Sure, we already picked our best books of the year, but if you hadn't noticed, a whole heap of new titles came out in 2023. And our reviews editors thought it would be a shame to let the year end without one final salvo of suggestions. The following are seven books that came out this year that we'd hate for you to miss—and our editors will tell you precisely why.
Close to Home
Among the new generation of Irish writers coming to fruition is Michael Magee, whose wrenching debut perfectly captures the buried trauma of the Troubles and the economic upheaval following the 2008 recession. It’s also an incredibly thoughtful study of a young man’s conflicted relationship with his hometown. —David Varno, literary fiction reviews editor
To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse
Fans of Catherine Lacey’s excellent alternative history novel The Biography of X might have noticed that supporting character Connie Converse was actually a real singer/songwriter, who this year was the subject of an impressively researched biography by musician Howard Fishman. His meditations on the mutability of identity and Converse's haunting story make readily apparent why Lacey was drawn to her story. —Marc Greenawalt, science and pop culture reviews editor
Open Throat
This slim, singular dispatch from the mind of a queer mountain lion living in the Hollywood Hills is probably my most recommended book of the year. You can gulp it down in a single afternoon, and the lingering buzz from its tonal mastery and syntactic playfulness might make you burn through it again before bed. —Conner Reed, mystery and memoir reviews editor
Sordidez
This year saw a boom in climate fiction, but Condé’s gorgeous debut novella stands out from the pack. Set in a post-collapse Puerto Rico, it centers on a queer indigenous resistance movement and packs an epic’s worth of worldbuilding into a bitesize container. —Phoebe Cramer, SFF, horror, and romance reviews editor
Love in a Time of Hate: Art and Passion in the Shadow of War
This collection of vignettes of the love lives of the 1920s’ most famous and infamous European and American artists, writers, and actors adds up to more than the sum of its parts, teasing out the collective emotional shift evident in their intimate thoughts and feeling as the Nazis rise to power in the 1930s. It’s reminiscent of Peter Englund’s November 1942, another fractured WWII narrative published this year, but that one tracks the collective emotional turn toward winning. This is about the turn toward losing. —Dana Snitzky, history and current affairs reviews editor
Everybody’s Favorite: Tales from the World’s Worst Perfectionist
Lillian Stone uncovers sharp cultural insights and has fun doing it in precise, witty essays that encompass her restrictive Evangelical upbringing, the diet-obsessed tabloid culture of the 2000s, her ruthless search for thinness, and unraveling it all as an adult. —Miriam Grossman, religion and self-help associate reviews editor
Brooklyn’s Last Secret
For fans who want more gently unfolding plots like Roaming crossed with the happenstance humor of High Maintenance and the verve of John Wray's Gone to the Wolves, this is not one to miss. Brooklyn cartoonist Stein's a musician herself—and part-time local bartender—and her authentic experience touring rocks out through this wry, joyfully watercolored graphic novel styled as a road trip diary of an under-the-radar indie band. Her celebrated recent books have been autobiographical, but this turn to fiction feels still very true to life. —Meg Lemke, comics and graphic novels reviews editor
