Year-End Lists

The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2025

Fiction

• Angel Down
  Daniel Kraus
• August Lane
  Regina Black
• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
  Kylie Lee Baker
• Buckeye
  Patrick Ryan
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
  Stephen Graham Jones
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
  V.E. Schwab
• The Colony
  Annika Norlin
• Death Takes Me
  Cristina Rivera Garza
• The Director
  Daniel Kehlmann
• The Doorman
  Chris Pavone
• The Feeling of Iron
  Giaime Alonge
• Flesh
  David Szalay
• A Gentleman's Gentleman
  T.J. Alexander
• The Good Liar
  Denise Mina
• A Guardian and a Thief
  Megha Majumdar
• Heart the Lover
  Lily King
• Heartwood
  Amity Gaige
• Hollow Spaces
  Victor Suthammanont
• The Hounding
  Xenobe Purvis
• How to Dodge a Cannonball
  Dennard Dayle
• Isola
  Allegra Goodman
• Katabasis
  R.F. Kuang
• Killing Stella
  Marlen Haushofer
• King Sorrow
  Joe Hill
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
  Kiran Desai
• Lonely Crowds
  Stephanie Wambugu
• Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
  Katie Yee
• Night Watch
  Kevin Young
• On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)
  Solvej Balle
• Perfection
  Vincenzo Latronico
• Playworld
  Adam Ross
• The Rarest Fruit
  Gaëlle Bélem
• The Remembered Soldier
  Anjet Daanje
• Shadow Ticket
  Thomas Pynchon
• Silver Elite
  Dani Francis
• The Sisters
  Jonas Hassen Khemiri
• The Slip
  Lucas Schaefer
• The South
  Tash Aw
• Startlement

  New and Selected Poems
  Ada Limón
• Stone Yard Devotional
  Charlotte Wood
• Sunrise on the Reaping
  Suzanne Collins
• These Summer Storms
  Sarah MacLean
• To Smithereens
  Rosalyn Drexler
• The Tokyo Suite
  Giovana Madalosso
• Trip
  Amie Barrodale
• Venetian Vespers
  John Banville
• Victorian Psycho
  Virginia Feito
• We Do Not Part
  Han Kang
• What We Can Know
  Ian McEwan
• A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
  Sangu Mandanna

Nonfiction

• Abundance
  Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
• The Age of Choice

  A History of Freedom in Modern Life
  Sophia Rosenfeld
• All Consuming

  Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now
  Ruby Tandoh
• Apple in China

  The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
  Patrick McGee
• The Arrogant Ape

  The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters
  Christine E. Webb
• Awake

  A Memoir
  Jen Hatmaker
• Baldwin

  A Love Story
  Nicholas Boggs
• Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

  A Reckoning
  Peter Beinart
• Black Moses

  A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State
  Caleb Gayle
• Book of Lives

  A Memoir of Sorts
  Margaret Atwood
• Born in Flames

  The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
  Bench Ansfield
• The Broken King
  Michael Thomas
• Buckley

  The Life and the Revolution That Changed America
  Sam Tanenhaus
• The Call of the Honeyguide

  What Science Tells Us about How to Live Well with the Rest of Life
  Rob Dunn
• Capitalism

  A Global History
  Sven Beckert
• Careless People

  A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
  Sarah Wynn-Williams
• Claire McCardell

  The Designer Who Set Women Free
  Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
• The Containment

  Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North
  Michelle Adams
• Crumb

  A Cartoonist's Life
  Dan Nadel
• Dark Renaissance

  The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
  Stephen Greenblatt
• Daughters of the Bamboo Grove

  From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
  Barbara Demick
• Empire of AI

  Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
  Karen Hao
• Every Day Is Sunday

  How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut
  Ken Belson
• The Fate of the Day

  The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780
  Rick Atkinson
• A Flower Traveled in My Blood

  The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children
  Haley Cohen Gilliland
• Girl on Girl

  How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
  Sophie Gilbert
• The Gods of New York

  Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990
  Jonathan Mahler
• I Seek a Kind Person

  My Father, Seven Children and the Adverts that Helped Them Escape the Holocaust
  Julian Borger
• John & Paul

  A Love Story in Songs
  Ian Leslie
• King of Kings

  The Iranian Revolution—A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
  Scott Anderson
• The Last Manager
  John W. Miller
• Mark Twain
  Ron Chernow
• A Marriage at Sea

  A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
  Sophie Elmhirst
• Memorial Days

  A Memoir
  Geraldine Brooks
• Mother Emanuel
  Kevin Sack
• Motherland

  A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
  Julia Ioffe
• Mother Mary Comes to Me
  Arundhati Roy
• 1929

  Inside the Greatest Crash in History--and How It Shattered a Nation
  Andrew Ross Sorkin
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
  Omar El Akkad
• The Peepshow

  The Murders at Rillington Place
  Kate Summerscale
• Raising Hare

  A Memoir
  Chloe Dalton
• Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope

  A Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement
  Brandon M. Terry
• The Spinach King

  The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
  John Seabrook
• There Is No Place for Us

  Working and Homeless in America
  Brian Goldstone
• Things in Nature Merely Grow
  Yiyun Li
• The Tragedy of True Crime

  Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us
  John J. Lennon
• We the People

  A History of the U.S. Constitution
  Jill Lepore
• What Is Queer Food?

  How We Served a Revolution
  John Birdsall
• Wild Thing

  A Life of Paul Gauguin
  Sue Prideaux
• The Zorg

  A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
  Siddharth Kara

This list summarizes other lists, including these:

• Favorite Books of 2025 MJ Franklin