100 Outstanding Books to Read for 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