The Best New Books Of 2023 So Far
Your 2023 Goodreads challenge started so well. Maybe you knocked off two books in the first fortnight of January, smugly logging them as your friends floundered after biting off more than they could chew attempting to launch into Anna Karenina right off the bat. But then the lull hits, life gets busy, a book drags along and that reading goal looks far away. Fear not; we’ve assembled a list of 15 of the best, hottest and most talked about books released in 2023 to get back on track.
From fiction to nonfiction, romances to true crime thrillers, and Andy Warhol-era New York to an island off the coast of Argentina, there’s something for everyone here.
Fiction
Yellowface
Rebecca F. Kuang
Genre: Thriller
Best for: An entertaining page-turner with social commentary and a satirical bite
Bestselling author of Babel once again has another smash-hit on her hands with Yellowface, a thought-provoking and darkly-humorous literary thriller. After literary sensation Athena Liu dies in a car-crash, the definitively unsensational June steals her latest unpublished manuscript and publishes it under a pseudonym. Predictably, it starts to go very wrong, very fast. The result is a wildly entertaining and biting satire on white privilege.
Small Worlds
Caleb Azumah Nelson
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Best for: A character driven exploration of what it means to be human
Caleb Azumah Nelson became something of a literary star with his first novel Open Water, which won Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2021. Small Worlds ensures there will be no sophomore slump. Set over the course of three summers, from South London to Ghana and back again, it centers around the power of dance and music in the worlds we build for ourselves. A truly uplifting summer read.
Nothing Special
Nicole Flattery
Genre: Historical Fiction
Best for: Those fascinated by the world of 1960s counterculture New York
There are few better literary settings than 1960s New York, and Nicole Flattery’s debut novel is undoubtedly one of the most original takes on the era. The off-beat coming of age story sees 17-year old Mae take a job as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol, propelling her on a wild journey around the fringes of the countercultural movement. The follow up to the acclaimed short story collection Show Them A Good Time explores themes of identity, independence and the line between art and voyeurism – it’s as confident a debut as we’ve seen in recent years.
Birnam Wood
Eleanor Cotton
Genre: Eco-Thriller
Best for: Fast-moving, timely literary thrillers
It’s been 10 years, but we finally have a follow up to Cotton’s Booker-Prize winning The Luminaries – of which she is still the youngest ever winner. Thankfully, Birnam Wood was worth the wait; the psychological thriller sees a group of idealistic young guerrilla gardeners who, facing climate destruction, get involved with a tech billionaire. Drawing inspiration from Shakespeare, it explores the human impulse to ensure our own survival, and the greed that ensures its destruction. You won’t be able to put it down while reading, or get it out of your head after finishing.
The Late Americans
Brandon Taylor
Genre: Literary Fiction
Best for: A revolving list of characters at a crossroads in their 20s
For fans of stories with multiple perspectives, this is a winner. Set over the course of a year of self-discovery in Iowa city, a group of close friends and lovers and aspiring artists circle and interchange amongst each other to varying degrees of tenderness, provocation and volatility. Taylor’s booker-nominated Real Life was something of a phenomenon, and the follow-up looks even more ambitious.
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home
Lorrie Moore
Genre: Magical Realism
Best for: A tragic-comic mediation on love and grief from one of our greatest living writers
Sometimes it can be hard to attribute icon status to contemporary writers while their legacy is still in the making. With Lorrie Moore there is no such difficulty, and so every new release is a major event. This contemporary twist on a ghost story sees middle aged Finn embark on a road trip with the long-lost love of his life – or, at least, their corpse. What follows is equally moving and witty – there are few sharper writers on relationships than Moore.
Close to Home
Michael Magee
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Best for: A bittersweet ode to home and the past
After Sean returns home to Belfast after finishing University, he gets drawn back into the life that he tried to escape from in the working-class republican housing estate he grew up around; alcoholism, unemployment and dalliances with the police. What could be a tough read instead plays out as a bittersweet love-letter to Northern Ireland, and a heartwarming portrayal of the people who live there. Ultimately it is about a generation who grew up after the end of the troubles, but whose lives are inextricably shaped by its aftershocks.
A Spell of Good Things
Ayobami Adebayo
Genre: Narrative Fiction
Best For: A rich, moving portrait of a modern society
A state-of-the-nation novel about modern Nigeria, Adebayo explores wealth, politics and poverty through the lens of two characters with vastly different backgrounds; Eniola, who spends his days running errands for the local tailor and collecting newspapers, and Wuraola, the golden child from a wealthy family in her first year of medical practice. Its investigation into the divide between the haves and have-nots is combined with a large dose of humanity.
Non-Fiction
Pageboy
Elliot Page
Genre: Memoir
Best for: A celeb memoir that doesn’t hold back
Hollywood memoirs are often not worth the subject they write about – PR agencies ensure most will be too clean-cut for anything of value to be allowed in their pages. Pageboy, by actor Elliot Page, defies that rule with abandon. In the midst of massive success – an Oscar nomination for Juno, a starring role in the blockbuster Inception – while in the midst of discovering himself as a queer person and as a trans person. It is a sometimes harrowing but often joyful examination of how we untangle ourselves – all while under the scrutiny of the public eye.
The Wager
David Grann
Genre: History & Adventure
Best For: Swashbuckling non-fiction that reads like a novel
In 1792, a barely afloat patched-together British vessel washed ashore on the coast of Brazil, containing 30 starving men clinging on to their last ounce of strength. It turns out they were the survivors of The HMS Wager, a warship that left England in 1740 for a secret ambush during the imperial war with Spain before being shipwrecked and marooned on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. They told the story of mutiny, murder and anarchy, which Grann recounts with wonderful tension.
Pat In The City
Patricia Field
Genre: Memoir
Best For: A look behind the scenes at the most iconic fashion in Film & TV
It seems like you can’t walk down the street at the moment without being met with some new Sex And The City information, from bombshell cameos to London Pop-ups. And now you have an excellent memoir from the stylist behind the iconic show, Patricia Field. It charts her journey from scrappy Queens kid peddling men’s pants to the fashion world’s most notorious renegade, and her massive success with Sex And The City and The Devil Wears Prada.
Traffic
Ben Smith
Genre: Business
Best For: The inside story of the rise and fall of the online-news phenomenon
Remember how ubiquitous Buzzfeed was from the early to mid-2010s? You were doing online quizzes, watching their youtube sketches, and suddenly the Buzzfeed news Twitter feed was your primary source of information. Now, the company has laid off most of its workers and is going full-steam ahead into the world of AI-generated content. Curious how this dramatic boom-to-bust story unfolded? Who better to detail it than the former editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News, Ben Smith. The result is an astounding yarn that will make you feel even worse about how much time you spent finding out which Disney princess you were eight years ago.
Strong Female Character
Fern Brady
Genre: Memoir
Best for: Unflinching personal story on a too-often concealed condition
Scottish Comedian Fern Brady is equally heartbreaking and hilarious in this moving memoir about growing up with undiagnosed autism. From growing up in a difficult household, to periods of homelessness, Brady breaks down the walls of what is so often a condition left undiagnosed, with devastating ramifications – and against all odds is extremely funny while doing so.
A Thread of Violence
Mark O’Connell
Genre: True Crime
Best for: True Crime thrillers a cut above the rest
This book achieves what previously was thought didn’t exist anymore; A fresh take on the true-crime genre. It follows the story of a double murder in Ireland in 1982 by Malcolm Macarthur, which remains one of the most infamous cases in the country’s history. As O’Connell investigates the mysteries surrounding the case, he tracks down Macarthur himself in Dublin, and finds that investigation might go both ways. It’s a fascinating narrative on the grey areas of the genre itself, and what it means to write about a murderer.
Tokens
Rachel O’Dwyer
Genre: Economics
Best For: A sharp, accessible deep-dive on just what is going on with crypto
Do you not really understand what on earth is going on with crypto? But definitely enjoy laughing about how ridiculous some of it seems? This could be the book for you. Exploring the history of experiments in extra-monetary economies, Rachel O’Dwyer takes a look at how big corporations using cryptocurrency to game the system with regulatory sleight-of-hand. But Tokens also explores how in the future tokens could also be a subversive way of imagining what money could be now and in the future.
