A bountiful year in books: The best reads of 2023

Fiction

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride

Chona Ludlow runs the local grocery in the Black and Jewish neighborhood of Chicken Hill with a fearless heart. When an attack at the store leads to an orphaned boy’s arrest, community members rally. This triumph from James McBride stresses the challenges of accessing America’s promises.

Stealing, by Margaret Verble

“I love my family, and I’m going to get to them as soon as I can,” promises Kit, a girl whose close ties to her mother’s Cherokee family are cut when she is dispatched to an abusive Christian boarding school in the 1950s. Kit chronicles the events leading to her removal from family, home, and community. Frank and fearless, the novel is a portrait of perseverance. 

Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton

In New Zealand, guerrilla gardeners cross paths with an American billionaire secretly up to no good. As the characters debate ideals, weigh choices, and battle their own and others’ egos, the tale gathers speed. Expertly crafted by Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton, it’s a heart-pumping thriller that exposes the tragedy of selfishness.

The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters

After their youngest daughter, Ruthie, vanishes during a summer of berry-picking in Maine, a Micmac family from Nova Scotia struggles to move forward. Indigenous Voices Award winner Amanda Peters delivers an un-put-down-able novel of identity, forgiveness, and insistent hope.

The End of Drum-Time, by Hanna Pylväinen

When a charismatic Lutheran minister is sent to northern Scandinavia to convert the Indigenous population, both sides must deal with the consequences, especially when a tribal leader experiences a religious awakening. Set in the mid-19th century, Hanna Pylväinen’s tale offers fresh perspectives on family bonds, cultural traditions, and religious colonialism.

Earth’s the Right Place for Love, by Elizabeth Berg

In 1940s Missouri, timid Arthur Moses gleans sage advice from his confident older brother, Frank. As he waits for love, and deals with a family tragedy, Arthur turns to nature for solace. Gracefully, he grows into the man that readers admired in Elizabeth Berg’s “The Story of Arthur Truluv.”

Loot, by Tania James

Tania James’ dazzling, richly embroidered historical novel imagines the journey of a life-size automaton of a wooden tiger – and those connected with it – from late 18th century India to France and England over 65 years. “Loot” is about the spoils and displacements of colonialism and the quest for betterment, autonomy, and love. 

North Woods, by Daniel Mason

“North Woods” follows the story of a house in the woods of western Massachusetts and its occupants over four centuries. This dazzling novel intertwines the often tragically truncated lives of its characters and its wooded setting, all gorgeously captured in multiple literary styles, genres, and voices.

The Liberators, by E.J. Koh

Korean American memoirist and poet E.J. Koh’s exceptional debut novel is full of delicately crafted snapshots of Korean history and the Korean diaspora. Spanning four generations, this epic embraces themes of colonization and loss.

The Museum of Failures, by Thrity Umrigar

While caring for his estranged mother in a Bombay hospital, Remy Wadia uncovers family secrets. Thrity Umrigar’s evocative novel explores the personal, political, and cultural reckonings of an immigrant son discovering compassion and forgiveness. 

The First Ladies, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

The friendship between first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune enriched both women, whose efforts set the stage for the modern Civil Rights Movement. The novel captures their invincibility and conviction.

Orbital, by Samantha Harvey

In a space station high above Earth, an international crew of six astronauts circles the planet – 16 times in a 24-hour span – ticking off tasks, eating meals from pouches, and hanging “like bats in their quarters.” Samantha Harvey’s hushed, perfect novel, her fifth, transports. “The earth feels – not small,” muses the narrator, “but almost endlessly connected, an epic poem of flowing verses.”

The General and Julia, by Jon Clinch

The general at the helm of Jon Clinch’s affecting novel is none other than Ulysses S. Grant; Julia is the practical, perceptive young woman he marries. As the story shifts between Grant’s arduous final days penning his memoirs and scenes from his life as war hero and president, a portrait emerges of realization, regret, and newfound humility.

Nonfiction

Preparing for War, by Bradley Onishi

A religion scholar and former evangelical youth minister looks at evangelical Christianity in the United States and the movement’s increasing involvement with political extremism. The author argues that the Jan. 6 insurrection was not an aberration but the logical outcome of the melding of politics and white Christian nationalism. 

King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig

This major biography of Martin Luther King Jr. benefits from a trove of newly available sources, from declassified FBI files to recently discovered audiotapes recorded by King’s widow, Coretta Scott King. In elegant prose, Eig presents King in full, capturing both the heroism and the frailties of the civil rights icon.

Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond’s follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Evicted” is a stirring study of why the United States, the world’s richest country, has the most poverty of any advanced democracy. He offers solutions by focusing not only on poor people but also on wealthy people and the middle class, who he says unwittingly benefit from the current system.

The Wounded World, by Chad Williams

This compelling nonfiction book traces civil rights leader and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois’ decades of reckoning with World War I. Du Bois at first encouraged Black men to enlist, believing that their sacrifices overseas would lead to equality at home, but was disillusioned when racist violence escalated after the war.

How To Say Babylon, by Safiya Sinclair

Acclaimed poet Safiya Sinclair’s searing and lyrical memoir describes her upbringing in Jamaica in a strict Rastafarian household ruled by her autocratic father. As his dreams of reggae stardom wither, he becomes increasingly rigid and violent; through poetry, she imagines a different life for herself.

Kennan: A Life Between Worlds, by Frank Costigliola

George F. Kennan played a central role in 20th-century American foreign policy and is regarded as the architect of the containment strategy that guided America’s approach to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But Kennan believed that his ideas had been badly misinterpreted. As the book makes clear, while he was certainly brilliant, he was also a complex and often troubled man.

The Red Hotel, by Alan Philps

Shortly after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, a small group of Anglo-American reporters traveled to Moscow to cover the conflict. Assigned to live and work in the legendary Metropol Hotel, they found their movements curtailed and their efforts thwarted by Soviet officials. A fascinating, insightful, and disturbing portrait of Western reporters working in a police state and how the experience changed their lives.

Necessary Trouble, by Drew Gilpin Faust

Drew Gilpin Faust is an acclaimed Civil War historian and the first woman to serve as president of Harvard University. Her memoir is both a moving personal narrative and an enlightening account of the transformative political and social forces that impacted her as she came of age as a privileged white girl in segregated Virginia.

Gator Country, by Rebecca Renner

Florida native Rebecca Renner delivers an engrossing account of wildlife officer Jeff Babauta’s two-year stint as an undercover agent for Operation Alligator Thief. The sting led to the arrest of 11 alligator poachers in the Everglades in a single day. Renner blends fine storytelling with Florida history, local lore, nature writing, and personal anecdotes.

The Exceptions, by Kate Zernike

Kate Zernike’s gripping and galvanizing account charts molecular biologist Nancy Hopkins’ struggle for equal treatment as one of the few women scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The story takes an inspirational turn when Hopkins teams up with her female colleagues in the mid-1990s. Together, they convince the university to acknowledge and correct its long-standing gender bias.

The Cost of Free Land, by Rebecca Clarren

Rebecca Clarren’s Jewish family benefited from U.S. government policies in the early 1900s that encouraged hundreds of thousands of people of European ancestry to move west and claim Native American land. Her book grew from a desire to understand, and possibly redress, the role her family played – directly and indirectly – in the denial of land rights to Native Americans.