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It’s the end of another year spent looking forward to long walks, tedious chores, and sleepless nights, because those are great times to listen to audiobooks. Every second spent in silence was a waste! I’ll do better next year, I promise!

Why am I always ignoring friends and family to listen to another chapter or two? Because of the books on this list (and many others, too. Possibly too many). A well-narrated book is a thing of joy, and here are some of the best that 2023 had to offer...

2023 was such a great year for fiction! We had the hardest time narrowing down our list of the best fiction books of the year, but after much debate, we settled on these 23 (an appropriate number for 2023, we decided). The books on this list take place in Hawaii, Argentina, the Hamptons, a Palace in the desert, and a land of milk and honey. We’ve got campus novels and high-concept museums, fictional biographies and black holes, ugly publishing truths and gladiatorial dystopias...

If there’s one thing you know you can rely on, it’s the good taste of Powell’s booksellers, which is soundly reflected in this year’s collection of nonfiction books that we thought were the best from this past year. On this list, you’ll find bookstores and hot dogs, doppelgangers and wolves, celebrities and shitty crafts. These books explore questions of identity, belonging, community, resistance, capitalism, colonialism, to name just a few of their topics; they’re tender and hilarious and heartfelt and insightful...

There’s a primal power to combining words with pictures and bookstores in 2023 saw that power being used to beautiful effect. This year we’re highlighting graphic works that run the gamut of genres and age groups.

Below are books about coming of age and books about grief; books about navigating difficult situations and books about giving in to the absurd; works of horror and works of quiet beauty. And then there’s Monica, which does all of that at once...

In a world as scary as ours is, sometimes you need to sink into a terrifying story to distract yourself. Which is where our list comes in: the best horror of 2023, as determined by Powell’s booksellers, experts in all things macabre and eerie and unnerving. On this list, you’ll find books about vampires and vaqueros, monsters and slashers, curses and carnivorous houses, mermaids and jellyfish and even Tom Cruise.

Get your late-night-reading-oil ready, because you won’t want to put any of these books down. Without further ado: the Best Horror of 2023....

As a person who tries to avoid spoiler alerts, romance surprised me a little bit — knowing that a happily ever after is most likely at the end of the story should annoy me. But it turns out that I really, really want to know how these crazy kids figure it out, even if their love is broadcast on the first page. These books contain a lot of twists and turns and surprises — secret exes turning up out of the blue! overcoming generational trauma! vampires! — and knowing everything ends up okay makes the journey...

Welcome readers, to the second of our Best Books of 2023 lists: Science Fiction & Fantasy! Absolutely an excuse for me to run up to booksellers — street-interview style — and demand to know their favorite world-building, magic-systems, and political messes (in SPACE!).

And readers, they delivered.

We’ve got Romantasy (petitioning Merriam-Webster to make this the word of the year); we’ve got veteran romantasy authors returning to beloved series to say “we’ve been doing this!“; we’ve got dragons and more dragons; love letters to books in cozy fantasy settings; unionized dolphins; cyberpunk thrillers about orbital elevators; series conclusions that stick the landing...

It’s coming! Do you feel it? That rumble under your feet? That is the approach of something amazing! In fact, it’s so thunderous that the trees are shaking and the ground is jumping and — careful! — you can hardly stay on your feet, until… almost… almost… YES, it’s here! The very first of Powell’s Best Books of 2023 lists. My very favorite category: Kids and Teens.

No wonder it made such a rumbly ruckus as it came. It’s sooooo heavy — filled with ten tons of terrific tomes: from picture books to medieval romcoms, from graphic memoirs to gothic horror. You’ll find giant jellyfish, brainy minotaurs, witch’s...

Best Nonfiction of 2022 | Best Debuts of 2022 | Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Romance & Graphic Novels of 2022 | Best Kids' and YA of 2022

As fun as it is to put these lists together, it’s also so, so difficult, because there are always so many books we want to include. This year, we did our best to contain it to 10 books, but the more we read and discussed and argued, the more we wanted to add an extra 5, and then another 5, which is how we ended up here...

After a few years where this category was dominated by books about current events, I was relieved to put this list together and see not just books about important issues of the day, but also a broad variety of books about the world and our place in it. And almost none of them mention the White House! A gift! So maybe take a breather and find a nourishing book on this list; current events will still be here when you finish...