Great Indie Books to Read in 2024
Here are our picks for some of the best indie books to read in 2024.
The Clothes Make the Man
The Clothes Make the Man
Arthur, a sensitive soul, navigates his life in academia with wit and insight that belies his own self-doubt. Told through a series of flash stories, Arthur’s search for love and acceptance means setting boundaries with his controlling mother, battling gender dysphoria, and struggling to overcome his biggest challenge – internalized hatred of his own fat, female body.
“In a series of fragmented moments that cut close to the heart, this bold yet tender novella explores Arthur’s journey of self-identity, from female to male, as he negotiates parental and societal expectations in the search for acceptance and freedom. Finnian Burnett’s confident, unflinching prose shines on the page, with characters hewn so sure and sharp we can sense the edge of a knife blade. This novella is hugely relatable and inexplicably moving, always bending towards hope. The Clothes Make the Man feels like a homecoming.”
Sara Hills, author of The Evolution of Birds
“This is a story that examines external and internal truths: how people see an individual, and how the individual explores the Self. It’s also worth noting the novella’s title here – fitting in the way it is declarative, yet drawing the reader’s attention to questions around the outer wrapping and what lies beneath.”
Michelle Elvy, Bath Novella-in-Flash Award 2022 Judge
Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere
Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere
2021 Best Indie Book Award Winner (short stories)
2021 International Rubery Book Award Nominee
2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist
Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere is a collection of short fiction set in Japan and in seven other countries around the world. Driven by characters who are tough, gritty, charming and witty, each of the sixteen tales takes the reader on a trip which ends with a twist.
It's A Small World: Young New Zealand Writers Youth Laureate Award
Emma Uren
It's A Small World
What if the universe is somebody’s science experiment? Somebody with a strange sense of humour.
And a deadline.
Allen’s latest school project is a little bit different. After all, it isn’t every day you get to build a universe! But as usual, things don’t go quite to plan. It may be harder to get that A-minus than he thinks…
Sophie is an orphan struggling to survive in the alleyways and back streets of the city. She’s totally unimportant in the scale of the universe, or so she thinks, until one day she stows away on a ship and is swept away on an unforgettable adventure. The fate of worlds is in the balance…
“Well-crafted and engaging…an adventure readers of all ages will enjoy.”
Lee Murray
"A wonderful story with admirable characters."
David Schembri
Joy's Lament
Chris Morris
Joy's Lament
Joy was the name given to her at birth, and it was long remarked that she might have been the very last thing in the universe to have been named so.
The universe is darkening. Joy and happiness is being sucked out of everyone, everywhere, and nobody seems to know how or why it’s happening. Except a young woman who goes by the very name of Joy. She’s sure she’s found the root cause of it all, and she wants to put an end to the universe’s misery. Joy has too much at stake to allow grief to overcome the only person she has left.
Stealing a spacecraft and crash-landing on a frozen planet, Joy begins to use her mysterious Sense to track down and experience the memories of a man named Lothar. Through Lothar’s various memories of an ancient tradition called Christmas, Joy witnesses the destruction of happiness and watches as a dreadful war claims the lives of many. But how did all of this suffering spread from this planet across the rest of the universe?
As sadness begins to overcome Joy herself, there may yet be one chance for both Joy and Lothar to put an end to this spread of distress. But it will require a great sacrifice. One that’s too terrible to consider for those that they love…
Inspired by the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, Joy’s Lament is a tale of happiness, grief, love and loss from the author of Dreams of a Damselfly, and Which Way is North?
The Starless Midnight
The Starless Midnight
Guido Sherman is your typical young teenage boy; awkward, unsure of himself, struggling at school and currently looking after his younger sister.
He would ask his mum for help but she's working, 400 kilometres away - in space! Besides, she's a bit tied up with a gigantic solar flare, a defunct satellite wedged in the roof of the space station and cut off from her only means of escape. Martha Sherman isn't having a good day.
Very soon though their worlds are going to collide. Guido Sherman needs his mum and he's going to do whatever it takes to get her back home safely. And on the way he is going to discover whether or not he has the right stuff.
The Starless Midnight is the first Young Adults novel by Michael Crouch, a comic book writer and artist whose work includes the true-life historical thriller, Thief-Taker General, the sci-fi tale Afterlife and the epic Vikings versus Vampires sage of Blackfriars. He is also a contributor to the WW1 graphic story anthology, To End All Wars published by Soaring Penguin Press.
Hotel Fen
Meri Benson, Marie Sinadjan
Hotel Fen
Victor has always had a passion for Norse history and mythology, but after hitting a dead end with his book on valkyries, not even that passion is enough to move him forward. Just when he's ready to abandon the project, he receives an email: he's won a free trip to Hotel Fen, a remote vintage resort in the Scandinavian Mountains.
Silje has always felt that her life was fairly unremarkable. She cares deeply about people and that has led her to find her purpose at a nursing home in Oslo. When a resident dies and leaves her an all-expense paid vacation package to Hotel Fen, however, she takes the opportunity to experience something different.
It all starts innocently enough, with a little meet-cute in the hotel elevator that takes forever to arrive on their floor. But the longer Victor and Silje remain together, the more dangerous the hotel becomes, and the more they question where reality ends and the impossible begins.
In the Sweep of the Bay
In the Sweep of the Bay
This warm-hearted tale explores marriage, love, and longing, set against the majestic backdrop of Morecambe Bay, the Lakeland Fells, and the faded splendour of the Midland Hotel.Ted Marshall meets Rene in the dance halls of Morecambe and they marry during the frail optimism of the 1950s. They adopt the roles expected of man and wife at the time: he the breadwinner at the family ceramics firm, and she the loyal housewife. But as the years go by, they find themselves wishing for more…
After Ted survives a heart attack, both see it as a new beginning. But can a faded love like theirs ever be rekindled?
“A tender and moving study of a marriage” Alison Moore, author of the Booker short-listed The Lighthouse
Don't Go Out After Dark: A Paranormal Hunters Novella
Don't Go Out After Dark: A Paranormal Hunters Novella
Deep in the Appalachian woods, the monsters don’t always hide…
Raised by a mother who hunts the supernatural for a living, Hannah Arodazac knows her own path leads to nowhere, but she still has hope for her sister. All Hannah wants is for her to have a normal life. But when their mother goes missing, the sisters are forced to recruit another hunter to help find her.
At odds with her companions, Hannah chooses to conduct the search on her own, only to be met with danger at every turn. And just when she thinks she’s found the help she’s been seeking, she discovers the true horrifying nature of Appalachia.
Can Hannah find her mother and make it out alive?
Let Your Lips Twitch: A humorous short story collection
Let Your Lips Twitch: A humorous short story collection
Comedy is everywhere if you allow yourself to see it—to feel it. It can be subtle or overt, dark or joyous, adorable or cheeky. Such ageless versatility is beyond compare. Curated with that in mind, author R.A. Clarke proudly presents sixteen humorous stories to the world.
Between these covers, you'll find short fiction in several genres. Each tale is infused with unique characters and comical situations, some rooted in reality, others certainly not. Flip the page and join a jewel heist executed by bumbling thieves at a gastronomy party, meet a lowly soul gifted the fantastical chance to redo an all-consuming moment of regret, or sweat alongside a father as he realizes his daughter is growing up too fast. Turn another page and you’ll enjoy clowning around while meeting Mr. Right, then zoom in on a perfectly focused meet cute, or feel Mother Nature’s wrath as a rebellious fishing excursion goes all kinds of wrong. There is something in this collection for everyone to enjoy, including eight never-before-seen stories.
Allow yourself to be entertained and whisked away. Let humour in all its glorious forms tempt your lips to move. Don’t fight the urge. Embrace it. Go ahead and let your lips twitch.
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