Naturally, our contributors are a bookish bunch, but their tastes are all over the map. If you’re not sure what we mean by that, take a gander at the smart, surprising list below. May you find something on it to add to your own New Year’s TBR stack!

Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs. “If ‘best’ means awe-inspiring, this is my 2025 choice.” ~Kitty Kelley

The Wayfinder: A Novel by Adam Johnson. “This year’s hands-down winner, a fully immersive book of long-ago Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, and other Pacific Island civilizations, is perhaps best enjoyed in audio given the sometimes-lengthy passages in ancient languages, but also because of the gorgeous voices of (and pronunciations by) the narrators. At the same time, have the printed book close by to reread favorite passages and, yes, to keep track of characters.” ~Jennifer Bort Yacovissi

This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (and Why It Matters) by Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman. “Knowing where you are can be essential, but it isn’t easy if all that appears on your map is ‘here there be dragons,’ or you’re holding the document upside-down, or some of the locations shown are ‘copyright traps’ that don’t really exist. If you prefer a GPS approach, solar flares might well leave you lost — and even if they don’t, relying on GPS may be shrinking your brain. Sobering stuff, but This Way Up is often laugh-out-loud funny, especially with its spot-on podcast parody.” ~Randy Cepuch

Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft From Attila the Hun to Kissinger by A. Wess Mitchell. “A groundbreaking study of diplomacy from Byzantium/Eastern Roman Empire vs. the Huns through Venetian, French, Habsburg, and British diplomacy in the modern centuries, to American diplomacy in the Cold War. The study is especially poignant in its detailed description of the treaties and alliances necessary for those countries to survive against the sometimes-superior odds of potential enemies and rivals. Highly recommended for readers interested in how diplomacy got its start and why it is still important today in the ongoing effort to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.” ~Andrew M. Mayer

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl. “I actually finished it on New Year’s Eve 2024, but it’s the last book I awarded five stars on Goodreads that wasn’t written by a friend of mine. The main story is utterly captivating. I’m a sucker for short stories, and some of the others in this collection tell you about Dahl’s own fascinating origin story and how he rose to fame (i.e., by writing great short stories).” ~Daniel de Visé

Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan. “The author combines fiction with the transcribed interviews of a horse trainer named Sonia to write Kick the Latch. This isn’t the glamorous tale of the Triple Crown but a portrait of a seedy backwoods racetrack full of troubled men and horses and one woman’s determination to survive at it. The precision of the prose mixed with the poetry of racing vocabulary makes each of the 144 pages do overtime, working as hard as the trainer herself.” ~Gretchen Lida

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. “This slender little novel is a stark reminder that our focus on our own worlds and blessings, especially at Christmas, often blinds us to a world that’s not all tinsel and glowing, colored lights. Though the reader may find themselves left in sad reflection, it’s important to consider what our presence in life can be. Also, reading it provides a reason to open that bottle of holiday cheer early.” ~Drew Gallagher

An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam: Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612), edited by María Antonia Garcés; translated by Diana de Armas Wilson. “An astonishing account of all aspects of people, customs, and social hierarchy in the late 1500s in Algiers by a Portuguese Catholic cleric who’d been enslaved there after being captured at sea by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by Spanish royalty after four years, the author provides riveting details that made me feel like I’d been there myself, in the flesh, living among the locals. I couldn’t put it down.” ~Stephen Case

Cyan Magenta Yellow Black: A Novel by Kevin Fenton. “This focuses on a trio of friends in 1990s Minneapolis, each struggling in their own way, and follows them through a season of their lives as they try to mend and care for each other and connect. One of those rare books where every paragraph is surprising and delightful, it manages to be warmhearted and funny without for a moment ignoring the darkness.” ~Emily Mitchell

Long Eyes by Khrystia Vengryniuk. “This is a haunting bilingual (Ukrainian/English) poetry collection that explores loneliness and isolation. It’s romantic, confessional, and spiritual (in a very pagan way).” ~Nicole Yurcaba

The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery series by Donna Leon. “I went to Venice for the first time this summer, and in preparation for the trip, my boss suggested I read this detective series set there. I took his advice (because, you know, he’s my boss), and since then, I’ve been obsessed with these books. I love a police procedural, but these books go way beyond the generic procedural and are rich in character and atmosphere, tackling difficult global subjects like sex-trafficking and environmental hazards and making them personal and emotionally resonant. Lucky for me she’s got more than 30 books in this series, because I’m all-in.” ~Tara Laskowski

Amber & Clay by Laura Amy Schlitz. “Take a story set almost 2,500 years ago and add enough narrators to populate a two-page character list hopscotching between a grab-bag of narrative styles — verse, prose, and museum-wall text. It sounds like a hot mess, but in the able hands of Schlitz, the result is pure magic and unlike any book you’ve read before. With two fierce child protagonists whose storylines intersect in surprising ways (and a breadcrumb trail of artifacts that’d give any would-be archaeologist a contact high), this is a book that reads like the wind and stays with you for long after.” ~Priyanka Champaneri

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. “This cut through the national gaslighting about the war on Palestine. With gorgeous prose and impeccable journalistic credibility, El Akkad burst the bubble of public delusion first through his viral tweet and then through this book of essays by the same name. The book fleshes out everything readers need to know about the war, its apologists, and its impact — through complicity — on the Western soul. He will be on the right side of history, and this will remain on my shelf as the best book I read in 2025.” ~Sarah Trembath

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. “I could recite the opening lines and the final lines, and I knew the story in between. Still, Dickens held me with pathos, humor, great characters, and skillful scene-building. Next up: David Copperfield!” ~David O. Stewart

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. “A master author analyzes 19th-century Russian short stories. You feel as if you’re sitting in a seminar with Saunders as, with humor and insight, he guides you through some of the best short stories ever written.” ~Liza Achilles

Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York by Ross Perlin. “This is always a thankfully difficult choice, but I nominate this one. Perlin is the co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance and a linguist who specializes in documenting and preserving endangered languages. In Language City, he tells the story of six different speakers of rare languages who now live in New York City. I knew I lived in the most linguistically diverse city in the world, but I had no idea how diverse it was, with pockets of people — sometimes a few hundred, sometimes a few dozen — speaking Seke (Nepal), N’ko (West Africa), Lenape (right here in Brooklyn), Nahuatl (Mexico), Wakhi (Central Asia), and Yiddish (Eastern Europe). After reading Perlin, I’m living in a different city than I’d thought.” ~John P. Loonam

The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter by Kai Bird. “When the present depresses me, I look for comfort from the past. Bird’s excellent history of a time when an intelligent, moral person occupied the White House is an uplifting tonic to today’s toxicity coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” ~Michael Causey

Herscht 07769: A Novel by László Krasznahorkai; translated by Ottilie Mulzet. “This recent novel by 2025’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is set in a fictional small town in post-reunification East Germany and mashes up neo-Nazis, particle physics, wolves, Angela Merkel, and a community orchestra struggling to play music by Johann Sebastian Bach. Written in one breathtakingly long sentence, it manages to be comedic, chilling, violent, and astounding all at once. Don’t miss it.” ~Marcie Geffner

Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno. “The child who has been sexually violated is marked by her abuser for life. In this hybrid of memoir and literary criticism, Sinno gets as close as humanly possible to the heart of this devastating black hole in her life, interrogating such writers as Vladimir Nabokov, Toni Morrison, and Christine Angot. Healing remains elusive, but through writing and literature, she finds her way toward something greater than herself — an extraordinary achievement.” ~Amanda Holmes Duffy

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. “This 1921 Pulitzer Prize winner is a look back at the 19th-century mores that both define and restrain the privileged class in Old New York. It’s a horror story masquerading as a romantic novel. Well-born lawyer Newland Archer is suffocating in his marriage to the beautiful, dull, manipulative May Welland until her cousin, the intriguing Countess Ellen Olenska, arrives, offering him the promise of passion…” ~Diane Kiesel

Playground: A Novel by Richard Powers. “Playground weaves together complex notions of philosophy and AI, while at the same time exploring the depths of marine life, game theory, and friendship. It’s easy to miss the point in this novel, but even if you do, the emotional impact of painful loss will affect you.” ~Clifford Garstang

Gingko Season: A Novel by Naomi Xu Elegant. “A debut novelist, Elegant is already a deft hand at her craft. Set in my hometown of Philadelphia, this book is a love story that is quirky, fun, and weird in delightful ways.” ~Martha Anne Toll

The House of Illusionists: and Other Stories by Vanessa Fogg. “Each story is a portal into a rich, fantastical new world with beautiful imagery and compelling characters. The language is polished and beautiful, inspiring one to pause and savor before diving back in for the next story. As a reader, it’s a gorgeous collection to get lost in, and as a writer, it’s inspiring to see such skillful writing like this out in the world.” ~Tara Campbell

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. “Hands-down, this was my favorite book of the year. He offers a passionate look at the lies we in ‘civilized’ nations tell, and how we have turned our backs on the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. One day, all civilized people will agree with him.” ~Chris Rutledge

Dungeon Crawler Carl: A Novel by Matt Dinniman. “This was the best book I read this year (and so were the next six in the series). I’m not alone — re-releases of self-published titles, Dinniman’s Carl series has blown up this year (Carl loves bombs) after a full-court press by his new publisher and so much buzz on BookTok and social media. The series, which I describe to friends as ‘Dungeons & Dragons meets Survivor in Space,’ is a collection of doorstops that I could not put down. I am obsessed with Carl and his cat sidekick/best friend/better half, Princess Donut, and cannot recommend this series enough to anyone looking for heartfelt escapism with social commentary that won’t make you feel bad.” ~Nick Havey

The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street by Mike Tidwell. “I’m a fan of horror fiction but rarely indulge; my reading typically focuses on the too-real threat of climate change. This one deftly and disturbingly combines both genres in an ominous investigation of how drought, heat, and insect plagues forewarn of climate-driven collapse in the author’s own Takoma Park, Maryland, neighborhood. Despite Tidwell’s earnest search for hope, his evidence chillingly makes clear: The call is coming from inside the house.” ~Julie Dunlap

Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology by Jess Zimmerman. “The author’s examination of female-coded mythological monsters offers incisive takes on feminism, fitting in (or standing out), and what it really means to be monstrous. The book feels ever more relevant in today’s climate.” ~Mariko Hewer

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. “Forget about clearing the deck or conquering your inbox. The human lifespan is ‘absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short,’ says the author. Start with that sobering fact and plan accordingly. This pithy, profound volume made me realize that time hacks are a sham and ‘the only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit-denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead focus on doing a few things that count.’” ~Anne Cassidy

Delinquents and other Escape Attempts by Nick Rees Gardner, Exit Zero by Marie-Helene Bertino, and First Kicking, Then Not by Hannah Grieco. “In this year of anxiety, I’ve read three outstanding collections that probably equal one book, all of which bring the humanity of often broken lives to the forefront. Especially in these fractious times, short stories, complete and whole in just a few pages (or even fewer, with the flash fiction included in these masterfully cohesive collections), were my refuge.” ~Caroline Bock

Yours, Eventually: A Novel by Nura Maznavi. “This is a modern story about a young doctor forging her own path in both her family and her Pakistani American community. Borrowing the best elements from Jane Austen’s Persuasion, it hits the perfect balance between retelling and remix to create a distinct story that will appeal to Austenites and contemporary readers alike.” ~Emma Carbone

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. “To read this is to be ambushed by dense sensuality and boundless hunger, an autofictional philosophy for living in the perpetual pursuit of pleasure. The jubilant, frequently manic narrative veers close enough to ecstasy to pierce its tenderest core, revealing just how vulnerable — how breakable — we become in the clutches of supreme bliss. Give yourself over to the radiant imagery and heady interiority of this extraordinary book: You will emerge in awe.” ~Frances Thomas

The Hong Kong Widow by Kristen Loesch. “This banger came out this year. It’s an historical gothic — set in 1950s Hong Kong — about a long-ago massacre that took place in an eerie remote mansion and the mystery at its heart that unravels decades later between an American mother and daughter. With stunning prose, impeccable research, and page-turning suspense, this novel is filled with hauntings, séances, and painful, utterly frightful and dangerous secrets that force the past into the present in the most exquisite way.” ~Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. “It was oh-so-gratifying to peek into the life of Precious Ramotswe via a captivating paperback that beckoned me to Botswana upon opening the door to a DC neighborhood Little Free Library one evening. How could a reader not savor a story with so many sentences that sparkle? A sampling: ‘You can go through life and make new friends every year — every month practically — but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones to which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.’” ~Elizabeth McGowan

Queen Esther: A Novel by John Irving. “As an unabashed Irving fan, I was delighted with what I think is his best work since The World According to Garp. All the signature Irving elements are present: an overly protective adult, unusual family relationships, wrestling, and oddly funny sexual encounters. As in all his novels, the story is woven in a complicated fabric of foreboding and hopefulness. Bad things happen, but life — even with all its vagaries — is still good.” ~C.B. Santore  

Girls, Visions and Everything by Sarah Schulman. “A scrappy lesbian writer falls in love with her actress friend in the seizing heart of NYC. While the police state and gentrification loom closer, this ragtag bunch of queers makes love and art.” ~Madeleine de Visé

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. “I was late picking this up, but the quiet strength and the moral actions of the main character have stayed with me. The voice got inside my head from the first page, and the ending was both hopeful and risky. A beautiful story of empathy and courage, both currently in short supply.” ~Terri Lewis

Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig. “I am a fan of the author, and I thoroughly enjoyed this one, the second volume in his Montana Trilogy. We even visited the Fort Peck Dam in eastern Montana that features in the book.” ~Paul D. Pearlstein

Crooks: A Novel about Crime and Family by Lou Berney. “I’ve talked about this book almost an embarrassing amount, but I have such a crush on it that, if I was in high school, I’d ask it to prom. Crooks is the perfect mix of character and suspense, an intergenerational crime drama that causes you to care about people you’d otherwise despise. Another brilliant work from a writer who never fails to deliver.” ~E.A. Aymar

How the Light Gets In: A Novel by Louise Penny. “This is the ninth installment in Penny’s excellent Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, and it is an especially satisfying one. If you hate bullies, this is the book you want to read.” ~Heidi Mastrogiovanni

Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb. “The author lives in a lorry with bookshelves. Every day, he trims and pleaches English hedges, alone. There is no mention of TikTok or cable news. You learn what pleaching is, and you might get the idea to slow down and imbue the humble, repetitive tasks in your own life with meaning.” ~Jay Hancock

The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better by Will Storr. “You probably don’t go to work training sessions to pick up hot book recs, but let’s not neglect that unheralded source of literary communion. In this case, a guest speaker recommended Storr’s take on consciousness, human psychology, and narrative, and I’m so glad I listened. Whether you write stories or just want to understand how our brains make — and hallucinate — meaning from inside the dark confines of our skulls, this is a compelling and illuminating read well worth the boredom I otherwise suffered in sitting through hours of mandatory training.” ~Carrie Callaghan

The Heart in Winter: A Novel by Kevin Barry. “This is a wild, love-drunk story set in 1890s Montana, one best listened to aloud. It’s the best Western I’ve read since True Grit.” ~Keith Donohue

The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. “This classic 1922 work provides a firsthand account of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s final, fatal, and ultimately unsuccessful expedition to the South Pole in 1910. Based on his own journal, Cherry-Garrard’s narrative recounts with authority and immediacy the hostile conditions and insurmountable obstacles experienced by the expedition’s members over three grueling years. While testifying to that human endurance and spirit, however, Cherry-Garrard wrote his account for the historical and scientific record rather than for emotional appeal, and, like other works of the genre, it derives its formidable literary power from the incommensurability of the extreme events narrated and the dispassionate voice narrating them.” ~Charles Caramello

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. “With raw emotion and earth-shattering clarity, El Akkad articulates the moral and political failings of the West in their clearest current manifestation, the genocide in Gaza. This reviewer’s superlatives can’t do the book justice. As both a reflection and a call to action, it should be required reading everywhere.” ~Rose Rankin

Behold the Bird in Flight: A Novel of an Abducted Queen by Terri Lewis. “This immerses the reader in medieval life, whether it be the intricacies of running a royal household or the arranging of marriages of nobles’ children…it’s a stunning debut.” ~D.A. Spruzen

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. “This has remained a classic for a reason. Gregor Samsa’s surreal and sudden transformation into an ungeziefer (repellent vermin) is a timeless metaphor that reveals so much about the rewards and penalties of family life.” ~Dorothy Reno

The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing by Adam Moss. “While my reading and teaching typically lean toward fiction, specifically the mystery genre, The Work of Art stood out as my favorite of the year — both a pleasure to read and an inspiration for my own too-often-flagging creativity. The collection profiles and interviews authors and artists across a variety of media to explore one of their works from inspiration to execution and beyond, offering a glimpse into the creative spark, the creative life, the creative discipline. The book is rich with images, too, often tracing the evolution of a work start to finish, so it’s a pleasure to look at, as well. I’m still pacing myself through it, savoring each chapter to the fullest.” ~Art Taylor

My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back by Mary M. Leder. “If Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow left you wanting more, try this obscure gem. Leder is another outsider (this time, a Jewish American) caught in Stalin’s Moscow for several decades, ultimately escaping with spirit, integrity, and independence of mind intact. A special bonus for Gentleman fans is Leder’s depiction of the real-life Metropol Hotel, which she had several occasions to visit.” ~Elizabeth J. Moore

Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson. “This surprising biography of a little-known, trailblazing fashion designer tells the intriguing, contradictory story of McCardell. Her life was brief (1905-1958); her impact on women’s clothes and lives endures. Sisters, thank her for our pockets!” ~Ellen Prentiss Campbell

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. “In a year of good reading, this classic gem stands out for its ambitions large and small, from its mindboggling time jump to its beautiful, telling one-liners (‘I delight in moat!’). This book reminded me why I love novels and language. How can anyone resist such a timeless and complex story (and heroine)?” ~Samantha Neugebauer

The Ephemerata: Shaping the Exquisite Nature of Grief by Carol Tyler. “This brutal graphic-novel memoir deals with Tyler’s slowly aging to the point where grief has ceased to be a one-off event and is instead a continuum. There’s a gorgeous finality to her art as it weaves between real-life anecdote and metaphor, a natural evolution of her previous work. I wrote about it here.” ~William Schwartz

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. “This academia-meets-Latinx-folk-horror-meets-historical-mystery adheres to none of the boundaries of any individual genre but instead weaves something rich and dark. In her story of a horror-fan grad student struggling to complete her thesis, Moreno-Garcia uses lush, romantic prose to position the use of witchcraft as a method of female empowerment against a terrifying generational curse. This book found me in the middle of hot July; it gave me chills and pulled me through time to see women claiming agency and fighting the things that go bump in the night.” ~Patricia S. Gormley

Your Name Here by Helen Dewitt and Ilya Gridneff. “Written nearly 20 years ago and just published by Dalkey Archive Press, this book hides a dystopian novel called Lotteryland within a narrative matryoshka inspired by Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. The characters (which include the authors) explore war, film festivals, alcohol, prostitution, and creative commerce, all while reading, plotting, and obsessing over books — I counted 131 titular namechecks by the end.” ~Michael Maiello

We Spread: A Novel by Iain Reid. “This beguiling novella (don’t be fooled by its page count) started out as a horror story and ended up making me want to cry. Its insights into art, aging, and what it means to have finally finished your work are as stirring as they are subtle. After turning the last page, I held the book in my hands for a good five minutes, quietly digesting what I’d just read.” ~Holly Smith