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 Last Days

Simon Clark Why did I love this book?

Last Days is such a powerful horror novel. It scared me. Fascinated me. And it kept me turning the pages. After reading an abundance of horror, I should be immune to fictional scares. But this story about Kyle Freeman, a down-on-his-luck filmmaker commissioned by a mysterious individual to make a documentary about a sinister cult known as The Temple of Last Days, is electrifying.

The plot serves as the adroit vessel that contains Nevill’s beautiful yet terrifying symphony of eerie images that would make my hair (if I had any) stand on end. Very few can write scary scenes like Nevill. It reminded me of when I created and co-hosted a ghost-hunting TV series for BBC Look North. Thankfully, unlike Kyle, the ghosts never followed me home…

By Adam Nevill,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Last Days (winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel of the Year) by Adam Nevill is a Blair Witch style novel in which a documentary film-maker undertakes the investigation of a dangerous cult―with creepy consequences

When guerrilla documentary maker, Kyle Freeman, is asked to shoot a film on the notorious cult known as the Temple of the Last Days, it appears his prayers have been answered. The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle's brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters

Simon Clark Why did I love this book?

John Wyndham changed my life. I read Wyndham’s The Night of the Triffids when I was thirteen: it ignited a craving of my own to write apocalyptic novels like Wyndham.

This wonderful biography of Wyndham charts his path from awkward, maybe even almost otherworldly boy to the maelstrom of World War 2, where he was plunged into battles to free Europe from the Nazis. These harrowing experiences surely shaped his fiction, where civilization could be torn asunder in a heartbeat. Binns’ biography is detailed, sympathetic, and deeply insightful. It embraces his personal life as much as it describes his extraordinary success as a writer.

If I wrote a love letter to Wyndham, I’d be a proud man if I could pen something half as good as Binns' Hidden Wyndham.

By Amy Binns,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Until now, little was known of John Wyndham. Despite his popularity, his obsessive need for privacy led to him being known as "the invisible man of science fiction".
He redefined the genre with dystopian classics The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos. In Hidden Wyndham, Amy Binns reveals the woman who was the inspiration for his strong-minded heroines. Their secret love affair sustained this gentle and desperately shy man through failure, war, and, ultimately, success.
Hidden Wyndham shows how Wyndham's own disturbing war experiences - witnessing the destruction of London in the Blitz then as part of the…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Human League and the Sheffield Electro Scene: Every Album, Every Song

Simon Clark Why did I love this book?

Darlington vividly evokes the industrial city of Sheffield, England, where an extraordinary musical movement flowered in the 70s against a backdrop of urban decay and steel foundries.

Groups of young people were so eager to create music that they spurned the time-consuming labor of learning to play guitars, instead opting for easy-to-play synthesizers. They spawned a new breed of strange music and groups with strange names: Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, Clock DVA.

Darlington delivers a satisfyingly detailed forensic examination of these experimental synth bands and their songs. The book captures a time when Sheffield, a city near where I live, made steel for the world – and made music for those who love the wonderful and the outlandish.

By Andrew Darlington,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Human League and the Sheffield Electro Scene as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Sheffield in the late-1970s was isolated from what was happening in London in the same way that Liverpool had been in 1963. A unique generation of electro-experimental groupings evolved in the former Steel City around Cabaret Voltaire and The Future. The Future split into two factions, Clock DVA and The Human League. Then The Human League split into two further factions, Heaven 17, and The Human League as we now know them, fronted by Philip Oakey with Joanne Catherall and Susan Sulley.

Dare became one of the most iconic albums of the eighties; the album by which Human League are…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Blood Crazy

By Simon Clark,

Book cover of Blood Crazy

What is my book about?

A violent post-apocalyptic horror novel. Everyone over the age of nineteen is psychologically transformed into violent killers. And nobody under the age of nineteen is safe.

Running through the burning ruins of cities is seventeen-year-old Nick Aten. He is fleeing tens of thousands of adults who will, if they catch him, tear him apart.

Nick will learn that at the heart of this global catastrophe is an eternal mystery—one that lives within us and shapes our lives. And, ultimately, each and every one of us will feel its irresistible power.

Book cover of Last Days
Book cover of Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters
Book cover of The Human League and the Sheffield Electro Scene: Every Album, Every Song

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