All 98 Bestselling Books for Full Year - 2023

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Click Headings Below for a the List of Bestselling Books with Images. View a collage of these titles.

25 Bestselling Fiction

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

27 Bestselling Nonfiction Books

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

25 Bestselling Children’s Books

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

21 Bestselling Poetry Books

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