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Overview
According to Penguin Random Housse
From captivating novels to insightful nonfiction, these are the books that are making the biggest splash in 2025! Add these to your TBR list and don’t miss out on the books everyone — from readers to critics — is talking about.
The Must-Read Books of 2025 (So Far)
4 participants (43 books)
Overview
According to Penguin Random Housse
From captivating novels to insightful nonfiction, these are the books that are making the biggest splash in 2025! Add these to your TBR list and don’t miss out on the books everyone — from readers to critics — is talking about.
Challenge Books
Audition
Katie Kitamura
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.
Water Moon
Samantha Sotto Yambao
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.
Mask of the Deer Woman
Laurie L. Dove
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.
A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
Sophie Elmhirst
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.
Theft
Abdulrazak Gurnah
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.
The Missing Half
Ashley Flowers
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.
The Listeners
Maggie Stiefvater
#1 New York Times bestselling novelist Maggie Stiefvater dazzles in this mesmerizing portrait of an irresistible heroine, an unlikely romance, and a hotel amidst a world in peril. January 1942. At a luxury hotel in West Virginia, June Porter Hudson must host captured Axis diplomats, while FBI Agent Tucker Minnick listens for secrets. But as war creeps into the Avallon’s halls, June faces a choice: protect her people or preserve the illusion of peace.
Let's Call Her Barbie
Renée Rosen
She was only eleven-and-a-half inches tall, but she would change the world. In 1956, the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. One woman’s vision for a doll shaped like a grown woman and outfitted in an enviable wardrobe will let them dream they can be anything. Barbie is born in this bold novel by USA Today bestselling author Renée Rosen.
The Favorites
Layne Fargo
An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating, starring a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice.
Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service
Michael Lewis
Who works for the government and why does their work matter? An urgent and absorbing civics lesson from an all-star team of writers and storytellers including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell.
All That Life Can Afford
Emily Everett
Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library — its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind — that fairy-tale life still out of reach. Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter and she soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess. It’s like she’s stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part? Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you’ve left behind.
Good Dirt
Charmaine Wilkerson
The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read With Jenna Book Club pick.