Publishers Weekly Best Books 2023

The best books in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category are:

• Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon)
• Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez (Hogarth)
• The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom)
• Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit)
• Like Smoke Like Light, Yukimi Ogawa (Mythic Delirium)
• Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh (Tordotcom)
• The Circumference of the World, Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)

Titles and authors of genre interest listed in other categories follow.

Fiction:

• Terrace Story, Hilary Leichter (Ecco)
• Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)

Mystery/Thriller:

• Flags on the Bayou, James Lee Burke (Atlantic Monthly)
• The Devil’s Playground, Craig Russell (Doubleday)
• The Eden Test, Adam Sternbergh (Flatiron)

Romance:

• I Am Ayah: The Way Home, Donna Hill (Sideways)
• A Shot in the Dark, Victoria Lee (Dell)

Young Adult:

• The Blood Years, Elana K. Arnold (Balzer + Bray)
• Blood Debts, Terry J. Benton-Walker (Tor Teen)
• Spin, Rebecca Caprara (Atheneum)
• The King is Dead, Benjamin Dean (Little, Brown)
• What Stalks Among Us, Sarah Hollowell (Clarion)
• The Isles of the Gods, Amie Kaufman (Knopf)
• A Door in the Dark, Scott Reintgen (McElderry)

Middle Grade:

• Simon Sort of Says, Erin Bow (Hyperion)
• The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity, Nicholas Day, illustrated by Brett Helquist (Random House Studio)
• The Eyes and the Impossible, Dave Eggers, illustrated by Shawn Harris (Knopf and McSweeney’s)
• The Probability of Everything, Sarah Everett (Clarion)
• Gone Wolf, Amber McBride (Feiwel and Friends)
• The Otherwoods, Justine Pucella Winans (Bloomsbury)
• The Story of Gumluck the Wizard, Adam Rex (Chronicle)
• Bea Wolf, Zach Weinersmith, illustrated by Boulet (First Second)

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