Year-End Lists

New York Public Library: Best Books for Adults 2025

[see also 2024 • 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

• The Afterlife of Malcolm X

  An Outcast Turned Icon's Enduring Impact on America
  Mark Whitaker
• The Appalachian Sea
  Steve Scafidi
• The Art Spy

  The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland
  Michelle Young
• Audition
  Katie Kitamura
• The Beast in the Clouds

  The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda
  Nathalia Holt
• Black Arms to Hold You Up

  A History of Black Resistance
  Ben Passmore
• Blood on Her Tongue
  Johanna van Veen
• The Book of Records
  Madeleine Thien
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
  Stephen Graham Jones
• The Burial Tide
  Neil Sharpson
• Children of Radium

  A Buried Inheritance
  Joe Dunthorne
• The City Changes Its Face
  Eimear McBride
• The Confessional

  A Graphic Novel
  Paige Hender
• The Country Under Heaven
  Frederic S. Durbin
• Dead Girl Cameo

  A Love Song in Poems
  M. Mick Powell
• Death of the Author
  Nnedi Okorafor
• The Devils
  Joe Abercrombie
• The Director
  Daniel Kehlmann
• Drome
  Jesse Lonergan
• Dwelling
  Emily Hunt Kivel
• The End Is the Beginning

  A Personal History of My Mother
  Jill Bialosky
• Fair Play
  Louise Hegarty
• 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
• The Forgotten Sense

  The New Science of Smell—and the Extraordinary Power of the Nose
  Jonas Olofsson
• Fresh, Green Life
  Sebastian Castillo
• Good Things

  Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love
  Samin Nosrat
• Groceries
  Nora Claire Miller
• Heartwood
  Amity Gaige
• I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness
  Irene Solà
• I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always
  Douglas Kearney
• Integrated

  How American Schools Failed Black Children
  Noliwe Rooks
• The Jailhouse Lawyer
  Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull
• The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive

  being dreamity, algoriddims, chants & riffs
  Marcia Douglas
• King of Ashes
  S.A. Cosby
• The Last Guy on Earth
  Sarina Bowen
• The Living and the Rest
  José Eduardo Agualusa
• No More Tears

  The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
  Gardiner Harris
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
  Omar El Akkad
• Perfection
  Vincenzo Latronico
• Precious Rubbish
  Kayla E.
• Promise Me Sunshine
  Cara Bastone
• Stone Yard Devotional
  Charlotte Wood
• Terrestrial History
  Joe Mungo Reed
• A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke
  Adriana Herrera
• The Trouble with Anna
  Rachel Griffiths
• The True Happiness Company

  How a Girl Like Me Falls for a Cult Like That
  Veena Dinavahi
• Turning to Birds

  The Power and Beauty of Noticing
  Lili Taylor
• Valley of Forgetting

  Alzheimer's Families and the Search for a Cure
  Jennie Erin Smith
• Vantage Point
  Sara Sligar
• The Wilderness
  Angela Flournoy