All 98 Bestselling Books for Full Year - 2023

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Click Headings Below for a the List of Bestselling Books with Images. View a collage of these titles.

25 Bestselling Fiction

  1. Behold the Dreamers: A Novel by Imbolo Mbue
  2. Voices of the Harlem Renaissance: Originally Published as The New Negro an Interpretation by Alain Locke and Introduction by Troy Johnson
  3. Intermission by Phyllis R. Dixon
  4. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
  5. Running to Fall: A Novel by Kalisha Buckhanon
  6. Killens Review of Arts & Letters (Fall / Winter 2021) by Clarence V. Reynolds
  7. Sex Therapy by Shaun Sinclair
  8. Dr. No by Percival Everett
  9. The Coming by Daniel Black
  10. Black Girl Lost by Donald Goines
  11. Killens Review of Arts & Letters (Fall / Winter 2022-2023) by Clarence V. Reynolds
  12. midnight & indigo Issue 7: celebrating black women writers by Ianna A. Small
  13. Jackal by Erin E. Adams
  14. Fool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything by Dean Conan
  15. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
  16. Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown
  17. Lone Women by Victor Lavalle
  18. The Talk by Darrin Bell
  19. Coleman Hill: A Biomythography by Kim Coleman Foote
  20. The Thing about Home by Rhonda McKnight
  21. Alice in Dreamland by Roland S. Jefferson
  22. Homegoing: A Novel by Yaa Gyasi
  23. Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
  24. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham
  25. Swimming in Cotton by Lawrence Deron Thomas

27 Bestselling Nonfiction Books

  1. The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power by Robin L. Smith and Courtney B. Vance
  2. Black on Black: On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America by Daniel Black
  3. In Spite of the Consequences: Prison Letters on Exoneration, Abolition, and Freedom by Lacino Hamilton
  4. The Jewish Onslaught: Despatches from the Wellesley Battlefront by Tony Martin
  5. I Love My People by Kim Singleton
  6. Searching for Agabus: Embracing Authenticity and Finding Your Way to You by Michael Walrond
  7. Black Labor, White Wealth : The Search for Power and Economic Justice by Claud Anderson
  8. The Gospel according to James Baldwin: What America’s Great Prophet Can Teach Us about Life, Love, and Identity by Greg Garrett
  9. The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks by Toni Tipton-Martin
  10. Reparations on Fire: How and Why it’s Spreading Across America by Nkechi Taifa
  11. White Fear: How the Browning of America Is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds by Roland S. Martin
  12. It Hurts to Lose a Special Person: Grieving the Death of One You Love by Amy Ross Mumford
  13. Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Recipes, Letters, and Remembrances by Kwame Alexander
  14. New Dimensions in African History by John Henrik Clarke
  15. Black History: An Inclusive Account of American History by Walter Milton, Jr. and Joel A. Freeman
  16. Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice by Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian
  17. The ISIS Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing
  18. Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote-A History, a Crisis, a Plan by Eric Holder
  19. A Black History Reader: 101 Questions You Never Thought to Ask by Claud Anderson
  20. How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill by Jericho Brown
  21. Don’t Let Them Bury My Story: The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre in Her Own Words by Viola Ford Fletcher
  22. Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey
  23. Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America! by Ronald Dalton Jr.
  24. Only for the Brave at Heart: Essays Rethinking Race, Crime, and Justice by Leon E. Pettiway
  25. Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
  26. CROWNED: Magical Folk and Fairy Tales from the Diaspora by Kahran and Regis Bethencourt
  27. How White Folks Got So Rich: The Untold Story of American White Supremacy by Reclamation Project

25 Bestselling Children’s Books

  1. Child of the Civil Rights Movement by Paula Young Shelton
  2. Nigeria Jones by Ibi Zoboi
  3. Remember Us by Jacqueline Woodson
  4. Little Rosetta and the Talking Guitar: The Musical Story of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Woman Who Invented Rock and Roll by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow
  5. Jelani’s Key by D. Amari Jackson
  6. Sailing Commitment Around the World with Captain Bill Pinkney by Bill Pinkney
  7. Black Girls by Dominique Furukawa
  8. Dream Big, Little Leader by Vashti Harrison
  9. I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes
  10. Bright Eyes, Brown Skin by Cheryl Willis Hudson and Bernette Ford
  11. The Making of Butterflies by Zora Neale Hurston and Adapted by Ibram X. Kendi
  12. Repeat After Me: Big Things to Say Every Day by Jazmyn Simon and Dulé Hill
  13. Cornrows (2023) by Camille Yarbrough
  14. I Want to Be Big! by Tiffany Golden
  15. Treasure Island: Runaway Gold by Jewell Parker Rhodes
  16. Something, Someday by Amanda Gorman
  17. Shining Legacy: Storypoems for the Young, So Black Heroes and Heroines Forever Will Be Sung by Nkechi Taifa
  18. I Am Rosa Parks (Penguin Young Readers, Level 4) by Rosa Parks and Jim Haskins
  19. An American Story by Kwame Alexander
  20. My Red, White, and Blue by Alana Tyson
  21. A Flag for Juneteenth by Kim Taylor
  22. Black Mother Goose Book by Elizabeth Murphy Oliver
  23. The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country by Amanda Gorman
  24. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
  25. C is for Curly by Markita Staples-Green

21 Bestselling Poetry Books

  1. Life On Mars: Poems by Tracy K. Smith
  2. Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans
  3. Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess
  4. Dream of a Word: The Tia Chucha Press Poetry Anthology by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Toni Asante Lightfoot
  5. Mother Love: Poems by Rita Dove
  6. Afrodisia;: New poems by Ted Joans
  7. Heroism in the New Black Poetry: Introductions and Interviews by D. H. Melhem
  8. Three Pieces by Ntozake Shange
  9. Never As Strangers by Laini Mataka
  10. The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry by Arnold Rampersad and Hilary Herbold
  11. Blessing The Boats: New And Selected Poems 1988-2000 (American Poets Continuum) by Lucille Clifton
  12. Hipology: Horizons in Poetry by Ron Alle and Stella Crews
  13. Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman
  14. Black Poetry by Dudley Randall
  15. Collected Poems: 1974–2004 by Rita Dove
  16. 1919 by Eve L. Ewing
  17. Above Ground by Clint Smith
  18. On The Imperial Highway: New And Selected Poems by Jayne Cortez
  19. Side Notes from the Archivist: Poems by Anastacia-Reneé
  20. Magic City by Yusef Komunyakaa
  21. S O S: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka