Sally Rooney’s new novel, Intermezzo (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sept.24), landed in bookstores this fall with maximum fanfare. Over the summer, critics received advanced reading copies that had been numbered, as if they were limited edition art prints, and the publisher threw a “premiere” party in New York the week of its U.S. release, with Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss of the Belletrist Book Club as its celebrity hosts. (Would Rooney herself make the trip from Ireland, invitees wondered? As it turned out, she would not.)

Intermezzo was certainly one of the most buzzed about books of the season, if not the year, garnering reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vulture, the Boston Globe, and countless other outlets. The attention was merited: Our editors selected it as one of the best fiction books of 2024.

This kind of publicity is the envy of authors both veteran and novice. With thousands of books published every year, there are countless worthy contenders that don’t receive the attention they deserve. Although Kirkus reviews nearly 10,000 titles annually, and a rave from us—often the first review, anywhere—can help to launch a book on the path to success, our plaudits, as influential as they are, can’t do the job alone. That’s why, for the past several years, I’ve used this space to call attention to books that deserved more buzz. “Buzz,” of course, can’t be measured scientifically, but I’m always happy to make a plug for the books I’ve treasured reading. If everyone isn’t talking about them, well, they should be.

3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan (Penguin Press, March 5): I love a group biography. This one, by the author of a terrific two-volume life of Frank Sinatra, tells the braided stories of the three jazz greats who came together in the spring of 1959 to record a jazz masterpiece, Kind of Blue. Our starred review called it a “marvelous must-read for jazz fans and anyone interested in this dynamic period of American music.”

American Mother by Colum McCann with Diane Foley (Etruscan Press, March 5): This one really flew beneath the radar, despite its high-profile author (Let the Great World Spin) and a backstory ripped from the headlines: The 2014 murder of journalist James Foley by ISIS in Syria. This powerful book focuses on his mother as she reckons with her loss, holds the U.S. government accountable, and meets with one of her son’s killers as he awaits trial. In a starred review, our critic called it a “harrowing memoir of grief and love.”

Henry, Henry by Allen Bratton (Unnamed Press, April 2): This sharp debut novel about a posh—and debauched—young man in England on the eve of the Brexit vote puts a queer modern spin on Shakespeare’s Henry IV. (There’s even a dissolute aging queen named Jack Falstaff.) But its other antecedents are Alan Hollinghurst and Edward St. Aubyn, and it’s a darkly glittering treasure from beginning to end. “This novel revisits classic literature but never feels beholden to it,” said our starred review.

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.