Bestselling Books

Full Year - 2023

View a collage of these titles.

25 Bestselling Fiction

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

27 Bestselling Nonfiction

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

25 Bestselling Children’s Books

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

21 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. Collected Poems: 1974–2004 by Rita Dove
  7. Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess
  8. The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry by Arnold Rampersad and Hilary Herbold
  9. On The Imperial Highway: New And Selected Poems by Jayne Cortez
  10. Dream of a Word: The Tia Chucha Press Poetry Anthology by Quraysh Ali Lansana and Toni Asante Lightfoot
  11. Blessing The Boats: New And Selected Poems 1988-2000 (American Poets Continuum) by Lucille Clifton
  12. Side Notes from the Archivist: Poems by Anastacia-Reneé
  13. Life On Mars: Poems by Tracy K. Smith
  14. Mother Love: Poems by Rita Dove
  15. Hipology: Horizons in Poetry by Ron Alle and Stella Crews
  16. Magic City by Yusef Komunyakaa
  17. Afrodisia;: New poems by Ted Joans
  18. Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman
  19. S O S: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka
  20. Heroism in the New Black Poetry: Introductions and Interviews by D. H. Melhem
  21. Black Poetry by Dudley Randall
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