Year-End Lists

The Boston Globe: The Best Books of 2025, published along with lists of favorite picture books, middle grade books, and young adult books

[see also 2024 • 2023 • 2021 • 2020]

Fiction

• The Antidote
  Karen Russell
• At Last
  Marisa Silver
• Audition
  Katie Kitamura
• The Book of Records
  Madeleine Thien
• The Correspondent
  Virginia Evans
• The Director
  Daniel Kehlmann
• Endling
  Maria Reva
• Exit Zero

  Stories
  Marie-Helene Bertino
• Flashlight
  Susan Choi
• Gliff
  Ali Smith
• Good and Evil and Other Stories
  Samanta Schweblin
• Heart the Lover
  Lily King
• Lonely Crowds
  Stephanie Wambugu
• Mona’s Eyes
  Thomas Schlesser
• On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)
  Solvej Balle
• An Oral History of Atlantis
  Ed Park
• Palaver
  Bryan Washington
• The Pelican Child

  Stories
  Joy Williams
• Pick a Color
  Souvankham Thammavongsa
• Stone Yard Devotional
  Charlotte Wood
• Shadow Ticket
  Thomas Pynchon
• Terrestrial History
  Joe Mungo Reed
• Tom's Crossing
  Mark Z. Danielewski
• What We Can Know
  Ian McEwan
• The Wilderness
  Angela Flournoy

Nonfiction

• American Kings

  A Biography of the Quarterback
  Seth Wickersham
• Bad Company

  Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream
  Megan Greenwell
• Baldwin

  A Love Story
  Nicholas Boggs
• Black Moses

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

  A Memoir of Sorts
  Margaret Atwood
• Bright Circle

  Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism
  Randall Fuller
• The Broken King
  Michael Thomas
• Captain's Dinner

  A Shipwreck, An Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History
  Adam Cohen
• Crumb

  A Cartoonist's Life
  Dan Nadel
• Gilded Rage

  Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley
  Jacob Silverman
• Girl on Girl

  How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
  Sophie Gilbert
• The Intermediaries

  A Weimar Story
  Brandy Schillace
• Languages of Home

  Essays on Writing, Hoop, and American Lives 1975–2025
  John Edgar Wideman
• Magic in the Air

  The Myth, the Mystery, and the Soul of the Slam Dunk
  Mike Sielski
• A Marriage at Sea

  A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
  Sophie Elmhirst
• The Martians

  The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America
  David Baron
• Memorial Days

  A Memoir
  Geraldine Brooks
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
  Omar El Akkad
• Only God Can Judge Me

  The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur
  Jeff Pearlman
• Raising Hare

  A Memoir
  Chloe Dalton
• Red Scare

  Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America
  Clay Risen
• Strangers in the Land

  Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America
  Michael Luo
• Troublemaker

  The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
  Carla Kaplan
• We the People

  A History of the U.S. Constitution
  Jill Lepore
• When It All Burns

  Fighting Fire in a Transformed World
  Jordan Thomas