Whether you were able to read 100 books throughout 2023, or 10, or 2, you probably can’t help having a favorite. A “best book of the year,” if you will. Well, here at the Whitman County Rural Library District, our bookish staff across 14 branches have been reading and ranking all year long as well. So, to start us all off on a new season of reading, we’ve compiled our list of the best books of the year, all of which are available for check out through WCL! Simply click any title below to see it’s status in our catalogue.

Fiction

• The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• Weyward by Emilia Hart
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
• The Bodyguard by Katherine Center
• Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan and Jodi Picoult
• The Shining Mountains by Alix Christie
• The Maid by Nita Prose
• The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden
• The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brenda Slocum
• The Finlay Donovan Series by Elle Cosimano
• Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Taker by Patricia Meredith
• The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by S. A. Chakraborty
• The Sugar Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke
• The 23^rd Midnight by James Patterson
• Go As a River by Shelley Read
• Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert
• West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Non-Fiction

• All That She Carried: the Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
• The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
• A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Over Take America and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
• The Utter Relief of Holiness: How God’s Goodness Frees Us from Everything that Plagues Us by John Eldredge
• Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
• Trail of the Lost: the Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail by Andrea Lankford
• The Office of BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There by Jenna Fischer
• The Return of the Gods by Jonathan Cahn
• The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War by Catherine Grace Katz
• How to Stay Married: the Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key

Poetry

• The Heronry by Mark Jarman
• Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Youth

• The School for Good and Evil Series by Soman Chainani
• Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
• The Witch Boy Series by Molly Knox Ostertag
• The Tales of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
• The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Counting by 7’s by Holly Goldberg Sloan