New Literary Fiction to Read in 2023

This powerful and moving novel from the bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and Violeta weaves together past and present, tracing the ripple effects of war and immigration on one child in Europe in 1938 and another in the United States in 2019.

In the fourteen masterful stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today, across borders, religions, and race.

In I Have Some Questions for You, award-winning author Rebecca Makkai has crafted her most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters, I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph.

Six women — mothers, daughters, sisters — gone missing. Inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, this harrowing novel tells the story of two sisters, both of whom could be the next victims, from the internationally bestselling author of Betty.

An immersive debut set across the temples, slums, and gated estates of late-twentieth-century Bangkok, telling the story of three families striving to control their destinies in a merciless, sometimes brutally violent, metropolis.

A lyrical debut novel that asks what we owe to our families, what we owe to our ancestors, and what we owe to ourselves. Janelle M. Williams’s Gone Like Yesterday employs magical realism to explore the majestic and haunting experience of being a Black woman in today’s America.

The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries — from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.

When siblings Jacob and Belinda Nti were growing up in Ghana, their goal was simple: to move to America. For them, the United States was both an opportunity and a struggle, a goal and an obstacle. Their desires and ambitions highlight the promise and disappointment that life in a new country offers. How each character comes to understand this and how each learns from both their dashed hopes and their fulfilled dreams lie at the heart of what makes What Napoleon Could Not Do such a compelling, insightful read.

Richly drawn stories about the lives of ordinary families in contemporary Botswana as they navigate relationships, tradition, and caretaking in a rapidly changing world.

A woman is haunted by the Mexican folk demon La Llorona in this “utterly terrifying and wholly immersive … story about generational trauma, colonization, systemic oppression, and the horror at the heart of motherhood” (Library Journal, starred review).

A young woman’s past and present collide when she brings her white fiancé home to meet her Chinese immigrant parents in this vibrant debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.

This beautiful, page-turning, and redemptive story of a mother’s gripping journey across the Caribbean to find her stolen children and piece her family back together is a “celebration of motherhood and female resilience” (The Observer).

A courageous young Sri Lankan woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor in this “heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war” (Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half).

The fates of two unforgettable women — one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life’s last vital act — intertwine in this sweeping, powerful novel set at the terminus of the Underground Railroad.

Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family — loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all. This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything, and the family ties that bind can also kill.

What happens to a girl’s sense of joy and belonging — to her belief in herself — as she becomes a woman? This unforgettable portrait of coming-of-age offers subtle yet powerful reflections on class, parenthood, addiction, lust, and the irrepressible power of dreams.

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, lovable — if fallible — characters, it’s about the peculiar unknowability of someone else’s family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love — all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.

A haunting, virtuosic debut novel about two young men who fall in love during World War I. In Memoriam is “dazzling and wrenching, witty and wildly romantic, with echoes of Brideshead Revisited and Atonement” (Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians).

From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, a dazzling collection of short stories that look deeply into the heart of family relationships, marriage, loss and memory, and what it means to spend a life together.

From the bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a “powerfully affecting” (People) family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole? An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.

This slyly humorous, thoroughly winsome novel finds the purpose in life’s curveballs, insisting that even when we are painfully warped by those we love most, we can be brought closer to our truest selves.

From nationally bestselling, award-winning author Liam Callanan, the story of an opportunity to start over at midlife, a chance to save a struggling convent in the Eternal City, and the dramatic re-emergence of an old flame.

A scammer as alluring as she is elusive irrevocably upends the lives of two strangers in this gripping novel from the acclaimed author of The Best Kind of People.

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past. From the two-time Booker Prize finalist, a dazzling written novel exploring love, memory, grief, and long-buried secrets.

A remarkable debut novel about the early postpartum days of motherhood: a visceral and revelatory portrait of a woman struggling with maternal fear and its looming madness, showing how difficult and fragile those days can be, and how vital love is to pull anyone out from the dark.

Full of unforgettable characters and written with Elizabeth Berg’s characteristic warmth, humor, and insight into people, Earth’s the Right Place for Love is about the power of kindness, character, and family, and how love can grow when you least expect it.

A brilliantly funny debut novel that follows a writer lured to Los Angeles to adapt her feminist mermaid novel into a big-budget action film, who believes her heroine has come to life to take revenge for Hollywood’s violations.

Set against a changing Singapore, discover a sweeping novel about one boy’s unique gifts and the childhood love that will complicate the fate of his community and country.

Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world, from one of today’s finest short story writers — MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow Kelly Link, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Get in Trouble.

An elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village, by the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Water Cure.

This provocative, fiercely imaginative debut follows a woman trying to slip the shackles of society by controlling her body and mind in extreme ways. Uncanny, alluring, and intimate, Chrysalis raises vital questions about selfhood and solitude. This daring novel asks if it is possible for a woman to have agency over her body while remaining part of society, and then offers its own explosive answer.

A heartrending story about a young mother’s fight to keep her daughter, and the winds of fortune that tear them apart by the USA Today bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War.

A playful, witty, and resonant novel in which a single mother and her two teen daughters engage in a wild scientific experiment and discover themselves in the process, from the award-winning writer of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty.

Set amid the Jamaican diaspora in London at the dawn of the 1980s, a mesmerizing story of love, loss, and self-discovery that vibrates with the liberating power of music. The unforgettable story of one young woman’s search for home, animated by a ferocity of vision, electrifying music, and the Jamaican spiritual imagination, Fire Rush is a blazing achievement from a brilliant voice in contemporary fiction.

From the “visionary” (New York Times Book Review) author of the International Booker Prize winner The Vegetarian, Greek Lessons is the story of the unlikely bond between a man losing his vision and a woman who has lost her language. It is a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection — a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.

A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt’s secrets in this sweeping debut, confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage.

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far removed from America’s own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black.

A heartrending novel based on a true story of love, loyalty, and the limits we confront when our deepest values are tested, by award-winning writer Buzzy Jackson.

From the legendary actor and bestselling author: a novel about the making of a star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film … and the humble comic books that inspired it. Funny, touching, and wonderfully thought-provoking, while also capturing the changes in America and American culture since World War II.

An epic yet intimate novel about a Colombian man caught up in the sweep of global, historical, and ideological revolutions. Equal parts family saga and epic historical novel, Retrospective reveals the story of one man and his family — based on real people and events — and a devastating portrait of the forces that shaped their lives, and for half a century, turned the world upside down.

A young woman pretends to be someone she isn’t in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls. Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline’s The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.

A provocative and lyrical debut novel follows a trailblazing Black ballerina who must reconcile the ever-rising stakes of her grueling career with difficult questions of love, loss, and her journey to self-liberation, from a sensuous new voice in fiction.

What if your two favorite people hated each other with a passion? Long-standing tensions between a husband, his wife, and her best friend finally come to a breaking point in this sharp domestic comedy of manners, told brilliantly over the course of one day.

A novel about friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.