The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

We've asked 1,707 authors and super readers for their 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Janice Law I ❤️ loved this book because...

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store has vigorous and distinctive prose and a big cast of vividly realized characters set in the Black and immigrant (mostly Jewish) section of a Pennsylvania industrial town in the 1920s and 1930s. The novel begins with the modern-day discovery of a body.

How the corpse got there and who he was in life, however, is a mere detail in the lively pagent provided by hardscrabble Chicken Hill and particularly its grocery store, a community lifeline in hard times, thanks to its good-natured proprietors Chona and Moshe Ludlow.

In a time of open racial discrimination, the Ludlows count both employees and friends across the color barrier, especially the Tamblins. When the latter asks for help in preventing a young deaf relative from being sent to a notorious orphanage, they agree, setting off a gripping and fast-moving plot.

By James McBride,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review

“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of A Fever In The Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

Janice Law I ❤️ loved this book because...

This is history as it should be written: well-researched with sharp characterizations and lively prose.

A Fever in the Heartland recounts how a charismatic former salesman promoted the Klan in Indiana in the 1920s.  Glib and intelligent, D.C. Stephenson tapped into the fear of immigrants, Blacks, Catholics, and Jews. Selling robes and other regalia and peddling a mix of entertainment and violence, he made the Klan into a money-making machine.

He made himself rich and the Klan into a power that corrupted politicians, judges, and cops. Stephenson dreamed of a run for President, and but for Madge Oberholtzer, who survived a sadistic sexual violent attack long enough to testify, he might have succeeded.

A Fever in the Heartland is a cautionary tale still, alas, relevant.

By Timothy Egan,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked A Fever In The Heartland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time." —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile

“Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of…


Want my future book recommendations?

My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of The Covenant of Water

Janice Law I ❤️ loved this book because...

There are so many characters to root for and so many threats to their happiness!

An ambitious and wide-ranging account of a South Indian family, The Covenant of Water begins in 1900 when a 12-year-old girl is married off to a 40ish landowner.

The marriage proves unexpectedly successful despite sorrows and troubles, many of which are connected with The Condition. This mysterious malady causes death by drowning and eventually impells the couple's granddaughter to become a doctor and to seek to unravel the family affliction.

The lively, well-observed characters range across the Indian caste system with memorable personalities from every station in life and include several important British personalities, too. All are set in a vast canvas from the rural plantations and the medical facilities of the British Raj to rapidly changing modern India. 

By Abraham Verghese,

Why should I read it?

23 authors picked The Covenant of Water as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SUBJECT OF A SIX-PART SUPER SOUL PODCAST SERIES HOSTED BY OPRAH WINFREY

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

“One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”—Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Homeward Dove

By Janice Law,

Book cover of Homeward Dove

What is my book about?

Jeff Woodbine enlivens his dead-end job by ripping off modest amounts of stock, a little theft that leads to blackmail by a co-worker.

On the morning trout season opens Jeff sees her pushing a toddler along the isolated riverside path. They argue, she rams the stroller into his leg, and he strikes her. She falls awkwardly, fatally hitting her head. Jeff panics and flees, leaving the speechless toddler behind.

Luck seems to be with him until, months later, he returns from work in Florida and falls in love with an old school friend who turns out, to his horror, to be the toddler's mother.

My book recommendation list