Challenge Your Reading With These Books in 2023

Our favorite member of Lethe is back in another tale of murder, monsters and dark magic set among the Ivy League elite. Bardugo’s follow-up to Ninth House doubles down on all the sinister intrigue and atmospheric chills that make this mesmerizing dark academia series impossible to put down. 

A riveting debut that will keep you up at night, She Is a Haunting is perfect for fans of Within These Wicked Walls and White Smoke. When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam to visit her estranged father, her goal is to be enough: straight enough, Vietnamese enough, and American enough, but the French colonial house Ba is restoring has other plans. Jade wakes up night after night paralyzed, discovering strange things, including the ghost of a beautiful bride cryptically warning her not to eat. Exploring themes like queerness, generational trauma, and colonialism, this horror novel will haunt you long after you’ve turned the final page.  

Rom-com and Emily Henry are two of our favorite pairings. Book lovers, meeting people on vacation, beach reads — these are all key components (and titles) of Emily Henry’s previous three books. Put them all together, and we not only have our “happy place” but the NEW book by Henry. We know you’ve swooned over her books, and if not, now is your chance. Trust us. 

Maybe you’ve been part of The Thursday Murder Club (as written by Richard Osman) or enjoyed the literary Easter-eggs in Anthony Horowitz’s mystery Magpie Murders. If so! It’s time to join The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts as designed by Rupert Holmes. It’s the diabolical lessons they never taught you in school! Opening to the first page is your admission to a delightful read. And then some. 

This graphic portrait of the boxing legend Jack Johnson, Last On His Feet gives readers a front-row seat to the Battle of the Century which took place on July 4, 1910. In this boxing match between Jack Johnson, the world’s first heavyweight champion, and Jim Jeffries, a former heavyweight championed deemed the “great white hope,” spectators were hoping for Jeffries to beat Johnson to restore the racial hierarchy. This masterful book is full of breathtaking illustrations and lyrical verse that bobs and weaves throughout Johnson’s life to paint the full picture of who Johnson was both in and out of the ring.  

For a tale of survival and shipwrecks, pick up The Wager. This riveting tale from David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon, will keep any reader captivated as they discover the events of the shipwreck, survival, and savagery surrounding the events on The Wager. David Grann is one of our favorite authors to bring true events and places to life through his writing, and we are thrilled to get yet another unputdownable book from him.  

This is the book that people already can’t stop talking about. Perfect for fans of The Godfather, this novel will enthrall readers as they read this crime thriller and family saga taking place in New Delhi. Easily bingeable and utterly intoxicating, make sure you set aside an entire weekend to binge-read this masterpiece of a novel! 

Considered “a fable for our times” by Alan Gratz, Big Tree is a unique and epic adventure that will linger in your mind long after you’ve finished. When two Sycamore seeds — Louise and Merwin — are launched into the world before they’re ready, their wit and imagination kick in, helping them navigate a dangerous and scary world, all while Louise has a mysterious voice speaking to her in her dreams. With stunning illustrations and a great hopefulness, Big Tree is a must-read for readers of all ages.  

Seventeenth-century pirate proletariats and Madagascar royalty as avant-garde “influencers” in the evolution of Enlightenment concepts of democratic governance, a pirate tale you haven’t read but should. The distinguished anthropologist, David Graeber, incendiary, revered, and missed author of Debt, Bullshit Jobs, and The Dawn of Everything (with David Wengrow), has left readers one final dazzling gem of a book. Short, sweet, utterly original. 

Joy Harjo’s iconic and renowned poem Remember invites readers young and not so young to pause and reflect on the immense wonder of the world around us. This picture book adaptation featuring the art of Michaela Goade is stunning. Simply, stunning. In the words of the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo, “We need poems when we lose something important to us, when we need to pay attention, or when we need to put something back together that has been broken.” We could all benefit by heeding her advice and that begins with embracing Remember. 

From the author of Good Vibes, Good Life comes a guide to finding love by first finding and nurturing your true self. Building healthy, sustainable relationships with others requires individuals to truly love ourselves and be able to recognize our own desires and needs. In this book, Vex King helps us develop these relationships with ourselves, and in turn others, with wisdom, thoughtful self-practice, and easy-to adopt-habit builders.  

Have you been biting your knuckles waiting…waiting…waiting…for the follow up to the first book in Jones’s Indian Lake Trilogy? It’s here. Book two. Now all you have to do after finishing Don’t Fear the Reaper is bite knuckles and repeat until book three is released. Better yet, go back to My Heart is a Chainsaw. All of Jones’s oeuvre is worthy of a re-read.