All 98 Bestselling Books for Full Year - 2023

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

25 Bestselling Fiction

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

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

21 Bestselling Poetry Books

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