Episode 631: Best Books of 2023

Writer's Bone

In our season finale, Daniel Ford and the Writer's Bone Podcast Network share the books we loved in 2023.

Thank you to the authors we interviewed and read, our network hosts, and, of course, you, our dear listeners for another terrific year of podcasting. We can't wait to celebrate our tenth anniversary in 2024!

The Best Books of 2023:

• Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott
• Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Under the Tamarind Tree by Nigar Alam
• Kind of a Big Deal: How Anchorman Stayed Classy and Became the Most Iconic Comedy of the Twenty-First Century by Saul Austerlitz
• King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father by Brooke Barbier
• Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post by Martin Baron
• The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz
• Dark Ride by Lou Berney
• Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks—A Cool History of a Hot Commodity by Amy Brady
• All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley
• At the Edge of the Woods by Kathryn Bromwich
• Bob Dylan: Mavericks of Music: Stories for Children by Daniel Budnik
• No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of A League of Their Own: Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood by Erin Carlson
• The Christmas Wager by Holly Cassidy
• A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness by Jai Chakrabarti
• Hide by Tracy Clark
• When the Game Was War: The NBA's Greatest Season by Rich Cohen
• Thicker Than Water by Megan Collins
• The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-first Century by Josh Cook
• All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
• The Rhythm of Time by S.A. Cosby and Questlove
• The 1998 Yankees: The Inside Story of the Greatest Baseball Team Ever by Jack Curry
• The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton
• The Way Life Should Be by William Dameron
• The Loneliness Files by Athena Dixon
• The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan
• A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
• Skull Water by Heinz Inus Fenkl
• Maddalena by Julia Fine
• Death Watch by Stona Fitch
• Come With Me by Erin Flanagan
• My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin
• The Hunt by Kelly J. Ford
• The Long War on Drugs by Anne L. Foster
• Devil Makes Three by Ben Fountain
• Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones
• The Wager by David Grann
• Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison
• Happy Place by Emily Henry
• Wellness by Nathan Hill
• 62: Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees, and the Pursuit of Greatness by Bryan Hoch
• A Sleight of Shadows by Kat Howard
• Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
• Loot by Tania James
• Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio by Katherine Rye Jewell
• The Longmire Defense by Craig Johnson
• Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy
• Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class by Blair L.M. Kelley
• For You and Only You by Caroline Kepnes
• What We Kept to Ourselves by Nancy Jooyoun Kim
• Morning in This Broken World by Katrina Kittle
• The Liberators by E.J. Koh
• You Should Have Told Me by Leah Kohen
• Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
• Big Gay Wedding by Byron Lane
• Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
• Prom Mom by Laura Lippman
• Walk the Darkness Down by Daniel Magariel
• I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
• The Revenge List by Hannah Mary McKinnon
• Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng
• You Will Find Your People: How to Make Meaningful Friendships as an Adult by Lane Moore
• Real Friends Talk About Race: Bridging the Gaps Through Uncomfortable Conversations by Yseult P. Mukantabana and Hannah Summerhill
• The Dream Builders by Oindrila Mukherjee
• Speech Team by Tim Murphy
• Charm City Rocks by Matthew Norman
• House Woman by Adorah Nworah
• Gilmore Girls: At Home by Micol Ostow
• A Summer Morning by Anne Leigh Parrish
• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
• Cooking My Way by Jacques Pépin
• The Sweet Spot by Amy Poeppel
• Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments by Joe Posnanski
• You Were Always Mine by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza
• The Men Can't Be Saved by Ben Purkert
• The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann by Virginia Pye
• Advika and the Hollywood Wives by Kirthana Ramisetti
• Go as a River by Shelley Read
• The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes
• The Kirschbaum Lectures by Seth Rogoff
• The Celebrants by Steven Rowley
• Evil Eye by Etaf Rum
• Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself by Luke Russert
• Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo
• Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan
• The Birthparents by Frank Santo
• Information Desk by Robyn Schiff
• Naked in the Rideshare: Stories of Gross Miscalculations by Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold
• The Hidden Life of Aster Kelly by Katherine A. Sherbrooke
• Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Pieces of Blue by Holly Goldberg Sloan
• Salvage This World by Michael Farris Smith
• You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
• Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder
• Bruce Springsteen A Little Golden Book Biography by Laurel Snyder
• Here in the Dark by Alexis Soloski
• Making It So by Patrick Stewart
• Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal
• Super Bloom by Megan Tady
• Congratulations, the Best is Over! by R. Eric Thomas
• In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas
• Late Bloomers by Deepa Varadarajan
• Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
• Strangers in the Night by Heather Webb
• The War Begins in Paris by Theodore Wheeler
• Saying It Loud: 1966―The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement by Mark Whitaker
• On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain by Ronald C. White Jr.
• City of Dreams by Don Winslow
• Busy Betty & the Circus Surprise by Reese Witherspoon
• Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
• Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
• Small World by Laura Zigman

Writer's Bone is proudly sponsored by The Bookshop: Lou's Literary Line, Libro.fm and Mark Cecil's upcoming novel Bunyan and Henry; Or, the Beautiful Destiny.