Year-End Lists

The Boston Globe: Books We Loved in 2023, published along with lists of favorite middle grade and young adult books

[see also 2025 • 2024 • 2021 • 2020]

Fiction

• At Sea
  Emma Fedor
• Blackouts
  Justin Torres
• Small Mercies
  Dennis Lehane
• Enter Ghost
  Isabella Hammad
• Small Worlds
  Caleb Azumah Nelson
• Take What You Need
  Idra Novey
• The Fraud
  Zadie Smith
• Terrace Story
  Hilary Leichter
• Birnam Wood
  Eleanor Catton
• Let Us Descend
  Jesmyn Ward
• Brooklyn Crime Novel
  Jonathan Lethem
• Everybody Knows
  Jordan Harper
• The New Naturals
  Gabriel Bump
• Decent People
  De'Shawn Charles Winslow
• Loved and Missed
  Susie Boyt
• Small World
  Laura Zigman
• The Faraway World
  Patricia Engel
• Hope
  Andrew Ridker
• North Woods
  Daniel Mason
• Voices of the Dead
  Ambrose Parry
• Witness
  Jamel Brinkley
• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
  James McBride
• The Long Form
  Kate Briggs
• The Romantic
  William Boyd
• I Have Some Questions for You
  Rebecca Makkai

Nonfiction

• The Wager

  A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
  David Grann
• Becoming Ella Fitzgerald

  The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
  Judith Tick
• Wild Dances

  My Queer and Curious Journey to Eurovision
  William Lee Adams
• Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties

  The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher--Television
  Foster Hirsch
• Dialogue with a Somnambulist

  Stories, Essays & A Portrait Gallery
  Chloe Aridjis
• Shakespeare in Bloomsbury
  Marjorie Garber
• Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant
  Curtis Chin
• Doppelganger

  A Trip into the Mirror World
  Naomi Klein
• I Can't Save You

  A Memoir
  Anthony Chin-Quee
• Welcome 2 Houston

  Hip Hop Heritage in Hustle Town
  Langston Collin Wilkins
• The Loved Ones

  Essays to Bury the Dead
  Madison Davis
• King

  A Life
  Jonathan Eig
• How Not to Kill Yourself

  A portrait of the Suicidal Mind
  Clancy Martin
• The Loneliness Files

  A Memoir in Essays
  Athena Dixon
• The Book of (More) Delights

  Essays
  Ross Gay
• The Con Queen of Hollywood

  The Hunt for an Evil Genius
  Scott C. Johnson
• It's Not You, It's Capitalism

  Why It's Time to Break Up and How to Move On
  Malaika Jabali
• The Night Parade
  Jami Nakamura Lin
• The Path to Paradise

  A Francis Ford Coppola Story
  Sam Wasson
• The Black Guy Dies First

  Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar
  Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris
• This is Not Miami
  Fernanda Melchor
• Love Across Borders

  Passports, Papers, and Romance in a Divided World
  Anna Lekas Miller
• Body Horror

  Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes
  Anne Elizabeth Moore
• Quantum Criminals

  Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan
  Alex Pappademas & Joan LeMay
• LeBron
  Jeff Benedict