Author Award-winning African-Australian Editor
The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

We've asked 1,639 authors and super readers for their 3 favorite reads of the year.

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

My favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Where Rivers Go to Die

Eugen Bacon Why did I love this book?

This collection of black speculative fiction with its Afrocentric cover in ochre and clay is an invitation to award-winning author and filmmaker Dilman Dila’s vision for a future Africa that borrows from the intrinsic tradition of oral storytelling. 

It canvases Dila’s diverse characters, vivid settings, and rich language in a cross-genre assortment. This book blends fantasy, science fiction, and horror in war stories, detective stories, futuristic stories, and superstition that resurrect ancestral heroes and empower everyday people in the village. 

By Dilman Dila,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Where Rivers Go to Die as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The stunning, new collection from the Ugandan master of Africanfuturism.

A young teen, haunted by the ghost of his father, takes it upon himself to save his brother and his people from a warlord's marauding army. A frustrated detective is driven to the brink, confronting the vengeful spirit killing grooms on their wedding night. What happens when British colonials find Martians in Africa, a brash warrior battles his elders and ancient horrors in order to secure paradise for his people, or an exiled abiba is stolen away to find his true destiny? 

Emerging Africanfuturist writer/director, Dilman Dila, brings us Where…


My 2nd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions

Eugen Bacon Why did I love this book?

This cross-lingual anthology is a unique hybrid of cultural poems and short stories from people of color in a crossroads of diasporas.

Contributing authors identify as Black, Black-Latinx, Filipo-Spanish-Chinese, Jamaican with Chinese heritage, Japanese-American, Cherokee, Euro-American Cherokee, Cuban, Jewish, Santeros, and more. Stories of transmorphed identities tug at the reader with lived experiences of belonging/unbelonging in a blend of the creative and scholarly.

The anthology is rich with the call of ancestry—peoples and place. Memorable prose poetry and short stories full of soul.  

By Khadijah Queen (editor), Kiini Ibura Salaam (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Infinite Constellations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A gathering of innovative, speculative fictions by writers of color, both established and emerging

The innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global majority: Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of human relationships, the deep honoring of memory, and the rootedness to place and the centering of culture.

The writers in this anthology mirror, instruct, bind and unbind, myth-make…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023…

Book cover of Caged Ocean Dub: Glints & Stories

Eugen Bacon Why did I love this book?

Caged Ocean Dub is an inventive and tiered book with fascinating and imaginative African-hued stories.

It comes in a blend of flash fiction, short stories, even a novelette, and it crosses genre in a scrumptious way that deliciously attacks your attention. This book is pregnant with ache, harmony, song, ritual and superstition—climatic and hypnotic start to finish. Reading it is almost like immersion in a dream sequence. 

By Dare Segun Falowo,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Caged Ocean Dub as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

There are dragons in Lagos and witches who wear their sons’ skins, while a cabal of otherworldly beings are collecting intelligent life forms in the depths of the universe.

Nigerian author Dare Segun Falowo’s poetically precise language and spine-tingling plot twists are reminiscent of both Poe and Kafka as they tackle themes of belonging, abusive maternal relationships, and tragic love in an unforgettable literary adventure.

This collection features some of Falowo’s most notable previously published stories alongside new tales of magic and terror. Ngozi Ugegbe Nwa was longlisted for the 2021 NOMMO for short stories and Vain Knife was longlisted…


Plus, check out my book…

Book cover of Serengotti

What is my book about?

In one tumultuous day, Ch’anzu loses hir job and finds wife Scarlet in bed with a stranger. As life spirals out of control, Ch’anzu turns to charismatic Aunt Maé for wisdom, and makes the bold move to a project in Serengotti, a migrant African outpost in rural Australia.

A novel haunted by the strangeness and yearnings of a displaced community – beautiful and fractured. Ch’anzu is forced to confront hir demons. Back in Melbourne, brother Tex has gone missing. In Serengotti violence and infidelity simmer.

Bathed in sensuous, original language, a love letter to the strong women who bind families together despite everything. It’s also a tender remembrance of the many who haven’t or couldn’t survive the dislocations and tragedies of their turbulent pasts.