The Ten Best Books of 2023 Published by Independent Publishers
2023 has been a tumultuous year in the book publishing industry between big-time corporate merger drama, cancel culture debates, and the scramble to understand and harness the power of AI. Despite all these challenges, independent publishers have been stalwarts of the industry ecosystem, continuing to bet on daring and exciting literature. We salute them for sustaining the publication of books from writers we desperately need and love. At Tertulia, we are constantly making an extra effort to showcase indie press books which often deserve more attention than they get. Today we present our list of ten unforgettable standouts of the year - these are not to be missed!
10 books
Winner of the 2023 Booker Prize 
Bethanne Patrick Is Only Here to Signal Boost & Ron Charles
Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)
Paul LynchGROVE ATLANTIC: This dystopian novel is set in a near future Ireland, where a scientist fights to keep her family together as Ireland slips into totalitarianism following the rise of the rightwing National Alliance party. “A triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave…Readers will find it soul-shattering and true, and will not soon forget its warnings,” remarked judging chair Esi Edugyan.
Bethanne Patrick Is Only Here to Signal Boost & Ron CharlesHardcover, 2023
$26.00$13.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
A wildly popular coming-of-age story in a bygone bohemian New York City
Everything/Nothing/Someone: A Memoir
Alice CarrièreSPIEGEL & GRAU: This debut memoir about a young woman growing up in the Greenwich Village of the 1990s with two famous but unconventional parents seems to be everywhere right now, receiving love from the likes of Lisa Taddeo, Dani Shapiro, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennette McCurdy, and Michael Imperioli, who called it an "incredibly honest, raw, soulful, courageous, and articulate work of art."
Hardcover, 2023
$28.00$14.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
The saga of a French family devastated by the Holocaust
The Postcard
Anne BerestEUROPA EDITIONS: In this fictionalized French memoir, a family receives a cryptic postcard listing the names of four ancestors who perished in the Holocaust, setting off a suspenseful quest to find out who sent it and why. This new translation was a 2023 Natalie Portman’s book club pick.
Hardcover, 2023
$28.00$14.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
"Nothing short of a masterpiece." – The New York Times
John Self & Catherine Taylor 🇺🇦🌻
So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men
Claire KeeganGROVE ATLANTIC: Three exquisite short stories that ruminate on relationships from one of Ireland's brightest literary stars and author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted Small Things Like These.
John Self & Catherine Taylor 🇺🇦🌻Hardcover, 2023
$20.00$10.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
This stunning love letter to trees is exquisitely illustrated and assembled by an acclaimed artist and nature activist
Amitav Ghosh & Tin House
The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape
Katie HoltenTIN HOUSE: A fantastic gift, this book is filled with foliage-friendly contributions from a diverse range of thinkers and artists from Plato to Radiohead to Zadie Smith to Jorge Luis Borges and more. "More than informative, inspiring; many of its writers merge the lyric with insights that are scientific, intimate and surprising." — The Washington Post
Amitav Ghosh & Tin HouseOut of stock
Longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction
Charles Finch & Lauren Christensen
A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial
Viet Thanh NguyenGROVE ATLANTIC: This “intensely personal reflection of the Vietnamese refugee experience” was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award, with the National Book Foundation praising it as “a complex meditation on Nguyen’s life as a father and a son, and an exploration of the murkiness of memory and necessity of forgiveness."
Charles Finch & Lauren ChristensenHardcover, 2023
$28.00$14.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
A historical family saga longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Elin Hilderbrand & WME Books
Coleman Hill
Kim Coleman FooteSJP LIT / ZANDO: Sarah Jessica Parker was taken by this "sweeping yet intimate family saga" that follows two women leaving behind the racism and poverty of the South for New Jersey during the Great Migration. It’s a moving intergenerational story based on historical records and inspired by the author’s own family legend.
Elin Hilderbrand & WME BooksHardcover, 2023
$28.00$14.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
A moving and unflinching memoir about surviving childhood trauma 
Cuss Whisperer & Christine Pride
Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways: A Memoir
Brittany MeansZIBBY BOOKS: A survivor's tale that looks back with a hopeful eye on a difficult childhood marked by poverty, abuse, and instability, this powerful memoir is the “most readable and the most psychologically rigorous book I've read in decades. I needed the reminder that art can do this," exclaimed Kiese Laymon.
Cuss Whisperer & Christine PrideHardcover, 2023
$27.99$13.99 + Free shipping50% off your first book
A lyrical ode to the year 2020 that will have staying power as a meditation on that time
Canongate & Mark Avery
Cacophony of Bone: The Circle of a Year
Kerri Ní DochartaighMILKWEED EDITIONS: In this pandemic collage told through essays, bits of text, poems and journal entries, a woman and her partner retreat to a remote Irish cottage to embark on a new chapter in life, when lockdown upends their plan. It’s a lyrical meditation on building a family in new surroundings that’s "powerful, unflinching…part hymn to nature, part memoir," according to The Guardian.
Canongate & Mark AveryHardcover, 2023
$26.00$13.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
A finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature 
Alexander Chee & Alina Stefanescu
On a Woman's Madness
Astrid RoemerTWO LINES PRESS: In this sensuous new translation of the 1982 queer classic, a recently married Surinamese woman escapes her abusive husband and sets off to the bustling city of Paramaribo. The Harvard Review called it “difficult, fragmentary, gorgeous, and at times unpredictable...The novel is saturated with pain, drama, pleasure, and violence, which may rightly invite comparison to classics by Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.”
Alexander Chee & Alina StefanescuHardcover, 2023
$24.95$12.48 + Free shipping50% off your first book