The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2023

100 Notable Books of 2023: The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review .

* indicates Ten Best list

Fiction & Poetry

After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
* The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
Blackouts by Justin Torres
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
* Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
The Deluge by Stephen Markley
* Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes
* The Fraud by Zadie Smith
From From by Monica Youn
A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll [graphic novel]
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
A History of Burning by Janika Oza
Holly by Stephen King
A House for Alice by Diana Evans
The Iliad by Homer
Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
Kantika by Elizabeth Graver
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
Monica by Daniel Clowes [graphic novel]
The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump
* North Woods by Daniel Mason
Not Even the Dead by Juan Gómez Bárcena
The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
Take What You Need by Idra Novey
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis
Victory City by Salman Rushdie
We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
Witness by Jamel Brinkley
Y/N by Esther Yi
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Nonfiction

The 272 by Rachel L. Swarns
Anansi’s Gold by Yepoka Yeebo
Battle of Ink and Ice by Darrell Hartman
* The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen
* Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs by Kerry Howley
Built From the Fire by Victor Luckerson
Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara
Crossings by Ben Goldfarb
Daughter of the Dragon by Yunte Huang
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
Easily Slip Into Another World by Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards
The Exceptions by Kate Zernike
* Fire Weather by John Vaillant
The Great Escape by Saket Soni
The Half Known Life by Pico Iyer
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell
Judgment at Tokyo by Gary J. Bass
King by Jonathan Eig
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta
The Land of Hope and Fear by Isabel Kershner
Liliana’s Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza
Lives of the Wives by Carmela Ciuraru
A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung
* Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo
Monsters by Claire Dederer
My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand
The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley by David Waldstreicher
Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe
Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman
Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar
Pageboy by Elliot Page
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk
The Rigor of Angels by William Egginton
Schoenberg by Harvey Sachs
Sink: A Memoir by Joseph Earl Thomas
The Slip by Prudence Peiffer
* Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista
Spoken Word by Joshua Bennett
A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell
Time’s Echo by Jeremy Eichler
The Undertow by Jeff Sharlet
Unscripted by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams
Up Home by Ruth J. Simmons
The Wager by David Grann
Waiting to Be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil
What An Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman
Wifedom by Anna Funder
You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live by Paul Kix