The results are in! We can now reveal the most popular books at the Library in 2023...
It's a fantastic list, with everything from cosy crime to literary fiction, celebrity memoir to Channel Islands murder mystery. Many are brand new, while others have been fixtures on the end-of-year list for some time.
So here it is: our Top 30 most borrowed books of 2023. Click the links to reserve them today.
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30. Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis - Jeffrey H Jackson (Book)
29. A Line to Kill - Anthony Horowitz (Book, eBook)
28. The Garnett Girls - Georgina Moore (Book, eBook)
27. The Authenticity Project - Clare Pooley (Book)
26. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman (Book, Audiobook CD)
25. Second Place - Rachel Cusk (Book)
24. Desert Star - Michael Connelly (Book)
23. Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt (Book)
22. The French House - Jacquie Bloese (Book)
21. The Fourth Enemy - Anne Perry (Book)
20. Mother's Day - Abigail Burdess (Book)
19. The Candy House - Jennifer Egan (Book)
18. The Last Remains - Elly Griffiths (Book, Audiobook CD)
17. The Switch - Beth O'Leary (Book, Audiobook CD)
16. The Happiest Man on Earth - Eddie Jaku (Book)
15. No Plan B - Lee Child (Book, Audiobook, Audiobook CD)
14. Spare - Prince Harry (Book)
13. Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell (Book)
12. Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens (Book, Audiobook)
11. The Man Who Died Twice - Richard Osman (Book, eBook, Audiobook, Audiobook CD)
10. The Summer Seekers - Sarah Morgan (Book)
Kathleen is 80 years old. After a run-in with an intruder, her daughter wants her to move into a residential home. She's not having any of it. What she craves - needs - is adventure. Liza is drowning under the daily stress of family life. The last thing she needs is her mother jetting off on a wild holiday, making Liza dream of a solo break of her own. Martha is having a quarter-life crisis. Unemployed, unloved and uninspired, she just can't get her life together. But she knows something has to change. When Martha sees Kathleen's advert for a driver and companion to take an epic road trip across America, she decides this job might be the answer to her prayers. Travelling with a stranger? No problem. And anyway, how much trouble can one 80-year-old woman be?
9. The Ink Black Heart - Robert Galbraith (Book)
When frantic, dishevelled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn't know quite what to make of the situation. The co-creator of a popular cartoon, Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie's true identity. Robin decides that the agency can't help with this - and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been murdered. Robin and her business partner Cormoran Strike become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie's true identity. But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests, and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches their powers of deduction to the limit.
8. The School For Good Mothers - Jessamine Chan (Book)
Frida Liu is an anxiety-prone, 39-year-old, Chinese-American single mom living in a Philadelphia much like ours when she is reported, after a spate of sleepless nights with her 18-month-old, for leaving her daughter alone for a stretch of time she later calls her Very Bad Day. Yet there is no room in Frida's world for bad days, let alone bad mothers, according to the state's increasingly empowered Child Protective Services, which seamlessly takes Harriet and sets about surveilling Frida's home. After a series of almost comically bad supervised visits, a judge deems Frida temporarily unfit. Her only hope for continuing to share custody of Harriet with her ex is to pass exams meted out by a prized new government program. This 12-month, live-in program, a 'school' situated on an abandoned college campus, will retrain Frida in how best to parent.
7. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin (Book, eBook)
On a bitterly cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even 25 years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
6. It Ends with Us - Colleen Hoover (Book, eBook)
Lily has come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up. She graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily's life suddenly seems almost too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, and maybe even a little arrogant. He's also sensitive, brilliant and has a total soft spot for Lily. Lily can't get him out of her head, but Ryle's complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his no dating rule, she can't help but wonder what made him that way in the first place. As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan, her first love and a link to the past she left behind. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
5. The Midnight Library - Matt Haig (Audiobook, Book, eBook, Audiobook CD)
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up til now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change. The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger. Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?
4. Victory City - Salman Rushdie (Book, Audiobook)
In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a 9-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga - literally 'victory city' - the wonder of the world. Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana's life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga's as she attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and as years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, Bisnaga is no exception.
3. And Away - Bob Mortimer (Book)
The long-awaited first autobiography by national treasure Bob Mortimer. Bob's life was trundling along happily until suddenly in 2015 he was diagnosed with a heart condition that required immediate surgery and forced him to cancel an upcoming tour. The episode unnerved him, but forced him to reflect on his life so far. This is the framework for this hilarious and moving memoir.
2. The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman (Book, eBook, Audiobook, Audiobook CD)
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing 80 but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?
1. The Bullet That Missed - Richard Osman (Book, eBook, Audiobook, Audiobook CD)
It's an ordinary Thursday, and things should finally be returning to normal. Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A local news legend is on the hunt for a sensational headline, and soon the gang are hot on the trail of two murders, ten years apart. To make matters worse, a new nemesis pays Elizabeth a visit, presenting her with a deadly mission: kill or be killed. While Elizabeth grapples with her conscience (and a gun), the gang and their unlikely new friends (including TV stars, money launderers and ex-KGB colonels) unravel a new mystery. But can they catch the culprit and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again?
