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The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

We've asked 1,608 authors and super readers for their 3 favorite reads of the year.

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My favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Arrested Adolescence: The Secret Life of Nathan Leopold

L.A. Fields Why did I love this book?

This book scratches a long-standing itch for aficionados of the Leopold and Loeb crime of 1924. After the murder of Bobby Franks, after the trial of the century, and after the killing of Richard Loeb, then what happened? Erik Rebain finally fills in that gap with this meticulously sourced biography.

The book has a strong sense of place for moments in Leopold’s life that shook and shaped him — from prison riots to his first time seeing a show again as a free man. There are characters to meet, like his later-in-life wife and the distasteful friends he made while seeking discreet sexual favors from young boys in Puerto Rico.

Mr. Leopold continued to have dubious adventures until his dying day, and one’s knowledge is not complete without this fitting end.

By Erik Rebain,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Arrested Adolescence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

During the summer of 1924, everyone was obsessed with Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, the two wealthy, brilliant, lovers who had brutally murdered a boy with a chisel just for the "thrill." Between the charm and accessibility of the dashing teenage defendants, their "deviant" sexual appetites, and the 1920s' culture wars over the generational shift in acceptable morality, it is no wonder it was labeled the trial of the century.

100 years after the murder, this groundbreaking new biography reveals the motivations behind Bobby's death and the secret life of one of his killers.

Pulling on previously unseen archival collections…


My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Otherlight

L.A. Fields Why did I love this book?

This is a poetry collection with story-like cohesion. The poems touch on topics like addiction, lost love, death, selfishness, and grief. They give an atmosphere of stark therapy, a smell of ozone and psych drugs, and indulgences of the self-sabotaging variety that are sometimes the only realistic way to cope.

Though it sounds dark, the mood of the book is ultimately hopeful and enduring. This is a journey through a barren, unadorned land with a frank and aloof guide. But think of icy cliffs, think of the calm after storms: there is beauty in bleakness and clarity among the wreckage.

Sometimes, the only way to reveal strength is to chip it out of frozen shale with a pitiless, excavating force.

By Jill McEldowney,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Otherlight as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Jill Mceldowney's Otherlight plunges us into the rarefied limbo of grief. Suspended in time, in action, in ice, its speaker is halfway out the door of this world-is half-turned to follow the beloved who hovers, conjured, just at the edges of these pages. Otherlight's iconoclasm is arresting and terrifying; it rejects the advances of a world that refuses to understand that sometimes the past is a mine we never want to be hauled from. In these lyrical, annihilating poems, Mceldowney shows us how a life can be utterly derailed by a death; how even after a lightning-struck past, choosing to…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of You Don't Belong Here

L.A. Fields Why did I love this book?

In the grand tradition of writers who are drunks (or perhaps drunkards who write), this is a modern addition to the canon. 

It’s always a remarkable feat when all you actually do is read a book, but in closing the cover, you feel you’ve been through an ordeal. Traveling with the protagonist to an isolated small-town writer’s retreat is claustrophobic and anxiety-inducing. This book reads like a whodunnit, but in the spirit of "how bad can this get?"

If you’ve ever fancied yourself a creative type, if you’ve ever known or feared an addiction, or if you’re just in the mood to disturb yourself — let this book take you somewhere you ought not to be.

By Jonathan Harper,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked You Don't Belong Here as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Morris came to Manderlay Colony to write, to share his truth, and create something literary. But on his last night in the quiet, small town, a series of events leave him trapped, with shrinking funds and no sure means of escape. As the hours and days pass, the beer bottles pile up on the bar counter, and as he confronts a man from his past, his sense of self is challenged. Jonathan Harper's debut novel is snarky, at times brutal, exploration of the modern man who stands at the mouth of a tunnel, knowing that what's inside will change him,…


Plus, check out my book…

Riot Son

By L.A. Fields,

Book cover of Riot Son

What is my book about?

In an unnamed American city during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, two people meet in a cloud of tear gas and experience love in the time of COVID-19.

Devon Amis is a thirty-something Texan and journalist dealing with the emotional fallout of a recent breakup and previous war correspondence. Garrett Robertson is a homeless genderqueer teen and freelance reporter newly emancipated from a cult religious upbringing.

They and their fellow freedom fighters (lawyers, medics, and activists) experience right-wing violence, police brutality, autonomous zones, federal crackdowns, and murderous vehicular attacks — all of which combust in one life-altering conflagration on the Fourth of July. Riot Son weaves real-life news events from one turbulent summer with a romance for the ages.