The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

Join 1,707 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Lisa Black Why did I love this book?

I'd heard about this book for years and finally picked it up at a bookstore when I did a signing. It is amazing! This is the story of The Great Migration, how Blacks in the South slowly made their way north between roughly 1915 and 1970.

"Stories" is more accurate since each person made their own decision and their own way—though the author wisely focused, for the most part, on three very different people, why and how and what they found when they moved.

And "escaped" is more accurate since plantation owners often went to fatal lengths to prevent the loss of their cheap labor. I didn't want to stop reading.  

By Isabel Wilkerson,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked The Warmth of Other Suns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Lisa Black Why did I love this book?

This was my first Grady Hendrix, and my first "vampire book" since Anne Rice’s. It’s the story of what a genteel housewife in a proper suburb does when a man she considers dangerous moves to town.

Forget convincing her husband if she can’t even convince her best buds: the women with wildly varied personalities and wildly varied backgrounds in her book club. This book is by turns poignant, heartbreaking, terrifying, and laugh-out-loud hilarious. 

By Grady Hendrix,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"This funny and fresh take on a classic tale manages to comment on gender roles, racial disparities, and white privilege all while creeping me all the way out. So good."-Zakiya Dalila Harris, author of The Other Black Girl

Now in paperback, Steel Magnolias meets Dracula in this New York Times best-selling horror novel about a women's book club that must do battle with a mysterious newcomer to their small Southern town.

Bonus features:
* Reading group guide for book clubs
* Hand-drawn map of Mt. Pleasant
* Annotated true-crime reading list by Grady Hendrix
* And more!

Patricia Campbell's life…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of Never Saw Me Coming

Lisa Black Why did I love this book?

I love a good revenge story as much as the next girl. And I loved the voice of Chloe, a psychopath who knows she's a psychopath, because she is going to college on a scholarship, provided that she participates in a study of psychopaths.

What the college doesn't know is that while she masquerades as a "normal" person to her fellow classmates, she's actually hunting the boy who did her wrong. Until someone starts hunting the study participants….

By Vera Kurian,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Never Saw Me Coming as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Utterly Gripping' Sunday Telegraph

Meet Chloe. First-year student. Ordinary girl next door. Psychopath.

Chloe Sevre can be whoever you want her to be. A cool girl, a best friend, someone to tell secrets to over midnight snacks. She has an impressive IQ, loves working out and frat parties.

She's also a psychopath.

In between her university classes and taking part in a secret clinical study of young psychopaths, Chloe is plotting to kill childhood friend Will Bachman.

They say you should never trust a psychopath. But when you hear what Will Bachman did to Chloe Sevre, you might just change…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Red Flags

By Lisa Black,

Book cover of Red Flags

What is my book about?

When D.C. crime scene analyst Dr. Ellie Carr is called to investigate the heartrending case of a missing baby, she’s shocked to discover that the child’s mother is her own cousin. Close during their impoverished childhoods, Ellie and Rebecca eventually drifted apart.

Rebecca is now half of a Washington power couple, and she and her wealthy lobbyist husband, Hunter, have been living a charmed life in an opulent mansion—until their infant son is taken.

“Every contact leaves a trace.” That’s the basic principle of forensic science, followed by pathologist Dr. Rachael Davies. But in this case, discovering where those traces lead quickly becomes a dangerous journey through a web of greed and deadly ambition.

My book recommendation list