If you’re feeling blue about the lower temperatures and shorter days, do what a fabulous pop star would do and dive into THE reigning beach read of summer 2023, as Dua Lipa brilliantly suggested with her latest club selection. Meanwhile, Roxane Gay picked a propulsive “Gone Girl-style thriller,” Queen Camilla kept things dark and academic with a cult campus novel, and Natalie Portman chose a heart wrenching novella by one of Ireland’s biggest literary stars.

The Guest

Foster

The Secret History

What Book Clubs Are Reading in December

Discover the top book club picks of the month, including selections by Roxane Gay, Reese Witherspoon, and Natalie Portman.

From Beatlemaniacs to fashionistas to nature-lovers, give your loved ones that perfect book that perfectly reflects their passions. This collection of beautifully designed large-format books includes the perfect keepsake for your gift recipient.

Our America: A Photographic History

The New York Times Best Seller

The Story of Art Without Men

The Gourmand's Egg. a Collection of Stories & Recipes

The 30 Coffee Table Books to Delight This Holiday

The Best Coffee Table Books to Give This Holiday

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! 

Prophet Song

Everything/Nothing/Someone: A Memoir

The Postcard

The Ten Best Books of 2023 Published by Independent Publishers

Discover top books of 2023 published by independent presses including Paul Lynch, Anne Berest, Astrid Roemer, Claire Keegan, Rob Delaney, Kim Coleman Foote, Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Viet Thanh Nguyen, Alice Carrière and Brittany Means. 

As the season of literary awards comes to its climax, one of the most exciting and optimistic of the prizes highlights emerging literary talent. Each year, the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize honors the best long-form debut work of fiction. Following the winners and shortlisters for this award is a great way to discover new voices and keep up-and-coming writers on your radar. Recent winners of this prestigious award include Kirstin Valdez Quade (The Five Wounds) and Raven Leilani (Luster). Congratulations to this year's winner and finalists, listed below with a description from the Center for each book.

We Are a Haunting

Moonrise Over New Jessup

Family Lore

The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize

The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize Shortlist and Winner

The Center for Fiction has announced the shortlist for its First Novel Prize, which honors the best debut work of fiction each year. Recent winners of this prestigious award include Kirstin Valdez Quade (The Five Wounds) and Raven Leilani (Luster).

The editors of The Atlantic have selected their picks for the 10 best books of the year. "We were drawn to ambitious projects, and looked for writing that was clear and beautiful," reads the editorial note. "Most important, we searched for books that you won’t be able to put down." The five fiction picks included Booker winner David Diop's Beyond the Door of No Return and Emily Wilson's highly acclaimed new translation of The Iliad. The five nonfiction picks included the widely praised memoir by Safiya Sinclair of her dysfunctional upbringing in Jamaica and David Leonhardt's history of the American dream. 

Birnam Wood

Our Share of Night

Beyond the Door of No Return

The Atlantic 10: The Best Books of the Year

The Atlantic 10: The Editors Select The 10 Best Books of the Year

The editorial staff of The Atlantic has selected their picks for the 10 best books of the year including novels, memoirs, translations of contemporary novels, translations of ancient texts, histories and more. 

Today is New Books Tuesday! This week we’ve got: the dystopian Irish novel that won this year’s Booker Prize, a historical murder mystery starring a famed 18th-century midwife, the life and times of a pioneering jazz legend, 24 hours in orbit with a crew of multicultural astronauts, plus an Atlantic writer takes on America’s religious extremists. 

Orbital

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song

New Arrivals: The Best Book Releases This Week

The dystopian Irish novel that won this year’s Booker, a historical murder mystery starring a famed 18th-century midwife, the life and times of a pioneering jazz legend, plus an Atlantic writer takes on America’s religious extremists. 

These are the top mystery books released in 2023 according to The Washington Post.

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

Blood Sisters

The Body by the Sea: A Brittany Mystery

Top Ten Mystery Books of 2023 According to The Washington Post

Discover the exceptional literary achievements of 2023 through this list of books honored with the most prestigious awards. From novels, to books in translation to mysteries to sci-fi to stories, see for yourself why these celebrated titles have captured both hearts and accolades.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner

The Award-Winning Fiction Books of 2023 

The 2023 Award-Winning Books in Fiction 

Discover the exceptional literary achievements of 2023 through this list of books honored with the most prestigious awards from novels to mysteries to sci-fi to stories. 

Cline has created a character who is so intriguing... We never really find out who she is – is she a thief, an escort, or just a young girl figuring it out?...this book shimmers with tension, flirts with danger, and begs questions about class, privilege, excess and survival.

Belletrist Book Club

The real protagonist here is the fire itself: an unruly and terrifying force with insatiable appetites. This book is both a real-life thriller and a moment-by-moment account of what happened — and why, as the climate changes and humans don’t, it will continue to happen again and again.

News tips? Share them here: https://t.co/ghL9OoYKMM

National Book Award

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

How could I resist a suspense novel in which a critic becomes an amateur detective in order to avoid becoming a murder suspect or even a victim? Soloski... [has] written a genuinely disturbing suspense tale that explores the theater of cruelty life can sometimes be.

Book Critic, "Fresh Air," NPR; 
The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism, Georgetown University

Here in the Dark

[Pod] taught me countless facts about ocean life, but the knockout is this one: Humpback whales compose and sing very long songs that they send into currents of water that echo around the planet. Other whales hear and repeat their favorite songs, with some getting worldwide play.

Women's Prize for Fiction

Howley’s account of the national security state and the people entangled in it includes fabulists, truth tellers, combatants, whistle-blowers... The result is a book that is riveting and darkly funny and, in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State

If Indiana Jones had kept a diary, it might have read much like Preston’s new nonfiction work. After discovering a forgotten city in the Amazonian forest... the author travels across the globe, seeking to solve some of the ancient world’s most beguiling mysteries.

A quarterly journal celebrating the culture, personalities, and history of California and the West.
Sign up for our newsletters: https://t.co/wJNWt1Qe2M

Americas (North Central South West Indies)

The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder

These essays by an Indian writer and translator should be required reading for anyone who has trouble finding travelogues outside the canon of privileged white writers (think Paul Theroux, Sarah Gilbert, Bruce Chatwin)

LIFE B MEMOIR: https://t.co/CssltFS7ST 
LIFE B AUDIO: https://t.co/xn3nt02Qu4
Critic @LATimesBooks 
Host @MissPagesPod 
Insta/THREADS @DearBookMaven
Created #FridayReads

Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel

This powerful book mostly covers the years between 2016 and 2022, when Rodrigo Duterte was president of the Philippines and pursued a murderous campaign of extrajudicial killings — EJKs for short.

Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country

Alberta, an award-winning journalist, a staff writer for the Atlantic, is also a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor. He combines professional rigor and personal compassion in this wide-ranging examination of what evangelism really means in today’s United States.

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

It makes perfect sense that Yayoi Kusama would create a wonderland of spotted mushrooms for Lewis Carroll’s classic, red and white, but purple and yellow too.

writer, THE SUPERRATIONALS @SemiotextePress & forthcoming I FEAR MY PAIN INTERESTS YOU @VersoBooks

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama

Pulitzer Prize

Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence

Oprah's Book Club

The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)

GoodReads Choice Award

Alex Award

Circe

Reese's Book Club

Tom Lake: A Reese's Book Club Pick

Kirkus Prize

Booker Prize

Audacious Book Club

Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture Oppenheimer

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Small Things Like These

Hugo Award

Costa Book Award

Nebula Award

Piranesi

Icy, treacherous sidewalks? ✔️ Disrespectfully cold windchill? ✔️ Drearily dusk at 4 PM? ✔️ Looks like it’s high time for a refresher course from the luminous and wise @katherinemay_ ….

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

For our December pick, I’m excited for us all to read Claire Keegan’s Foster — the story of a young girl sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland... There’s a warmth and complexity to Keegan’s characters that I hope you all connect with as much as I have!

What am I reading? I’m glad you asked! The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet by @melindataub is hands-down one of the best Pride and Prejudice retellings I’ve ever read—Melinda actually made me 💯 Team Lydia, and let me tell you, that is no small feat.

The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

My ten favorite, non-Zola books of 2023. These are the ones that I will think of for many many years to come, and that people will probably get sick of hearing me reference. So good. Obsessed, truly. I’ll probably write about them on the newsletter next week.

REAL LIFE: a novel (2020)  FILTHY ANIMALS: stories (June 2021) THE LATE AMERICANS: a novel (2023) newsletter: sweater weather, https://t.co/6PnsSjw3ZO

The Wolves of Eternity

It’s a wistful feeling, realizing that a writer you love will never come out with a new book. A.S. Byatt died this month. Her work is sonic and detailed and spackled with texture. One of my favorite of her subjects is the writer’s soul, which she depicts with loving honesty...

Author of the NYT bestseller THE IMMORTALISTS & THE ANATOMY OF DREAMS, olive enthusiast, Midwest convert.

The Children's Book

I'm a Fan

Look what arrived just in time for holiday baking! The new book by Nancy Silverton!! She’s a perfectionist so you know it’s going to be great. Everything looks delicious inside. Let’s get baking.

The Cookie That Changed My Life: And More Than 100 Other Classic Cakes, Cookies, Muffins, and Pies That Will Change Yours: A Cookbook

Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees

Diaghilev's Empire: How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World

Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild

The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story

Kids Run the Show

We Must Not Think of Ourselves

United States - Civil War Period (1850-1877)

United States - State & Local - South (AL,AR,FL,GA,KY,LA,MS,

Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

Eyeliner: A Cultural History

Biographies & Memoirs

Crime & Thrillers

Fiction

Food & Wine

Historical Fiction

History

Mystery

The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook on Aging and Work

Superheroes (see also Fiction - Superheroes)

Your Profile

Become a co-op member

Recommended on Instagram

Featured Recommendations

New Arrivals