Top Moving Novels to Read in 2024

Looking for the next page-turning story that will have you from cover to cover? Well here are the must reads to look out for when you are shopping for your next book.

1. We Were the Lucky Ones: A Novel
   
   Inspired by the incredible true story of one Jewish family separated at the start of World War II, determined to survive—and to reunite—We Were the Lucky Ones is a tribute to the triumph of hope and love against all odds. It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety. As one sibling is forced into exile, another attempts to flee the continent, while others struggle to escape certain death, either by working grueling hours on empty stomachs in the factories of the ghetto or by hiding as gentiles in plain sight. Driven by an unwavering will to survive and by the fear that they may never see one another again, the Kurcs must rely on hope, ingenuity, and inner strength to persevere.

    An extraordinary, propulsive novel, We Were the Lucky Ones demonstrates how in the face of the twentieth century’s darkest moment, the human spirit can endure and even thrive.

2. All the Broken Places: A Novel
   
   Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived in the same well-to-do mansion block in London for decades. She lives a quiet, comfortable life, despite her deeply disturbing, dark past. She doesn’t talk about her escape from Nazi Germany at age twelve. She doesn’t talk about the grim postwar years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn’t talk about her father, who was the commandant of one of the Reich’s most notorious extermination camps.Then, a new family moves into the apartment below her. In spite of herself, Gretel can’t help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget. One night, she witnesses a disturbing, violent argument between Henry’s beautiful mother and his arrogant father, one that threatens Gretel’s hard-won, self-contained existence.Immersive, chilling, unputdownable, All the Broken Places moves back and forth in time between Gretel’s girlhood in Germany and present-day London. Here, Gretel is at a similar crossroads to the one she encountered long ago. Then, she denied her own complicity, but now, faced with a chance to interrogate her guilt, grief, and remorse, she can choose to save a young boy. If she does, she will be forced to reveal the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting. This time, she can make a different choice than before—whatever the cost to herself.
3. When the Jessamine Grows
   
   Talk of impending war is a steady drumbeat throughout North Carolina, though Joetta McBride pays it little heed. She and her husband, Ennis, have built a modest but happy life for themselves, raising two sons, fifteen-year-old Henry, and eleven-year-old Robert, on their small subsistence farm. They do not support the Confederacy’s position on slavery, but Joetta considers her family to be neutral, believing this is simply not their fight.Her opinion is not favored by many in their community, including Joetta’s own father-in-law, Rudean. A staunch Confederate supporter, he fills his grandsons’ heads with stories about the glory of battle and the Southern cause until one night Henry runs off to join the war. At Joetta’s frantic insistence, Ennis leaves to find their son and bring him home.But soon weeks pass with no word from father or son and Joetta is battered by the strain of running a farm with so little help. As the country becomes further entangled in the ramifications of war, Joetta finds herself increasingly at odds with those around her – until one act of kindness brings her family to the edge of even greater disaster.

   Though shunned and struggling to survive, Joetta remains committed to her principles, and to her belief that her family will survive. But the greatest tests are still to come – for a fractured nation, for Joetta, and for those she loves.

4. The Poppy Sisters
   
   Phoebe is a volunteer nurse at a Base Hospital in Étaples, France, treating men who’ve served on hte Western Front. Their courage and resilience inspires her, and though she’s meant to keep her distance, Captain Archie Bailey soon captivates her heart.Her younger sister Celia is a nurse at a POW camp on the island of Jersey. These men fight for the forces that bombed her brother and parents, but long hours spent healing them shows her they aren’t the monsters she expected.Despite the miles between them, both Celia and Phoebe come to see the commonality in their experiences – the sense of community and friendship, the unexpected moments of love and laughter, and a bond so strong that even war can’t break it.
5. Moon Over Humboldt
   
   Bill Collins raised his son Kenny to work hard in the logging trade and keep his whining to himself. But when Kenny becomes a meth addict, Bill must face the bitter truth that he may have failed at his most important job.Jonah Price moved to Humboldt County to save the redwoods. Yet, guilt over his father’s death leads him to get high so often that he walks through life like a zombie, half-dead to his surviving family and floundering as an environmental activist.After meeting in a 12-step program, Bill and Jonah form a bond that grows as they open up about their struggles. They find in each other a kindred spirit who could help each man rebuild his shattered life—if they can overcome their differences.

Jim Hight had written for dozens of newspapers and magazines in Los Angeles and Boston before he moved to rural Humboldt County, California, in 1996 as the staff writer for North Coast Journal. The city boy was intrigued and fascinated by his new subjects-loggers and forest defenders, fishermen and scientists, ranchers and dairy farmers, small-town mayors and county sheriffs, tribal healers and cannabis growers. His writing delighted readers, and he won an environmental and agricultural reporting award from the California Newspaper Publishers Association.But Hight had moved to cannabis-friendly Humboldt at the worst time for his recovery from marijuana addiction-and the best time for this novel, as things would turn out.