Twelve authors share their favorite reads of 2023 and most anticipated books of 2024 (Pt. 3 of 4)
Alice Elliott Dark, Amina Gautier, Ann Hood, Mary Kay Zuravleff, and eight other writers suggest some great books for your TBR list.
When I decided to reach out to a couple dozen writers to see if they’d like to contribute a list of their favorite books from last year, along with the books they were looking forward to reading this year, I figured I’d get 10-12 responses, enough for one post. I should have known better; after all, writers are passionate readers. And just about everyone loves to make lists of their favorites and share them. So, having heard from 50 authors, I’ve had to make this a four-part series. I know you will find common ground with some writers and discover new books to add to your TBR list.
Part 3 features, in alphabetical order: Heather Bell Adams, Helen Benedict, Donnaldson Brown, Alice Elliott Dark, Amina Gautier, Ann Hood, Linda Kass, Rosalie Morales Kearns, Francesca Marciano, Virginia Pye, Ronna Wineberg, and Mary Kay Zuravleff.
Part 4 will feature Elizabeth Benedict, Michelle Brafman, Christine Coulson, Jennifer Haigh, Anne Korkeakivi, Tara Lynn Masih, Zibby Owens, Hannah Sward, Dawn Tripp, and several other writers.
Heather Bell Adams is the author of Maranatha Road (2017) and The Good Luck Stone (2020). She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she works as a lawyer. She served as North Carolina’s 2022 Piedmont Laureate.
My favorite reads of 2023:
The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn: This was the book that stuck with me all year. It’s immersive, gripping, and inventive, and I’ve been raving about it to anyone who will listen.
Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain: A debut short story collection that skillfully interrogates the stereotypes of working-class western Pennsylvania.
Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt: Suspenseful historical fiction set against Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846.
Good Women by Halle Hill: A debut short story collection featuring young women trying to assert themselves, establish boundaries, and weather generational trauma.
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo: Weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City, a moving portrait of multiple generations of women.
Most anticipated reads of 2024:
The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey: The gift of seeing into the future doesn’t necessarily mean the ability to change it. I always enjoy Livesey’s books.
Old Crimes by Jill McCorkle: A new short story collection by a compassionate and insightful storyteller.
Beyond That, The Sea by Laura Spence-Ash: A young woman in World War II is torn between two families.
The Seamstress of Acadie by Laura Frantz: In the tumultuous 1750’s, a seamstress and her family in Acadie are caught between the French and the British.
The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez: I read an ARC in 2023 and was absolutely mesmerized by this story set against the construction of the Panama Canal and told in a chorus of alternating voices. I’m in awe of how Henriquez makes us care so much about all the characters.
Helen Benedict is the author of The Good Deed, due out in April 2024; Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece (2022), Wolf Season (2017), and Sand Queen (2011), among other novels. (photo credit: Suzanne Gainer)
These are five of the novels that stood out for me the most this past year, all but the first having been published in 2023.
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa: A heartrending, eye-opening novel about a Palestinian family’s struggle to survive and to love that spans the years 1941-2022 but could be about Gaza today.
Viper’s Dream by Jake Lamar: Lamar, an American who lives in Paris, knows his jazz history and his Noir. This is a rip-roaring combination of both.
Take What You Need by Idra Novey: A brave novel about class, rural Appalachia and what happens when a liberal New Yorker runs up against her country-tough stepmother and neighbors.
Gilded Mountain by Kate Manning: This novel, too, is about class in America, only set in the hardscrabble early 1900s. Full of humor and triumph, Manning can do voices and the past like no one else.
Nadia by Christine Evans: Evans is an Australian playwright living in D.C. and this is her first novel, a riveting and compassionate portrait of a young Bosnian and her Serbian persecutor, both refugees in London shortly after the Balkan wars.
The five I’m most eager to read in 2024:
Gliff by Ali Smith: A Scottish novelist and essayist, Smith isn’t known well enough in the U.S.. She is experimental, intellectual, wise and highly political, yet also funny and without so much as a drop of pretention.
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan: This collection of stories came out in 2023, but I was too busy reading her other books to get to this one yet. Her every sentence is like a small drop of crystal in a wide, warm pool.
My Friends by Hisham Matar: Matar’s writings about Libya and his family’s persecution have all been passionate and deeply moving. I have a feeling this might be the best of all.
Leaving by Roxana Robinson: Robinson gets under the skin in her fiction, whether dealing with drug addicts, war-torn veterans, or marriages, but she does it gently and with understanding.
Country of Under by Brooke Shaffner: A work many years in the making, this is a debut novel about people on the margins of society and gender, and their struggle to negotiate the many barriers thrown up in their faces.
Donnaldson Brown is a former attorney and screenwriter and the author of Because I Loved You (2023), about which Mary Morris said, “In this beautifully rendered, evocative novel Donnaldson Brown paints a portrait of star-crossed lovers, brought together by their love of horses and torn apart by tragedy and closely-guarded secrets.” (photo credit: Kate Burton)
Lists are difficult, aren’t they? They never feel complete. But here are the books that stayed top of mind.
Lost and Found by Kathryn Schulz: A memoir about love and loss, and love again. What a pleasure to spend time with her intellect and her heart.
My Antonia by Willa Cather: Filling one of the many gaps in my reading. Wonderful characters and story, and an interesting look at the life of immigrants in a different time.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett” My favorite of her novels. I just sank right into the narrative and didn’t want it to end.
An Immense World by Ed Yong: A mind-blowing exploration of how non-human creatures perceive the world. Truly fascinating.
The Sweet Spot, Amy Poeppell: It’s been a tough year for news. This is a well-paced, fun novel with wonderful characters. Diverting and satisfying.
Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point (2022) and Think of England (2002) and the story collections In the Gloaming (2000) and Naked to the Waist (1991). (photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan)
The two books that completely floored me that I read this year were Nine Doors and Ten Windows by Jane Hirshfield, books of essays about poetry, yet I would offer them to every artist as well as anyone seeking serenity. They are written so magically with such focus and sublime logic that you can feel your brain cooling as you read.
I listened to the audiobook of Demon Copperhead on a series of walks when I was at a residency. That was one of my top experiences of the year, having the wonderful voice of Charlie Thurston in my ear telling that familiar yet brilliantly re-envisioned story.
I counted the days to get Absolution by Alice McDermott, and it didn’t disappoint. I am still thinking about vivid moments and the secular and spiritual properties of absolution she explores in the book. In this vein of luminous knock-out sentences writing, I loved In the Orchard by Eliza Minot, half a day in the life of a young mother that opens up the whole world.
I adored Commitment by Mona Simpson. Her way of illuminating the poignant small moments and the compassion she offers her characters is unique and always makes me have a better day after sitting with her words.
Two non-fiction books I loved were Mott Street by Ava Chin and Doppelganger by Naomi Klein.
This year I’m looking forward to seeing two books I read early out in the world, The Red Grove by Tessa Fontaine, a gorgeous, imaginative, generous story about a women’s commune in the redwoods that is tested on several fronts; and Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner, a smart and touching novel about a younger sister finding her way in life despite the overwhelm of the older mentally unstable sister.
I am also planning to read Day by Michael Cunningham, The Fraud by Zadie Smith, Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, The Postcard by Anne Berest, Erasure by Percival Everett, Fire Exit by Morgan Talty, and many more.
Amina Gautier is the author of the short story collections At-Risk (2011, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction), Now We Will Be Happy (2014, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize), and The Loss of All Lost Things (2016). Her new collection, The Best That You Can Do, will be published by Soft Skull Press on January 16.
Five books I greatly enjoyed in 2023
Ted Wheeler’s historical novel The War Begins in Paris features a troupe of journalists who are gathered in Paris and who are covering the rise of Nazism and Fascism. The novel intersperses traditional chapters with news reels, a very interesting structure. Gioia Diliberto’s historical novel Coco at the Ritz, also set in Paris during WWII, covers the months Coco Chanel lived at the German-occupied Ritz Hotel and had a German spy for a lover. The novel troubles our contemporary perceptions of Chanel, with whom we tend to associate elegance, expensive perfumes and little black dresses. Told from Chanel’s point of view, we see her ambition and insecurity, her foolishness, her murky decision-making, and though our image of the famous fashion icon is tarnished, we somehow feel some sympathy for her as well.
Meron Hadero’s short story collection A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times and Dionne Irving’s collection The Islands share thematic concerns. Hadero’s collection depicts Ethiopians at home and abroad and deals with issues of displacement, and Irving’s collection explores the Jamaican diaspora, following characters from Jamaica to Canada, Europe, and the United States. Hadero’s collection is focused on families, fitting in, and generations, whereas Irving’s more closely follows romantic and/or sexual relationships that either begin as or become exploitative.
Lastly, I really enjoyed Van Jordan’s poetry collection When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again, which features a strong narrative voice without sacrificing any of its lyricism. The newest collection blurs past and present, referencing numerous Shakespeare plays alongside interrogating the murder of Tamir Rice. The poems are just so smart.
Five of My Most Anticipated Books For 2024
I’ve been waiting to read Jhumpa Lahiri’s newest story collection Roman Stories, which came out in 2023. I love everything by Lahiri and I know it will be a special book (she’s the most awesome of the awesomes), so I’ve been saving her stories for when I’ll have a chance to savor them.
Another 2023 book that I’ve had my eye on is Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones’s Hurricane Book: A Lyric History, an interesting hybrid of poetry, essay, and history all centered around six hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico between 1928 and 2017. It’s published by Rose Metal Press, so I know it will offer an innovative take on its subject.
I’m looking forward to Susan Muaddi Darraj’s short story collection Behind You is the Sea, which bookends her previous collection A Curious Land, following the descendants of her fictionalized Tel-Al Hilou villagers from Palestine to the American Eastern shore.
I’m also looking forward to Karen Outen’s Dixon, Descending. Some twenty years ago I enrolled in a fiction workshop Outen offered in Philadelphia. She was a lovely teacher and I’m so happy to see that she’s completed her first book.
Ann Hood is the author of over a dozen novels, including the bestsellers The Knitting Circle, The Obituary Writer, The Book That Matters Most, and Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, and several memoirs, including the bestsellers Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love and Food, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, and Fly Girl, a memoir about her years as a TWA flight attendant. Her new novel, The Stolen Child, will be published by Norton on May 7. (photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan)
My greatest discovery in 2023 was Carys Davies, a Welsh writer whose novels completely captivated me. West (2021) is about a widower who leaves his young daughter to head west in search of giant monsters in the uncharted land west of the Mississippi River. The Mission House (2018) follows a man who leaves his demons behind in England for life in south India.
What’s even more wonderful is that Davies has a new novel, Clear, coming out in April 2024 about a minister in 1840’s Scotland sent to evict the lone occupant of a northern island.
I also loved Pet, a psychological thriller set in 1980s New Zealand by Catherine Chidgey. When twelve-year-old Justine becomes her charismatic teacher’s pet, the world as she knows it slowly starts to unravel.
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney is one of the best books I’ve read in a long while about grief. Thirteen-year-old Jamie wants to build a perpetual motion machine to connect with his mother, who died when he was born.
A few weeks after his wedding, Lewis learns he is turning into a great white shark in Shark Heart by Emily Habeck.
Besides Clear, in 2024 I’m looking forward to Tana French’s new Dublin mystery, The Hunter, and Bear by Julia Phillips, who wrote the gorgeous novel Disappearing Earth. Kate Atkinson has a new Jackson Brodie novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook, coming in September. And as a fan of Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age, I’m excited by her new novel, Come and Get It.
Linda Kass is the author of two World War II novels, both inspired by true events: Tasa’s Song (2016) and A Ritchie Boy (2020). Her latest book is Bessie, a novel about the life of Bess Myerson, the daughter of poor Russian Jewish immigrants who became Miss America in 1945. Kass is the founder and owner of Gramercy Books in Columbus, Ohio. (photo credit: Lorn Stolter)
Favorite Books Read in 2023:
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver: I was staggered by this very human story of a boy trying to survive in a community preyed upon for decades, the final blow coming from Purdue Pharma tearing apart the lives of a generation of kids like Demon. Kingsolver’s gift is in telling us what we need to know in a way that allows us to inhabit this boy, this place, and its people.
This Is Happiness by Niall Williams: This is an enchanting, big-hearted, and unhurried novel about a small Irish village in the 1950s or 60s and an intimate study of a small place on the brink of change. The prose is exquisite and descriptive, as authentic a book as any I’ve read.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett: In the spring of 2020, Lara Nelson is sheltering in place on the family’s orchard in northern Michigan with her husband, Joe, and their three twenty-something daughters. Harvesters are scarce and while the women are picking cherries, the daughters beg their mother to tell them about her brief career as an actor, particularly about her time in the 1980s as part of a summer theater troupe in a rural Michigan town called Tom Lake, where she shared the stage and was romantically involved with an actor who later became famous. The troupe is putting on a production of “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder and that dramatic work becomes this novel’s soul. Patchett’s themes are family, love, memory, and fate.
The Postcard by Anne Berest: This hybrid novel/memoir is the actual story of Anne Berest’s family members who died at Auschwitz in 1942. A postcard arrives in 2003 that lists four names: Ephraim, Emma, Noemie, Jacques. It takes Anne and her mother more than a decade to reach back into history to understand the experiences of her grandparents and aunts and uncles, and that is the tension and intrigue that fills this powerful, highly readable, and deeply moving account of a Jewish family almost completely wiped out in the Holocaust.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride: This is a charming and heartrending story about a neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania called Chicken Hill in the 1920s and ‘30s where Jews, Blacks, and immigrants made their homes, a community of people connected by love and loyalty. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store reveals a rapidly changing country as it zooms in on the sundry characters of Chicken Hill at a time of migration, violence, and segregation. In the end, McBride offers the Jewish message of Tikkun Olam, to heal or repair the world. He finds a way to remind us of something we desperately need to hear right now: that even during humanity’s most despairing times, love and community and action can save us.
Books I’m Excited to Read in 2024:
The Women by Kristin Hannah (February 6): This is an emotionally charged story of a turbulent, transformative era in America: the polarized 1960s and the women who put themselves in harm’s way to help others.
No Better Time by Sheila Williams (February 27): A historical novel about a little-known aspect of World War II—the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only Black Women’s Army Corps to serve overseas during the conflict.
Table for Two by Amor Towles (April 2): I am very excited to read this collection of six short stories set in New York City, along with a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood and featuring the strong-minded Evelyn Ross, who was in his first novel, Rules of Civility.
Lucky by Jane Smiley (April 23): Given my love of music and books that take me back to the 60s and early 70s, this is a soaring, soulful novel about a folk musician who tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell and rises to fame across our changing times. Described as “full of atmosphere, shot through with longing and exuberance, romance and rock ‘n’ roll,” Lucky is a story of chance, of grit, and a portrait of one woman’s journey in search of herself.
Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles (April 30): This book is based on the true story of Jessie Carso—the American librarian who changed the literary landscape of France during World War I.
Rosalie Morales Kearns is the author of the novel Kingdom of Women (2017) and the short story collection Virgins and Tricksters (2012).
Best reads of 2023:
Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses
A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers
Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead
Light Thickens by Ngaio Marsh
Looking forward to in 2024:
Dixon Descending by Karen Outen
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages by Janina Ramirez
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Francesca Marciano is the author of the novels Rules of the Wild: A Novel of Africa (1998), Casa Rossa (2002), and The End of Manners (2008), and the short story collections The Other Language (2014) and Animal Spirit (2020).
My favorite reads of 2023:
Apeirogon by Colum McCann: This was a re-read, but it’s one of my most favorite books ever. This is the right moment to read to read it if you need a sliver of hope about humanity and reconciliation.
North Woods by Daniel Mason
The Second Place by Rachel Cusk
The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore
Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan
In 2024 I want to read:
The Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel: A book I keep reminding myself to read because I loved Wolf Hall.
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko: I don’t know this author, but I heard this is a good book by a Native American author.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: Because everyone who has read it raves about it.
The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
Virginia Pye is the author of River of Dust, Red Phoenix, and Shelf Life of Happiness: Stories. Her most recent novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, a love story of writers and readers set in the Gilded Age, was published in October 2023.
Best reads of 2023:
I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai
The Bee Sting, Paul Murray
Half Life of a Stolen Sister, Rachel Cantor
The Blue Window, Suzanne Berne
Tom Lake, Ann Patchett
Books I look forward to reading in 2024:
Straw Dogs of the Universe, Ye Chun
Absolution, Alice McDermott
The Vulnerables, Sigrid Nunez
Old Crimes and Other Stories, Jill McCorkle
Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward
Ronna Wineberg is the author of the novel On Bittersweet Place (2014) and the story collections Nine Facts That Can Change Your Life (2016) and Artifacts and Other Stories (2022).
Books I enjoyed last year:
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers: Beautiful novel about a Black American family and their enslaved ancestors.
A Message from Carnegie by David Milofsky: Wonderful historical novel about Andrew Carnegie and the Gilded Age.
Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv: Insightful, moving exploration of mental illness and crisis. Rachel Aviv writes for The New Yorker.
Civil Service by Claire Schwartz: Powerful poems about civic life, political realities, power, love and more.
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman: Beautiful illustrations and text about the things women hold in their lives.
Books to read in 2024:
Soulscapes by Lee Woodman(poems)
Leaving by Roxana Robinson (a novel)
Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li(short stories)
Swimming with Ghosts by Michelle Brafman (a novel)
Mary Kay Zuravleff is the author of The Frequency of Souls (1996), The Bowl is Already Broken (2005), Man Alive! (2013), and American Ending (2023), about a young woman growing up in a family of Russian immigrants in the 1910s who seeks a thoroughly American life.
I’m in a pod of writers available for pep talks and craft tips. The great news is that several of the members launched a book last year! So in 2023 I devoured and championed Small World by Laura Zigman, Swimming with Ghosts by Michelle Brafman, American Arcadia by Laura Scalzo, Ana Turns by Lisa Gornick, and Absolution by Alice McDermott. Many of us buddied up for the Friendship Tour, where we had the opportunity to read together or interview each other.
Five books I loved in 2023 by writers I’ve never met were Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez, Bunny by Mona Awad, Happily by Sabrina Orah Mark, Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson, and Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood.
In 2024, I’m looking forward to Dixon, Descending by Karen Outen, This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud, Behind You is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson, and The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (which came out in 2021 and I’m eager to get to it this year).