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100 Outstanding Books to Read for 2025

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100 outstanding books to read in 2025

Here is a list of some book prize winners as well as others who were nominated or runners-up. These novels have been recognised by prestigious literary awards such as the Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Women’s Prize for Fiction during 2023 and 2024. If you’re looking for your next great read, this is the perfect list to work your way through, featuring a diverse range of powerful storytelling and unforgettable characters.

  1. Night Watch – Jayne Anne Phillips
  2. Same Bed, Different Dreams – Ed Park
  3. Wednesday’s Child – Yiyun Li
  4. Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver
  5. Trust – Hernan Diaz
  6. The Rabbit Hutch – Tess Gunty
  7. The Haunting of Hajji Hotak – Jamil Jan Kochai
  8. Prophet Song – Paul Lynch
  9. The Bee Sting – Paul Murray
  10. Western Lane – Chetna Maroo
  11. If I Survive You – Jonathan Escoffery
  12. Study for Obedience – Sarah Bernstein
  13. This Other Eden – Paul Harding
  14. Old God’s Time – Sebastian Barry
  15. How to Build a Boat – Elaine Feeney
  16. In Ascension – Martin MacInnes
  17. Pearl – Sian Hughes
  18. A Spell of Good Things – Ayòbámi Adébáyò
  19. All the Little Bird-Hearts – Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
  20. The House of Doors – Tan Twan Eng
  21. Blackouts – Justin Torres
  22. Chain-Gang All-Stars – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  23. Temple Folk – Aaliyah Bilal
  24. The End of Drum-Time – Hanna Pylväinen
  25. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store – James McBride
  26. Loot – Tania James
  27. The Future – Naomi Alderman
  28. Pod – Laline Paull
  29. Fire Rush – Jacqueline Crooks
  30. Black Butterflies – Priscilla Morris
  31. Trespasses – Louise Kennedy
  32. Cursed Bread – Sophie Mackintosh
  33. Glory – NoViolet Bulawayo
  34. The Marriage Portrait – Maggie O’Farrell
  35. Time Shelter – Georgi Gospodinov
  36. Still Born – Guadalupe Nettel
  37. Whale – Cheon Myeong-kwan
  38. The Gospel According to the New World – Maryse Condé
  39. Boulder – Eva Baltasar
  40. Standing Heavy – GauZ’
  41. Biography of X – Catherine Lacey
  42. North Woods – Daniel Mason
  43. The Fraud – Zadie Smith
  44. Birnam Wood – Eleanor Catton
  45. Burnham Wood – David Vann
  46. Crook Manifesto – Colson Whitehead
  47. Victory City – Salman Rushdie
  48. The Wren, The Wren – Anne Enright
  49. Let Us Descend – Jesmyn Ward
  50. Devil Makes Three – Ben Fountain
  51. Rouge – Mona Awad
  52. Holler, Child – LaToya Watkins
  53. Land of Milk and Honey – C Pam Zhang
  54. Night Wherever We Go – Tracey Rose Peyton
  55. The Saint of Bright Doors – Vajra Chandrasekera
  56. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home – Lorrie Moore
  57. The Maniac – Benjamín Labatut
  58. The Vaster Wilds – Lauren Groff
  59. The Great Reclamation – Rachel Heng
  60. The Disenchantment – Celia Bell
  61. The Glutton – A.K. Blakemore
  62. Kairos – Jenny Erpenbeck
  63. The Lost Wife – Susanna Moore
  64. Yellowface – R.F. Kuang
  65. The Guest – Emma Cline
  66. The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese
  67. Monica – Daniel Clowes
  68. The Bandit Queens – Parini Shroff
  69. The Passenger – Cormac McCarthy
  70. Stella Maris – Cormac McCarthy
  71. The Night Watchman – Louise Erdrich
  72. Harlem Shuffle – Colson Whitehead
  73. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
  74. The Sentence – Louise Erdrich
  75. Trust Exercise – Susan Choi
  76. The Book of Goose – Yiyun Li
  77. Briefly, A Delicious Life – Nell Stevens
  78. The Candy House – Jennifer Egan
  79. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong
  80. Open Throat – Henry Hoke
  81. Flux – Jinwoo Chong
  82. Chlorine – Jade Song
  83. Our Share of Night – Mariana Enríquez
  84. The Extinction of Irena Rey – Jennifer Croft
  85. The Other Valley – Scott Alexander Howard
  86. What Napoleon Could Not Do – DK Nnuro
  87. Such Kindness – Andre Dubus III
  88. We All Want Impossible Things – Catherine Newman
  89. All This Could Be Different – Sarah Thankam Mathews
  90. Sea Change – Gina Chung
  91. Really Good, Actually – Monica Heisey
  92. The Sun Walks Down – Fiona McFarlane
  93. The New Life – Tom Crewe
  94. Red Memory – Tania Branigan
  95. A History of Burning – Janika Oza
  96. Brotherless Night – V.V. Ganeshananthan
  97. Horse – Geraldine Brooks
  98. Booth – Karen Joy Fowler
  99. The Trees – Percival Everett
  100. Shrines of Gaiety – Kate Atkinson