Devin Jacobs
Every year, readers wait with bated breath for The New York Times to display their picks for the absolute best books of the year. It’s like the Oscars of literature, except instead of awkward acceptance speeches, you get beautifully crafted stories that’ll keep you up way past your bedtime. This year’s list, announced in early December, is a fascinating mix of five fiction and five nonfiction titles that editors Gilbert Cruz and his team sweated over, narrowing down from their 100 Notable Books list.
And let’s be honest—2025 hasn’t exactly been a year of obvious blockbuster books. These picks feel refreshingly unexpected, the kind of under-the-radar gems that serious readers live for.
Literary Fiction Takes Center Stage
If you’re looking for beach reads and romantic comedies, you won’t find them here. The New York Times went all-in on serious literary fiction, and they didn’t hold back. Leading the pack is “Angel Down” by Daniel Kraus, a stream-of-consciousness WWI novel that apparently does things with narrative structure that’ll make your brain do backflips. Then there’s “The Director” by Daniel Kehlmann, which follows an Austrian filmmaker navigating the nightmare of WWII because if there’s one thing literary fiction loves, it’s wrestling with humanity’s darkest moments through art.
But the real showstopper might be Kiran Desai’s “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” clocking in at a hefty 700 pages. This family saga tracks two young people whose lives intersect and diverge across continents and decades, spanning India and America while grappling with the eternal push-pull between tradition and modernity. Desai, who won the Booker Prize for “The Inheritance of Loss,” has apparently outdone herself with what critics are calling her most ambitious work yet. Rounding out the fiction picks are Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s “The Sisters” and Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional,” the latter being a meditative exploration of a woman who retreats to a rural Australian religious community despite not believing in God.
Nonfiction That Demands Your Attention
The nonfiction selections are where things get really interesting, tackling everything from historical horror to personal memoir with unflinching honesty. Arundhati Roy’s “Mother Mary Comes to Me” stands out as a raw, deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of “The God of Small Things.” Roy traces her complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, in what reviewers describe as revelatory and gut-wrenching—the kind of book that makes you want to call your own mom immediately.
Then there’s Kevin Sack’s “Mother Emanuel,” which tackles the devastating 2015 Charleston church shooting through exceptional reporting. Written by a journalist, the book digs into what they mean for America. Similarly powerful is Brian Goldstone’s “There Is No Place for Us,” exposing a troubling new reality: the dramatic rise of working homeless people in rapidly gentrifying Atlanta. These are people with full-time jobs who still can’t afford housing, a crisis that’s quietly spreading across American cities.
Sophie Elmhirst’s “A Marriage at Sea” and Sue Prideaux’s “Wild Thing” round out the nonfiction picks, each bringing unique perspectives to personal narratives that somehow feel universal. The Times podcast reveals that these ten books stood out not just for their quality, but for their staying power.