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Rebecca's Favorite Reads of 2023

So many 4 and 5 star books this year. These are some titles that made lasting impressions--mostly literary fiction, some historical fiction, a dash of dystopia, thrillers, and a smattering of romantic comedy to keep things light. Hope you find something you'll enjoy! Annotations from NoveList.

Tulsa City-County Library

21 items

  • Follows the life of Ever Geimausaddle, a young Native American, through the multigenerational perspectives of his family as they face policy corruption, threats of job loss, constant resettlement and the pent up rage of centuries of injustice.
    Book, 2022Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2022. — Fiction
  • In a small Irish town in 1985, coal merchant and family man, Bill Furlong, while delivering an order to the local convent, makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
    Book, 2021New York : Grove Press, 2021. — Fiction
  • As the world changes around them, a family weathers the storms of growing up, growing older, falling in and out of love, losing the things that are most precious—and learning to go on.
    Book, 2023New York : Random House, [2023] — Fiction
  • A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound.…
    Book, 2023New York : Riverhead Books, 2023. — Fiction
  • The star of a popular, but controversial for-profit program in the private prison industry that basically turns prisoners into gladiators contemplates freedom, in the new novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Friday Black.
    Book, 2023New York : Pantheon Books, [2023] — Fiction
  • When a recently retired family patriarch clears out his bank account and disappears during a sweltering summer in 1976, his three children converge on their mother's home for the first time in years and track clues to an ancestral village in…
    Book, 2013New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. — Fiction
  • A fierce queer coming-of-age story follows the personal and political awakening of a young gay black man in 1980s New York City, from the television drama writer and producer of Narcos.
    Book, 2022New York : Flatiron Books, [2022] — Fiction
  • In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance…
    Book, 2023New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2023] — Fiction
  • A sketch writer for a late-night comedy show, Sally Milz pokes fun at the phenomenon of talented but average men who've gotten romantically involved with beautiful women and how the reverse never happens until she meets a pop music sensation who…
    Book, 2023New York : Random House, [2023] — Fiction
  • The best-selling author of Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America presents a collection of relatable and humorous essays that explore his return to his hometown of Baltimore.
    Book, 2023New York : Ballantine Books, [2023] — 818.603 T461ya2 2023
  • The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans…
    Book, 2023New York : Crown, [2023] — 339.46 D465p 2023
  • After the death of her literary rival in a freak accident, author June Hayward steals her just-finished masterpiece, sending it to her agent as her own work, but as emerging evidence threatens her success, she discovers just how far she’ll go to…
    Book, 2023New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2023] — Fiction
  • A young poet reflects on his 3,000-mile journey from El Salvador to the United States when he was nine years old, during which he was faced with perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions during two…
    Book, 2022New York : Hogarth, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, [2022] — 305.906912 Z25a 2022
  • When Leda's daughters leave home to be with their father, she decides to take a trip to a small coastal town in Italy, but soon after she arrives memories from her unsettled past come back to haunt her.
    Book, 2008New York : Europa Editions, 2008. — Fiction
  • In the riveting new novel from the author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist The Great Believers, a woman must reckon with her past when new details surface about a tragedy at her elite New England boarding school.
    Book, 2023[New York] : Viking, [2023] — Fiction
  • Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy. In twelve striking,…
    Book, 2022Portland, Oregon : Tin House, [2022] — Fiction
  • Nineteen years after a passionate love affair created a rift between her family, Carlisle must face the events of that fateful summer, in this mesmerizing tale of betrayal, art and ambition set in the world of professional ballet, NYC during the…
    Book, 2022New York : Doubleday, [2022] — Fiction
  • While investigating the mysterious death of matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of a famous soap empire, Andy Mills is seduced by the safety and freedom found in Lavender House, where a queer family lives honestly and openly, until he becomes a pawn in…
    Book, 2022New York : Forge, 2022. — Mystery
  • Accepting a position at a small-town public library, a recent graduate student and failed novelist discovers a patron dead in the library bathroom and begins to dig up her co-worker's past as a nurse with a trail of premature deaths.
    Book, 2023New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2023. — Fiction
  • Falling in love while attending a competitive 1980s performing arts high school, David and Sarah rise through the ranks before the realities of their family dynamics and economic statuses trigger a spiral that impacts their adult lives.
    eAudiobook, 2019Macmillan Audio, 2019