The Top 20 books of 2023 as rated by BookBrowse subscribers

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

A Novel

by James McBride

Hardcover: Aug 2023 | Paperback: Jul 2025

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah's Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them.

Remember Us

by Jacqueline Woodson

Hardcover: Oct 2023 | Paperback: May 2025

Winner: BookBrowse YA Book Award 2023

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson brings readers a powerful story that delves deeply into life's burning questions about time and memory and what we take with us into the future.

The Covenant of Water

by Abraham Verghese

Hardcover: May 2023 | Paperback: May 2025

Winner: BookBrowse Fiction Award 2023

From the New York Times–bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, and following three generations of a family ...

Tom Lake

A Novel

by Ann Patchett

Hardcover: Aug 2023 | Paperback: Apr 2025

In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America's finest writers.

The Wager

A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

by David Grann

Hardcover: Apr 2023 | Paperback: Feb 2025

Winner: BookBrowse Nonfiction Award 2023

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The ...

The House of Doors

by Tan Twan Eng

Hardcover: Oct 2023 | Paperback: Oct 2024

From the bestselling author of The Garden of Evening Mists, a spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption.

North Woods

A Novel

by Daniel Mason

Hardcover: Sep 2023 | Paperback: Oct 2024

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and ...

Chenneville

A Novel of Murder, Loss, and Vengeance

by Paulette Jiles

Hardcover: Sep 2023 | Paperback: Sep 2024

Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post–Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the ...

King of the Armadillos

by Wendy Chin-Tanner

Hardcover: Jul 2023 | Paperback: Sep 2024

A transcendent debut novel about family, love, and belonging, set against the backdrops of 1950s New York City and a historical leprosarium in Louisiana, following one young man's quest to not only survive, but live a full and vibrant life

Let Us Descend

A Novel

by Jesmyn Ward

Hardcover: Oct 2023 | Paperback: Sep 2024

From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years ...

A Fever in the Heartland

The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

by Timothy Egan

Hardcover: Apr 2023 | Paperback: Jun 2024

A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them.

The Postcard

by Anne Berest

Hardcover: May 2023 | Paperback: May 2024

Anne Berest's The Postcard is among the most acclaimed and beloved French novels of recent years. Luminous and gripping to the very last page, it is an enthralling investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and a ...