The Must-Read Books of 2025

Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2025

A “mesmerizing” (People) novel that weaves the intimate lives of two midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late 20th century. Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observations and the warmth that comes from a profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love and for goodness.

Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize
Amazon’s Best Books of 2025
New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years — an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the author of The Inheritance of Loss.

In a thrilling race through the dual worlds of futuristic science and mystical lore, symbology professor Robert Langdon uncovers a shocking truth about a secret project that will forever change the way we think about the human mind. The world’s most celebrated thriller writer and author of The Da Vinci Code returns with his most stunning novel yet — a propulsive, twisty, thought-provoking masterpiece that will entertain readers as only Dan Brown can do.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2025

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime. Discover the word-of-mouth hit hailed by Ann Patchett as “A cause for celebration” — an intimate novel about the transformative power of the written word and the beauty of slowing down to reconnect with the people we love.

Winner of the 2025 National Book Award in Nonfiction
New York Times Notable Book of 2025

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

From bestselling author Martha Beck, a new path to overcoming anxiety by awakening the creativity within. Beck provides instructions for engaging the “creativity spiral,” in a process that not only shuts down anxiety but leads to innovative problem solving, a sense of meaning and purpose, and joyful, intimate connection with others — and with the world. The opposite of anxiety, it turns out, is a wonderful new way of life — one that can calm and inspire us as individuals and help us become a source of healing for everything around us.

The 2025 B&N Gift Book of the Year

With all the generosity of spirit that has endeared her to millions of fans, Samin Nosrat offers more than 125 of her favorite recipes — simply put, the things she most loves to cook for herself and for friends — and infuses them with all the beauty and care you would expect from the person Alice Waters called “America’s next great cooking teacher.”  Good Things captures, with Samin’s trademark blend of warmth, creativity, and precision, what has made cooking such an important source of delight and comfort in her life.

From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.

The hugely anticipated new book from Charlie Mackesy, revisiting the much-loved world of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse — the internationally bestselling book, with over ten million readers around the world. Mackesy’s four unlikely friends are wandering through the wilds again. They’re not sure what they are looking for. They do know that life can be difficult, but that they love each other, and cake is often the answer. When the dark clouds come, can the boy remember what he needs to get through the storm?

If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn’t you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words — Let Them — will set you free. In her latest groundbreaking book, The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins — New York Times bestselling author and one of the world’s most respected experts on motivation, confidence, and mindset — teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can’t control and start focusing on what truly matters: you.

#1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham is the acclaimed master of the legal thriller. Now, he’s back with his first-ever whodunit, even more suspenseful than his courtroom dramas, as a small-time lawyer accused of murder races to find the real killer to clear his name.

2025 Books-A-Million Book of the Year

Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world — or just get to the next level — in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2025

From one of our most acclaimed chroniclers of the forces eroding America’s social fabric, her most personal and powerful work: a reckoning with the changes that have rocked her own beloved small Ohio hometown. Paper Girl is a gift of courage, empathy, and insight. Beth Macy has turned to face the darkness in her family and community, people she loves wholeheartedly, even the ones she sometimes struggles to like. And in facing the truth — in person, with respect — she has found sparks of human dignity that she has used to light a signal fire of warning but also of hope.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2025
2025 Target Adult Book of the Year
Audible’s Audiobook of the Year

From the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits. Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: Transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love — this time among the stars.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2025

In her long-awaited new memoir, the author of the New York Times bestseller and James Beard Award winner Blood, Bones & Butter tells the “raw and darkly humorous” (People) story of her family’s unexpected dissolution. Hamilton’s gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them.

A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical quest when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike fantasy novel.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2025

A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer. Cursed Daughters is a brilliant cocktail of modernity and superstition, vibrant humor and hard-won wisdom, romantic love and familial obligation. With its unforgettable cast of characters, it asks us what it means to be given a second chance and how to live both wisely and well with what we’ve been given.

When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll unlike any other, she knows what she’s setting in motion. It might just take the world a moment to catch up. In the decades to come — through soaring heights and devastating personal lows, public scandals and private tensions — each of them will have to decide how tightly to hold on to their creation. Because Barbie has never been just a doll — she’s a legacy.

New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025

A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice — from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack.

In her first nonfiction book in a decade, the #1 bestselling writer who taught millions of readers to live authentically (Eat Pray Love) and creatively (Big Magic) shows how to break free. All the Way to the River is a landmark memoir that will resonate with anyone who has ever been captive to love — or to any other passion, substance, or craving — and who yearns, at long last, for liberation.

Shot Ready is a powerful distillation of Stephen Curry’s transformative philosophy of success — centered on preparation, constant improvement, creativity, connection, mindfulness, and joy — delivered in his incomparable voice and style. Stunningly designed and illustrated with more than 100 gorgeous photographs, Shot Ready is an intimate narrative and a practical blueprint for any reader who wants to unlock their own potential.

New York Times Notable Book of 2025

From the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail, comes a spellbinding narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history. With the depth of a classic history and the drama of a thriller, 1929 unravels the greed, blind optimism, and human folly that led to an era-defining collapse — one with ripple effects that still shape our society today.

New York Times Notable Book of 2025

From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman’s OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy.

Brené Brown returns with an urgent call to reimagine the essentials of courageous leadership. In a time when uncertainty runs deep and bluster, hubris, and even cruelty are increasingly framed as acceptable leadership, Brown delivers practical, actionable insights that illuminate the mindsets and skill sets essential to reclaiming focus and driving growth through connection, discipline, and accountability.

In this eagerly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years. Throughout this thrilling read, Smith shows us once again her unrivalled ability to think through critically and humanely some of the most urgent preoccupations and tendencies of our troubled times.

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened. In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).

In seven days, Jet Mason will be dead. But first, Jet is going to solve her own murder. The author of the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series — now a hit Netflix series — returns with her first novel for adults: An “irresistible” (The Washington Post) thriller about a young woman trying to solve her own murder, “full of the writer’s signature twists and turns” (People).

New York Times Notable Book of 2025

Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. A whimsical and heartwarming novel about a witch who has a second chance to get her magical powers — and her life — back on track.

A guide to the art of journaling — and a meditation on the central questions of life — by the bestselling author of Between Two Kingdoms, with contributions from Hanif Abdurraqib, Jon Batiste, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, George Saunders, and many more. Whether you’re a lifelong journaler or new to the practice, this book gives you the tools, direction, and encouragement to engage with discomfort, ask questions, peel back the layers, dream daringly, uncover your truest self — and in doing so, to learn to hold the unbearably brutal and astonishingly beautiful facts of life in the same palm.

From the Academy Award-winning actor and author of Greenlights comes an inspiring, faith-filled, and often hilarious collection of personal poetry and prayers about navigating the rodeo of life and chasing down the original dream, belief.

New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025

Through the “revelatory and gut-wrenching” (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend — the dramatic rise of the working homeless in cities across America.

Amazon’s Best Books of 2025

Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing — formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness — are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: A second chance.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. It’s a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence.

The award-winning authors and podcasters Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle created We Can Do Hard Things — the guidebook for being alive — to help fellow travelers find their way through life.

It was meant to be a harmless prank. What had they done? From the New York Times bestselling author of The Better Sister and The Wife comes a suspenseful story about a vacation in the Hamptons that goes terribly wrong for three friends with a complicated history.

New York Times Notable Book of 2025

Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history. Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates this forgotten chapter in history, buried for decades — bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence — and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.

A publishing event ten years in the making — a searing, exquisite new novel by the bestselling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists — the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires. A trenchant reflection of the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.

New York Times Notable Book of 2025

Megha Majumdar’s electrifying new novel is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, in which two families seeking to protect their children must battle each other. A piercing and propulsive tour de force. With stunning control and command, Megha Majumdar paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of two families, each operating from a place of ferocious love and undefeated hope, each discovering how far they will go to secure their children’s future as they stave off encroaching catastrophe.

New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. Meditative, moving, and finely observed, Stone Yard Devotional is a seminal novel from a writer of rare power, exploring what it means to retreat from the world, the true nature of forgiveness, and the sustained effect of grief on the human soul.

Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize Barack Obama’s 2025 Summer Reading List

One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love. Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.

To find a missing young woman, the new tribal marshal must also find herself. Ex-Chicago detective Carrie Starr returns to her roots as a tribal marshal after her daughter’s death. On the reservation, she investigates the disappearance of Chenoa Cloud, haunted by memories and the mysterious Deer Woman. Starr must find the missing woman and herself amidst the tribe’s struggles.

Barack Obama’s 2025 Summer Reading List
New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025

An instant New York Times bestseller, this is the electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.

Two women haunted by their sisters’ unsolved disappearances band together in this captivating mystery from the author of All Good People Here and host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie.

From the New York Times-bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones, a propulsive and heart-wrenching story of a young woman entrusted with a boy’s life as WWII rages in Italy. A remarkable tale of friendship, romance, motherhood, and survival, One Good Thing reminds us what is worth fighting for — and that love, even amidst a world in ruins, can triumph.

Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping novel from Emily Henry.

New York Times Notable Book of 2025

In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people — and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him.

A revealing personal life story like no other — enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering — and a testament to the world-making power of Black motherhood. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It’s one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America — and the wisdom that women pass on to one another, mothers to daughters, across generations.

Barack Obama’s 2025 Summer Reading List
New York Times Notable Book of 2025

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.