Bestselling Books

Full Year - 2023

View a collage of these titles.

40 Bestselling Fiction

  1. Jelani’s Key by D. Amari Jackson
  2. Voices of the Harlem Renaissance: Originally Published as The New Negro an Interpretation by Alain Locke and Introduction by Troy Johnson
  3. Killens Review of Arts & Letters (Fall / Winter 2022-2023): Jubilee by Clarence V. Reynolds
  4. Coleman Hill (hardcover): A Biomythography by Kim Coleman Foote
  5. Intermission by Phyllis R. Dixon
  6. Repeat After Me: Big Things to Say Every Day by Jazmyn Simon and Dulé Hill
  7. midnight & indigo Issue 7: celebrating black women writers by Ianna A. Small
  8. Treasure Island (hardcover): Runaway Gold by Jewell Parker Rhodes
  9. The Thing about Home by Rhonda McKnight
  10. Black Girls by Dominique Furukawa
  11. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
  12. Jackal by Erin E. Adams
  13. Black Mother Goose Book by Elizabeth Murphy Oliver
  14. Alice in Dreamland by Roland S. Jefferson
  15. Something, Someday by Amanda Gorman
  16. The Making of Butterflies by Zora Neale Hurston and Adapted by Ibram X. Kendi
  17. Running to Fall: A Novel by Kalisha Buckhanon
  18. Fool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything by Dean Conan
  19. Homegoing: A Novel by Yaa Gyasi
  20. Cornrows (2023) by Camille Yarbrough
  21. Killens Review of Arts & Letters (Fall / Winter 2021): The Beautiful Struggle by Clarence V. Reynolds
  22. Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
  23. Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
  24. Shining Legacy: Storypoems for the Young, So Black Heroes and Heroines Forever Will Be Sung by Nkechi Taifa
  25. Sex Therapy by Shaun Sinclair
  26. Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown
  27. I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes
  28. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham
  29. Dr. No by Percival Everett
  30. Lone Women by Victor Lavalle
  31. Bright Eyes, Brown Skin by Cheryl Willis Hudson and Bernette Ford
  32. Swimming in Cotton by Lawrence Deron Thomas
  33. I Want to Be Big! by Tiffany Golden
  34. The Coming by Daniel Black
  35. My Red, White, and Blue by Alana Tyson
  36. The Talk by Darrin Bell
  37. Behold the Dreamers: A Novel by Imbolo Mbue
  38. Nigeria Jones by Ibi Zoboi
  39. Black Girl Lost by Donald Goines
  40. Remember Us by Jacqueline Woodson

35 Bestselling Nonfiction

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

23 Bestselling Poetry

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

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