Best Novels of 2023

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This was a spectacular year for fiction. Some of our most beloved authors returned with books that reminded us why we fell in love with them in the first place (good to see you again, Melissa Broder and Alice McDermott!) while other books introduced us to voices we didn’t know we longed for until we encountered them on the page.

Get ready for a range of styles, from propulsive mysteries to family dramas to historical reckonings to sci-fi spectaculars. All of them capture characters in their full (and sometimes hilarious) humanity and offer insights that will stick with you long after you’ve finished the last chapter. Let us know on Oprah Daily and Oprah’s Book Club socials which lines stuck with you, which stories broke your heart or made you laugh out loud, and which books made you want to go back to the beginning and start all over again.

Happiness Falls, by Angie Kim

Everything seemed normal the morning of Mia’s father’s disappearance. But an abnormality in 0.00000003 percent of her younger brother’s DNA resulted in a condition that leaves him—the only one who knows what happened on that fateful morning—perpetually smiling and unable to speak. As the mystery of her father’s disappearance becomes entangled with mysteries of the human condition, the question arises: Can we ever really know those we love? —Charley Burlock

Absolution, by Alice McDermott

“You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.” The year was 1963; the city, Saigon. Patricia was newly married to an engineer working for the military and spent her days ignoring artillery blasts and attending garden parties. Sixty years later, the next generation has questions, and Patricia has the benefit of hindsight. This is the Vietnam we never got in history class—a story of innocence lost, womanhood tested, and our nation held to account. —C.B.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride

Set in Pottstown’s Chicken Hill, this energetic novel (written by James McBride, author of the 85th Oprah’s Book Club pick) explores the complexities of a Black and Jewish community in the 1930s. Though set up as a mystery—complete with a dead body—the story finds its footing in Dodo, the deaf, parentless boy hidden by locals from officials attempting to put him in a home for the insane. Heartwarming and heartbreaking, a feat of language, life, and imagination. —Leigh Newman

Lucky Dogs, by Helen Schulman

Out of the inferno that was the Harvey Weinstein imbroglio comes a witty and insightful tale of two women. One is Meredith, a starlet who was raped by a powerful producer in a hotel room and is hiding in Paris to write her memoir. The other is Nina, who rescues Meredith during a nasty encounter at the Berthillon ice cream stand. Unfolding in Los Angeles, Sarajevo, Tel Aviv, and Florida, their tale will take your breath away. —Marion Winik

The Last Animal, by Ramona Ausubel

This compulsively readable story begins in Siberia, where a recently widowed paleobiologist, Jane, has lugged her two teenage daughters on a research trip. A startling discovery lands the grieving trio in a castle in Italy, trying to implant a woolly mammoth embryo into the womb of an eccentric couple’s pet elephant. A wildly entertaining adventure and a meditation on what it means to love your children in the “Age of Extinction.” —Lily Houston Smith

The Unsettled, by Ayana Mathis

Ava Carson grew up in Bonaparte, Alabama, one of the oldest and strongestBlack communities in the state. But by 1985, Bonaparte’s Black population has nearly vanished and Ava is living in a Philadelphia homeless shelter with a son that her own mother doesn’t know about. Through a chorus of virtuosic voices, the author of the 72nd Oprah’s Book Club selection, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, weaves together a story of a mother, a daughter, and the land that both unites and divides them. —C.B.

Death Valley

From the author of Milk Fed comes a hilarious and hallucinatory journey into the badlands of California. With a seriously ill husband at home and a critically injured father in the ICU, a writer heads to the Death Valley Best Western, desperate for solitude. Instead, she finds a giant cactus, climbs inside, and enters a landscape in which rocks talk, time warps, and escape is always a mirage. Like grief itself, this book is at once surreal, absurd, lucid, and wise; it will change you. —C.B.

Age of Vice, by Deepti Kapoor

Kapoor’s sprawling thriller portrays contemporary India with mesmerizing complexity. Three disparate souls mesh and clash at the center: a playboy with ambitions beyond his decadent lifestyle, a female journalist who becomes deeply entangled in his labyrinth, and a boy from a lower caste whose life of service and crime is shaped by deadly disputes involving both a wandering goat and an out-of-control Mercedes. —Carol V. Bell, M.W.

Fireworks Every Night, by Beth Raymer

The Borkoski family are down on their luck when they arrive in South Florida, but soon Dad is selling used cars as fast as they come in and the girls are cavorting in swimsuits at the KOA campground pool. It’s hard to pinpoint the moment when things go south; addiction, mental illness, and betrayal all play roles. Raymer balances the sadness of her story with terrific humor, deep compassion, and beautiful writing about the natural world. —M.W.

The Fraud, by Zadie Smith

This whip-smart historical novel follows the 1873 Tichborne trial from the perspective of Eliza Touchet, an uncompromising housemaid whose purpose on earth is to discover the truth behind headlines. Who stands in her way? Self-aggrandizing men, literary friends of her cousin by marriage, and good old-fashioned polite society. Documenting both intimate family scenes and true events, Smith tells a crackling story of hubris, justice, and storytelling itself. —Henry Guzmán

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