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New year, new books. Now that we’re finally starting to see the bottom of our TBR piles, it’s time to start adding some 2023 book releases to the list. While it feels a little early to start picking out the best books of 2023, what we can do is round up all the exciting releases that we’re set to see this year.
This is a mix of fiction and non-fiction books that includes standalones and series follow-ups as well as first books of a new series. Since the first week of January is part of 2023 already, we’ve also included some fresh off-the-print books that you might want to check out.
Fiction Books Releasing This 2023
1. Unseelie by Ivelisse Housman
READ UNSEELIE BY IVELISSE HOUSMAN
Unseelie came out on January 3rd, marking the start of Ivelisse Housman’s Unseelie Duology. The book follows sisters Iselia and Isolde as they discover the secrets of the fae world and fae magic. The story incorporates a growing theory that reports of changelings, which are fae children left by fae to be raised by humans, throughout history was a folkloric explanation for autism. We’ll leave you to find out which of the sisters is a fae being.
2. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (Releases January 14)
READ HOW TO SELL A HAUNTED HOUSE
How to Sell a Haunted House is a post-COVID horror story and that’s not just because of when it’s published. The plot kicks off after the death of the parents of siblings Louise and Mark Joyner who now have nothing but their childhood home to their name. The Goodreads blurb for the book says it revolves around themes of generational trauma, particularly how “each of us are possessed by our parents” which may make it your next favorite horror book if you love coming of age horror movies.
3. The Forest Brims Over by Maru Ayase (Releases July 25)
READ THE FOREST BRIMS OVER BY MARU AYASE
First off, let’s talk about that gorgeous cover. Book covers have gotten pretty same-y lately, making The Forest Brims Over stand out more because it really does look like the forest is brimming over from its fictional world and into your living room, bus seat, bed, etc. wherever you usually read.
Written by Japanese author Maru Ayase and translated to English by Haydn Trowell, is about a woman who turns into a forest to give her husband a topic to write a novel about. It’s very reminiscent of Japanese folklore about crane wives and with a premise like that, the book may well be one of 2023’s most interesting fiction releases.
4. Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood
READ LOATHE TO LOVE YOU BY ALI HAZELWOOD
By the way!
Did you know we’re launching a Kickstarter campaign? In the next few months, our campaign for ‘Gentle Jack: The Party Game for Bad Friends‘ goes live! Visit the official website or follow the Kickstarter page to stay in the loop.
Loathe to Love You is a romantic comedy that’s just waiting to be taken to the beach once the weather warms up a little. The book is about three women in stem, engineers to be specific, falling in love with their rivals. Sometimes the rivalry is purely professional, but there’s a more tense subject matter in Under One Roof where the female lead has a big-oil lawyer for a roomate.
5. The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis (Releases January 17)
READ THE SHARDS BY BRET EASTON ELLIS
Bret Easton Ellis reached global fame with his best selling novel American Psycho which, to oversimplify, was about a man who seemingly becomes a serial killer during the 80s. The Shards is also about a serial killer in the 80s except this time you’re reading the events unfold through the eyes of wealthy teenagers who end up in what feels like Gossip Girl meets Scream.
Non-Fiction Books Releasing This 2023
1. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber (Releases January 24)
READ THE PIRATE ENLIGHTENMENT BY DAVID GRAEBER
Anthropologist David Graeber may have passed on two years ago, as reported by The Guardian, but his 2018 book Bullshit Jobs is still making ripples. This year, his final posthumous book Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia will be talking about the social and governing structures of pirate societies and how non-European these proto-democracies informed the Enlightenment.
2. Wolifsh: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear by Erica Berry (Releases February 21)
Wolves are deeply symbolic animals and in Wolfish, Erica Berry braids together all of the symbols and stories associated with these majestic creatures, her life experiences, and the legendary story of a wolf who leaves his pack and wanders the Wallowa Mountains to create a narrative about how the stories we tell are ultimately about the identities we construct for ourselves as individuals and societies.
3. How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind (Releases March 14)
READ HOW TO THINK LIKE A WOMAN BY REGAN PENALUNA
How to Think Like a Woman shifts the lens to the perspective of female philosophers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, a feminist writer and mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, to learn how these women thought of the world they lived in, how they felt about being women in their respective eras, and how they pursued their intellectual endeavors in a world that didn’t think of intellect as something associated with womanhood.
4. The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg (Releases February 14)
READ THE CLIMATE BOOK BY GRETA THUNBERG
Greta Thunberg made the news late last year for her Twitter spat with Andrew Tate, but this year the news is about her what with the upcoming release of her book on climate disaster that looks at how climate change has devastated communities and how we can fight back and restore the planet through collective action.
5. Spare by Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex (Releases January 10)
READ SPARE BY PRINCE HARRY THE DUKE OF SUSSEX
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have begun to speak about their experiences inside the royal family after they officially stepped back from their roles in 2020. The couple released a documentary series with Netflix back in 2022 and it’s now being followed by an autobiography from Prince Harry that releases later this January. With the buzz around Harry and Meghan in recent months, this could be one of the hottest 2023 book releases.
Is Winds of Winter Coming Out This 2023?
Let’s address the elephant in the book nerd room: The Winds of Winter isn’t going to be released this 2023. In a livestream hosted by Penguin Random House, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin shared that he was still working on the continuation of his A Song of Ice and Fire series. The author calls Winds a “challenging book” that he believes he is “three quarters of the way done” with. Martin estimates it will be longer than 1,500 manuscript pages, about length of his earlier book Storm of Swords.
