syed
3. Shoe Dog: A memoir by the creator of Nike by Philip H. Knight
4. The Connell Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
5. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
6. Unbroken: An Extraordinary true story of courage and Laura Hillenbrand
7. Sapiens: A graphic History Vol 1. by Yuval Noah Harari
8. Atomic Habits by James Clear
9. Humanise: A maker’s guide to building our world by Thomas Heatherwick
10. Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Top Ten Most Popular Authors

1. Sarah J. Maas
2. Neal Shusterman
3. Leigh Bardugo
4. Holly Jackson
5. Sarah Govett
6. Colm Toibin
7. Jennifer Lynn Barnes
8. Stephanie Garber
9. Jonathan Stroud
10. Richard Osman

Holly Jackson’s latest YA thriller comes highly recommended by our 4th Form avid readers – ‘The Reappearance of Rachel Price’ and Lyn Painter’s YA rom coms have been going down a storm with the Wellesley 3rd Form.

Waterstones Debut Novel of the Year is available from the library in print and e-book format.

On 3rd December the Nero Book Awards Shortlist 2024 was announced.

View the lists here

Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2024 | Book Pulse | Library Journal

Subject based lists from The Guradian

The best ideas books of 2024 | Best books of 2024 | The Guardian

Best books of 2024 | The Guardian

Five of the best sports books of 2024 | Best books of 2024 | The Guardian

• The History of Mary Prince by Mary Prince
• My bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass
• The black Jacobins : Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo revolution by C.L.R James
• Black Spartacus : the epic life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudir Hazareesingh
• Black Tudors : the untold story by Miranda Kaufmann
• Black and British: A Short Essential History by David Olusoga
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
• Hidden figures : the untold story of the African-American women who helped win the space race by Margot Lee Shetterly
• Angela Y. Davis; an autobiography
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• The March trilogy (graphic novel memoirs) by Congressman John Lewis, a lifelong civil rights activist.
• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African childhood by Trevor Noah
• The seven volume series of autobiographical books by Maya Angelou, starting with I know why the caged bird sings
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• A promised land by Barack Obama
• Just Sayin’ – My Life in Words by Malorie Blackman
• Brit(ish) : on race, identity and belonging by Afua Hirsch
• Natives : race and class in the ruins of empire by Akala
• Coming to England by Floella Benjamin
• Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay (a memoir)

• Black History for Every Day of the Year by David Olusoga. A celebration of Black History from around the world and through history including the current day.
• Black Arsenal: Club, culture, identity edited by  Clive Chijioke Nwonka

Featured author: Malorie Blackman

This year’s Black History Month theme is ‘Reclaiming Narratives’ and who better to exemplify this than award-winning, and much-loved author, Malorie Blackman. As a child growing up in London, Blackman was an avid and precocious reader, spending all the hours she could reading and borrowing books from her local public libraries. In her funny, candid and moving biography ‘Just Sayin’ she recounts that she didn’t see people like her in any of the novels and stories she read; Black people were not represented at all as protagonists. If she did encounter any Black characters they were not central to the plot or portrayed as stereotypes.

Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses is a masterclass in reclaiming narratives. By centring Black voices and inverting power dynamics, she reclaims space for marginalised stories within a genre that has often excluded them. Her work challenges readers to reconsider their perceptions of race, power, and privilege while amplifying the voices of those who have been silenced by mainstream narratives.

But Blackman’s reclamation of narrative goes beyond representation. It is a form of resistance against the dominant structures that have shaped our understanding of race and identity for so long. By reclaiming the right to define who holds power and whose stories matter, Blackman has redefined what dystopian fiction can be. Her work paves the way for future generations of writers and readers to continue the work of reclaiming and reshaping the stories that define our world.