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 Crook Manifesto

Scott Brooks Why did I love this book?

Crook Manifesto is a follow-up to Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle. This time, set in the 70s, we return to the world of Ray Carney, now running a more successful and larger furniture store right on 125th St, in Harlem. And again, Carney is a cipher for Whitehead to explore the sights, sounds, and humanity of one of America’s most fascinating, volatile neighborhoods.

Whitehead is at the top of his game here as he captures the styles and rhythms of the city in all its glorious, bell-bottom 70s groove. Carney’s block of Harlem is a powder keg of crime and racial tension, with the Black Panthers marching in the streets, corrupt cops demanding pay for protection, and, of course, more petty crimes and con artists.

The book is peppered with rich, funny, painful moments and broken lives. He makes it look so damn easy as his language be-bops along and somehow magically captures the rhythm of urban life. The first section of the book, where Carney is forced to stick up an underground poker game, is at once wry and tense and overflowing with gritty splendor.

You don’t need to have read Harlem Shuffle to enjoy Crook Manifesto, but I guarantee you will want to. Good news, the third and final is on the way!

By Colson Whitehead,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Crook Manifesto as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Harlem Shuffle continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.

“Dazzling” –Walter Mosley, The New York Times Book Review.

It’s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of A Certain Hunger

Scott Brooks Why did I love this book?

A friend who I share books with all the time and who has directed plays I wrote, handed me this book and said, "YOU would love this." Always curious how people perceive my tastes, I opened to the first sentence, and here's what I got: "They all look the same, hotel bars, even when they don't."

Yep, I'm in.

Chelsea Summers' protagonist is telling her story from prison where she will live out her life for the multiple murders of her lovers. The thing is, she also ate some of them. But Dorothy Daniels is not your everyday cannibal. She is a deviously smart self-aware sociopath, culinary master and food critic.

The author has created a hilarious, perverted and gruesome anti-hero here, and every page drips with horror and brilliance. Yeah, I said perverted. This book is bawdy and raunchy as things get, so I wouldn't be recommending this one to grandma. Unless your grandma's down like that, I don't know.

All the obvious comparisons apply. Hannibal Lecter by way of Bret Easton Ellis and with plenty of Raymond Chandler noir similes to go around. The other delicious layer going on here is a gen-xers wink at the audience about things like the death of print media and the tragically self-congratulatory foodie movement which I was especially grateful for.

I almost did not set this down from the moment I read that first sentence.

By Chelsea G. Summers,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Certain Hunger as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of Vanity Fair's Books That Will Get You Through This Winter
“One of the most uniquely fun and campily gory books in my recent memory... A Certain Hunger has the voice of a hard-boiled detective novel, as if metaphor-happy Raymond Chandler handed the reins over to the sexed-up femme fatale and really let her fly." ―The New York Times

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy’s clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Department of Truth

Scott Brooks Why did I love this book?

As a writer, I have sworn to read all over the place and try to get out of my comfort zone as much as possible. I also believe that great stories lie in waiting in many places in many forms. (The Last of Us, a video game, was the source material for one of the best HBO series last year.) For a long while I thought I should probably explore the banquet of great work being done in comics and graphic novels.

(Writers note: If you want to learn a lot about plotting and economical storytelling, Frank Miller's Batman comics are a great place to start.)

I was so lucky to have picked up The Department of Truth from the line at the register at Forbidden Planet here in New York City. It is a fever dream of conspiracy madness that slowly unwinds what we believe is the history of our country and our world. A still-alive Lee Harvey Oswald heads this super-secret branch of the government whose mission seems to be to control the truth or what the population should believe.

As if that isn't cool enough, we follow a mysterious woman with red Xs over her eyes as she supervises the mass murder of some flat earthers, who paid top dollar to be flown to the edge of the earth. The writing is so rich and smart I regularly went back and reread whole sections.

Tynion skillfully draws a line through all the great unprovable mysteries of our culture from bigfoot to Kennedy to Emperor Constantine changing the calendar and the missing three or four hundred years that resulted.

The artwork is far from your normal superhero drawings with lush, haunting full color pages. I don't know what medium the artists use, but the final result is almost like watercolor.

The Department of Truth could easily end up being this generation's The Watchmen, and by that I mean, the one comic that people who never read comics pick up.

Also, the series rights have been optioned, so one day, it will live on in serialized, televised splendor. 

By James Tynion IV,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Department of Truth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

COLE TURNER has studied conspiracy theories all his life, but he isn't prepared for what happens when he discovers that all of them are true: the JFK Assassination, Flat Earth Theory, Bigfoot, Mothman, and so much worse. One organization has been covering them up for generations, controlling the narrative for what they claim is the greater good.

What is the deep, dark secret behind the Department of Truth-and will learning it destroy Cole's life from the inside out?

The first three arcs of the critically acclaimed series by Eisner Award-winning writer JAMES TYNION IV (Something is Killing the Children, The…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

And There We Were and Here We Are

By Scott Brooks,

Book cover of And There We Were and Here We Are

What is my book about?

“I wasn’t even going to tell this story, but Violet had to go and write a whole book about all of us before getting herself killed.”

Ten years ago, Jerry came to NYC to break into show business. Today, his career is stalled; his ex-fiancé is a TV star, and he survives by bartending in Manhattan’s cocktail lounges. Stunned by loss and regret, he is sleepwalking through life when he discovers Violet’s book about when they were young, hopeful servers at a Times Square restaurant.

Mustering the courage to open it, he relives the days of callbacks, late nights, angry chefs, and crazy customers. With unflinching honesty, Brooks exposes the reality of breaking into show business while living paycheck-to-paycheck in the most expensive city in America.

Book cover of Crook Manifesto
Book cover of A Certain Hunger
Book cover of The Department of Truth

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