Fiction | Nonfiction
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At The New York Times Book Review, we write about thousands of books every year. Many of them are good. Some are even great. But we get that sometimes you just want to know, “What should I read that is good or great for me? Well, here you go — a running list of some of the year’s best, most interesting, most talked-about books. Check back next month to see what we’ve added.
We chose the 10 best books of 2023. See the full list.
Fiction
Give me a thrilling new take on an American masterpiece
James, by Percival Everett
In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own and with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.
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I want a great American book full of humanity
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
McBride’s latest opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the remains’ connection to one town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history. But rather than a straightforward whodunit, McBride weaves an intimate tale of community.
I’d like an intricate, immersive fantasy
The Book of Love, by Kelly Link
Link, a Pulitzer finalist and master of short stories, pushes our understanding of what a fantasy novel can be. Here, she follows three teenagers who return from the dead and compete for the chance to remain alive in a series of magical challenges, spinning a rich tale full of secrets and the supernatural.
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I want to read a book everyone is (still) talking about
Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver’s powerful novel, published in 2022, is a close retelling of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield” set in contemporary Appalachia. The story gallops through issues including childhood poverty, opioid addiction and rural dispossession even as its larger focus remains squarely on the question of how an artist’s consciousness is formed. Like Dickens, Kingsolver is unblushingly political and works on a sprawling scale, animating her pages with an abundance of charm and the presence of seemingly every creeping thing that has ever crept upon the earth.
Introduce me to a family I’ll love (even if they break my heart)
How about a wrenching story that puts heroic women at the center?
The Women, by Kristin Hannah
The best-selling author of “The Nightingale” follows a San Diego debutante who works as an Army nurse during the Vietnam War. “Hannah’s real superpower is her ability to hook you along from catastrophe to catastrophe, sometimes peering between your fingers, because you simply cannot give up on her characters,” our reviewer wrote.
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I’d like a moody, mesmerizing crime novel from a master
The Hunter, by Tana French
For Tana French fans, every one of the thriller writer’s twisty, ingenious books is an event. This one, a sequel to “The Searcher,” once again sees the retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, a perennial outsider in the Irish west-country hamlet of Ardnakelty, caught up in the crimes — seen and unseen — that eat at the seemingly picturesque village.
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I’d like a smart romantic comedy that avoids cliché
Good Material, by Dolly Alderton
Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old man struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.
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How about a heartwarming novel to suit any mood?
Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt
This debut novel, a runaway best seller, follows a widow named Tova who starts working overnight shifts at a nearby aquarium, where she forms a bond with an octopus named Marcellus. As they grow closer, it turns out that Marcellus holds the key to one of her most painful episodes: the disappearance, decades ago, of her son.
Nonfiction
I’d like a nuanced look at the U.S.-Mexico border crisis
I’m ready to hear about one of the most shocking moments in recent literary history
Knife, by Salman Rushdie
In his candid, plain-spoken and gripping new memoir, Rushdie recalls the attempted assassination he survived in 2022 during a presentation about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Rushdie lost an eye, but he has slowly recovered thanks to the attentive care of doctors and the wife he celebrates here.
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I want a dramatic, Pulitzer-winning history that reads like a novel
Teach me about a forgotten chapter of American history
Madness, by Antonia Hylton
Hylton investigates the hidden history of Crownsville Hospital, a segregated asylum on 1,500 acres in Anne Arundel County, Md., that operated for over 90 years. The story has resonance today — particularly regarding America’s continuing failure to care for Black minds.
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I want an unflinching account of motherhood from one of our best personal essayists
Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, by Leslie Jamison
Jamison, who has previously written stylishly about her experiences with addiction, abortion and more, here delivers a searing account of divorce and the bewildering joys of new motherhood, cementing her status as one of America’s most talented self-chroniclers.
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I can’t learn enough about World War II
Judgment at Tokyo, by Gary J. Bass
Written by a veteran journalist and Princeton professor, this immersive look at the prosecution of Japanese war crimes offers an elegant account of a moment that shaped the politics of the region and of the Cold War to come.
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I want a revelatory biography of someone I thought I knew everything about
King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig
The first comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades, Eig’s book draws on a landslide of recently released government documents as well as letters and interviews. This is a book worthy of its subject: both an intimate study of a complex and flawed human being and a journalistic account of a civil rights titan.
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