Shelf Awareness's Best Adult Books of 2023

This year's selection of the 10 Best Fiction and 10 Best Nonfiction adult titles caused us to notice that it's hard to think about life in the present without first reflecting upon the past: Even novels such as Chain-Gang All-Stars and Prophet, while set in a near/alternate future, reckon with the past; and nonfiction like How to Say Babylon, Lesbian Love Story, and The Quickening acknowledge that one must find one's place in the world in part by understanding the historical events that led to this moment. The team at Shelf Awareness once again appreciated such literary companions to escort us through the strange and unpredictable year that was 2023. Click here to see our reviews. (And here are our Best Children's and YA Books of 2023.)

Fiction
America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien (Mariner)
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Ajdei-Brenyah (Pantheon)
Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea (Little, Brown)
In Memoriam by Alice Winn (Knopf)
The Laughter by Sonora Jha (HarperVia)
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)
Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes (Avid Reader Press)
Prophet by Helen Macdonald & Sin Blaché (Grove Press)
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck (Marysue Rucci Books)
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus (MTV Books)

Nonfiction
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World  by Christian Cooper (Random House)
The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl (Spiegel & Grau)
Enlightened Transsexual Comix by Sam Szabo (Silver Sprocket)
The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science by Kate Zernike (Scribner)
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair (Simon & Schuster)
Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives by Amelia Possanza (Catapult)
The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth by Elisabeth Rush (Milkweed)
The Talk by Darrin Bell (Holt)
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith (One Signal/Atria)
Zero at the Bone by Christian Wiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Powered by: Xtenit