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 Bliss & Blunder

Tom Pugh Why did I love this book?

In Bliss and Blunder, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table return to England as a group of entitled, insecure techbros.

It might sound unlikely, but there’s true, literary magic at work as Gosling weaves England’s best-loved legends into the fabric of our present moment. Strange, fearless, and utterly convincing, there’s fun to be had in imagining (Sir Ga)Wayne drinking in the Green Knight or rummaging through Guinevere's Instagram account – but there’s anger, too.

Beneath the mythmaking, the story of Arthur is a story of power – the way it oozes and where it pools, who it celebrates, and who it destroys. We’re still as bewitched by the myths as we ever were – and the story hasn’t changed at all. 

By Victoria Gosling,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'Exquisitely written and structurally bold ... a deeply impressive novel' Eva Dolan, author of This Is How It Ends

Selected for TLS Summer Books 2023

Arthur and Gwen married young. Twenty years on, Gwen's got it all: wealth, beauty, a famous husband who's the founder of Britain's most successful tech company, stables full of horses, millions of followers on Instagram, an unstable lover, a wayward son, a hoard of secrets, an aching heart, and a cyberstalking blackmailer who calls himself The Invisible Knight.

As the Wiltshire town of Abury prepares to celebrate the fortieth birthday of its favourite son, Morgan,…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of Now We Shall Be Entirely Free

Tom Pugh Why did I love this book?

Andrew Miller doesn’t do conventional heroes. In his most recent novel, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free (set during the Napoleonic Wars), two soldiers are given the task of finding a suspected war criminal.

On the subsequent manhunt from Portsmouth to the west coast of Scotland, my expectations were repeatedly – and gloriously – upended. 

The pursued doesn’t know he’s being pursued. It isn’t even clear if he’s guilty. The question is both pressing and increasingly irrelevant, except as a matter for his conscience and as a matter of public relations for the British army.

More than anything, it’s this horror of objective truth, shared by nearly every character, which propels the book – by turns (and perfectly) a thriller, a romance, a comedy, and a novel of ideas.  

By Andrew Miller,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Now We Shall Be Entirely Free as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

* WINNER OF THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE *

* SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE *

The rapturously acclaimed new novel by the Costa Award-winning author of PURE, hailed as 'excellent', 'gripping', 'as suspenseful as any thriller', 'engrossing', 'moving' and 'magnificent'.

One rainswept winter's night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain's disastrous campaign against Napoleon's forces in Spain.

Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind. He will not - cannot - talk about the war or face the memory of what took…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Betrothed: The Great Plague of Milan

Tom Pugh Why did I love this book?

This is a recommendation for everyone who loves big nineteenth-century novels. The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni was new to me in 2023 – and just what I needed to get me through the long winter nights.

Written in the 1820s and 30s and set two hundred years earlier, the novel opens with an act of moral cowardice. An innocent couple is torn apart at the whim of a nobleman. In the way of all the best nineteenth-century novels, we only discover whether their love is strong enough to reunite them after numerous mishaps, adventures, and digressions.

Again and again, Manzoni shows how people can always be relied on to make a bad situation worse. At times, the book feels like it could have been written yesterday!

By Alessandro Manzoni,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The Betrothed ("I Promessi Sposi") is one of the greatest European historical novels. As its title impies, it an epic love story in Lombardy on the late 1620s. It is no spoiler to say, and you will be relieved to know, that the two young lovers eventually marry.

But it is what happens along that way that makes The Betrothed so engaging and instructive. The Betrothed fictionalizes in great detail the historical realities of the Thirty Years War and the Great Plague that struck Milan around 1630.

"They heard with a smile of incredulity and contempt any who hazarded a…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

The Lord of Worlds

By Tom Pugh,

Book cover of The Lord of Worlds

What is my book about?

Following England’s break with Rome, Europe has closed its doors to English wool and other goods. In search of new markets, Queen Elizabeth’s head of intelligence sends exiled soldier Matthew Longstaff to start negotiations with the Ottoman Empire.

Starved of resources, he finds himself drawn into a game of piracy and blackmail. A trade agreement lies within his grasp when, suddenly, the stakes are raised again. A greater prize now tantalizes – one with the power to change the world. But time is running out.

As Longstaff’s enemies pursue him through the streets and palaces of Istanbul, it will take all his strength to secure his prize and escape the Lord of Worlds.