• The Best Novels of 2024: The Booker Prize Shortlist - Orbital by Samantha Harvey
  • The Best Novels of 2024: The Booker Prize Shortlist - Held by Anne Michaels
  • The Best Novels of 2024: The Booker Prize Shortlist - Creation Lake: A Novel by Rachel Kushner
  • The Best Novels of 2024: The Booker Prize Shortlist - James: A Novel by Percival Everett
  • The Best Novels of 2024: The Booker Prize Shortlist - The Safekeep: A Novel by Yael van der Wouden
  • The Best Novels of 2024: The Booker Prize Shortlist - Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

The Best Novels of 2024: The Booker Prize Shortlist, recommended by Nitin Sawhney

Every year, the ÂŁ50,000 Booker Prize is awarded to a work of fiction newly published in English. We spoke to the composer Nitin Sawhney, one of this year’s judges, about their search for a shortlist, and why these six books—including the winning title, Samantha Harvey’s space station novel Orbital—are the best novels of 2024.

  • Magical Realism Books - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel GarcĂ­a Márquez, translated by Gregory Rabassa
  • Magical Realism Books - The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
  • Magical Realism Books - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami & translated by Jay Rubin
  • Magical Realism Books - Beloved by Toni Morrison
  • Magical Realism Books - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
  • Magical Realism Books - Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Magical Realism Books, recommended by Five Books interviewees

If you enjoy some fantastical elements in your literature—but you aren’t quite ready for full-on swords and sorcery—then perhaps magical realism books are for you. As a genre, magical realism is often associated with South America, thanks in large part to the ‘father of magical realism’ Gabriel GarcĂ­a Márquez and mega-bestselling books by Isabel Allende, but examples can be found from all over the world. We’ve put a list of must-read titles.

  • Books by Nobel Prize in Literature Winners - The Years by Annie Ernaux & translator - Alison Strayer
  • Books by Nobel Prize in Literature Winners - The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić
  • Books by Nobel Prize in Literature Winners - The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Books by Nobel Prize in Literature Winners - Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka
  • Books by Nobel Prize in Literature Winners - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel GarcĂ­a Márquez, translated by Gregory Rabassa

Books by Nobel Prize in Literature Winners, recommended by Five Books interviewees

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually since 1901 and remains one of the most prestigious prizes a writer can aspire to. It’s also been consistently international, with many novelists and writers from around the globe winning the award for books written in an array of languages. Not all are accessible, and picking out which ones to read can be a tough call. To help, here’s our list of books by winners of the Nobel literature prize that have been recommended on Five Books.

  • Public Domain Books - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Public Domain Books - The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Public Domain Books - Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
  • Public Domain Books - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  • Public Domain Books - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  • Public Domain Books - Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Public Domain Books

Public domain books are books on which the copyright has expired, which means they are often available for free on the internet. Copyright rules vary by country, but some of the classics of literature were written more than a century ago and are now in the public domain.

  • Books Becoming Movies in 2025 - The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa
  • Books Becoming Movies in 2025 - Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
  • Books Becoming Movies in 2025 - The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
  • Books Becoming Movies in 2025 - The Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  • Books Becoming Movies in 2025 - The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
  • Books Becoming Movies in 2025 - The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

Books Becoming Movies in 2025

As a way of choosing books, selecting those that are being made into movies should be a good way to go. Why spend millions bringing a book to the screen unless it has an unusually spellbinding plot or is a particularly wonderful evocation of a time and place? Below are some of the books film directors have seen worthy of turning into movies in 2025.

  • Classic Horror Books - The Shining by Stephen King
  • Classic Horror Books - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
  • Classic Horror Books - Fledgling by Octavia Butler
  • Classic Horror Books - Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
  • Classic Horror Books - The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
  • Classic Horror Books - Collected Ghost Stories by MR James

Classic Horror Books

Do you love scary stories? We put together a list of horror novels that have been recommended on Five Books over the years—books we think every horror fan should read before they die. How many have you read?