Best fiction 2025
The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson
The Wayfinder
by Adam Johnson

A grand historical novel about a girl from a remote Polynesian island who goes on an epic journey to the heart of the Tongan Empire, from the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author--
The Dentist: A DS George Cross Mystery by Tim Sullivan
The Dentist: A DS George Cross Mystery
by Tim Sullivan

George Cross is on the autism spectrum. He struggles with simple daily interactions but his single-mindedness, attention to detail and fierce persistence make him the most successful detective in the Bristol station with a 97% conviction rate. When the body of an elderly homeless man is discovered on the edge of Clifton Downs, George insists on scrutinizing the smallest details, even after his fellow officers dismiss the murder as an act of random violence. As he delves into the dead man's past, he discovers a connection to a case that has been cold for fifteen years. The same tragedy that led to the victim's homelessness may have also led to his death. Despite skepticism from his colleagues, including his partner Josie who as usual is both exasperated by and protective of George, he is determined to solve both cases - and finally arrest the murderer who has roamed free.--Provided by publisher.
Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
Play Nice
by Rachel Harrison

Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so-glamorous secret--she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio's parent's messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That's not what Clio's sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped Alex of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house. After Alex's sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house-flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother's claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother's book, the presence in the house becomes more real, and more sinister, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio's beautiful life to its very foundation--
Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders
Lessons in Magic and Disaster
by Charlie Jane Anders

In the vein of Alice Hoffman and Charlie Jane Anders's own All the Birds in the Sky comes a novel full of love, disaster, and magic. A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic--with very unexpected results--in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.Jamie is the average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, generational trauma, and an esoteric dissertation proposal. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch. Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories. Jamie's busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path. Now it's up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.
Let's Give 'em Pumpkin to Talk about: A Quirky Pumpkin Spicy Small Town Rivals to Lovers Fall Romance by Isabelle Popp
Let's Give 'em Pumpkin to Talk about: A Quirky Pumpkin Spicy Small Town Rivals to Lovers Fall Romance
by Isabelle Popp

Textile artist Sadie Fox did not sign up for this. When she agreed to come home to Pea Blossom, Indiana, it was to care for her father's beloved pumpkin patch. The deal was that--just for the summer--she would grow a ginormous pumpkin, win the Indiana State Fair's pumpkin contest and finally win back her father's--grudging--respect. Instead, a horde of wild hogs destroyed the entire patch. Which is precisely when the annoyingly sexy, sunshiny next-door neighbor shows up. Josh Thatcher is a tech millionaire who traded in the office for growing gourds, including experimental squash hybrids. And for the life of her, Sadie can't understand what he sees in her sweary, tattooed, prickly self--or why he's offering to help his biggest competitor. But a storm-fueled kiss proves there's definitely something growing between them. Maybe it's just attraction. Maybe it's more. Whatever it is, it's already bigger than Sadie's fast-growing pumpkin--or the secret that Josh has been hiding--
A Murder for Miss Hortense: A Mystery by Mel Pennant
A Murder for Miss Hortense: A Mystery
by Mel Pennant

Retired nurse, avid gardener, and renowned cake maker Miss Hortense has lived in Bigglesweigh, a quiet suburb of Birmingham, England, since she emigrated from Jamaica in 1960. She takes great pride in her home, starching her lace curtains bright white, and she can tell if she's being shortchanged on turmeric before she's taken her first bite of a beef patty. A career in nursing has also left her afraid of nobody, ... and she's an expert in deciphering other people's secrets with just a glance. Miss Hortense once used her skills to benefit the Pardner network--a local group of Black investors that she helped found. Until, that is, she was unceremoniously ousted from its ranks, severing her ties to the majority of her friends and community. That was thirty years ago. Now, as a new millennium dawns, an unidentified man has been found dead in the home of one of the Pardner members. ... Suddenly Miss Hortense finds her long-buried past rushing back, bringing memories of the worst moment of her life--
Atmosphere: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Atmosphere: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Love Story
by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece Frances--that is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA's space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space. Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston's Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates. ... As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe--
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
The Incandescent
by Emily Tesh

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions. Walden is good at her job--no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It's her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it's possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from--is herself.--Provided by publisher.
The Emperor of Gladness: Oprah's Book Club by Ocean Vuong
The Emperor of Gladness: Oprah's Book Club
by Ocean Vuong

A year in the life of a wayward young man in New England who, by chance, becomes the caretaker for an eighty-two-year-old widow living with dementia, powering a story of friendship, loss, and how much we're willing to risk to claim one of life's most treasured mercies: a second chance--
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
The Correspondent
by Virginia Evans

Sybil is seventy-three years old, in the winter of her life. Sybil has always made sense of the world through writing letters and through this epistolary novel we see how she comes to terms with her past and present and learns forgiveness--
Great Big Beautiful Life: Reese's Book Club by Emily Henry
Great Big Beautiful Life: Reese's Book Club
by Emily Henry

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist, still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they're both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years--or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th century, ... Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she'll choose the person who'll tell her story--
Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd
Murder at Gulls Nest
by Jess Kidd

From Jess Kidd, the bestselling author of Things in Jars who is so good it isn't fair (Erika Swyler, nationally bestselling author), the first in a cozy mystery series about a former nun who searches for answers in a small seaside town after her pen pal mysteriously disappears. I believe every one of us at Gulls Nest is concealing some kind of secret. 1954: When her former novice's dependable letters stop, Nora Breen asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in Frieda's letter, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a charming hotel in Gore-on-Sea in Kent. A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests. But when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest it's time to ask if a dark past can ever really be left behind--
The Eights by Joanna Miller
The Eights
by Joanna Miller

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000-year history, Oxford University officially admits female students. Burning with dreams of equality, four young women move into neighboring rooms in Corridor 8. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne, and Otto-collectively known as The Eights-come from all walks of life, each driven by their own motives, each holding tight to their secrets-and are thrown into an unlikely, unshakeable friendship. Among the historic spires, and in the long shadow of the Great War, the four women must navigate and support one another in a turbulent world in which misogyny is rife, influenza is still a threat, and the dead do not always remain dead ...--
Awakened by A. E. Osworth
Awakened
by A. E. Osworth

On a morning much like any other, 30-something queer Brooklynite Wilder makes [a] miraculous discovery: suddenly, as if by magic, they can understand every language in the world. Dazed and disconnected, Wilder is found and taken in by a small coven of trans witches who have all become Awakened with mystical powers of their own. Quibble, a handsome portal traveler; Artemis, the group's caretaker and seer; and Mary Margaret, a smart-ass teen with telekinetic powers, all work to make the cagey and suspicious Wilder feel comfortable, both within their group and with the knowledge that magic is, in fact, real. Just as Wilder is finding their footing, a malicious AI threatens to dismantle the delicate balance of the coven and the world as they know it. Newly assembled and tenuously bound, the group scrambles to stay united as they parse the difference between difficult and dangerous, asking themselves continuously: is any consciousness--be it artificial, material, or magical--too dangerous to exist?--
A Gentleman's Gentleman by Tj Alexander
A Gentleman's Gentleman
by Tj Alexander

A Vintage Books original--Title page verso.
Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone
Promise Me Sunshine
by Cara Bastone

Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman's life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again.--
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
The River Has Roots
by Amal El-Mohtar

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family. There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic--none more devotedly than the family's latest daughters Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees. But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters' bond but also their lives will be at risk--
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
by Stephen Graham Jones

A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.--
Wild Dark Shore: Reese's Book Club Pick (a Novel) by Charlotte McConaghy
Wild Dark Shore: Reese's Book Club Pick (a Novel)
by Charlotte McConaghy

A novel about a family living alone on a remote island, when a mysterious woman washes up on shore--
The Filling Station: A Bestselling Historical Fiction Novel about the Tulsa Race Massacre by Vanessa Miller
The Filling Station: A Bestselling Historical Fiction Novel about the Tulsa Race Massacre
by Vanessa Miller

A heart wrenching and hopeful novel from the USA TODAY bestselling author of The American Queen. Two sisters. One unassuming haven. Endless opportunities for grace.
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite
Murder by Memory
by Olivia Waite

Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn't hers--just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship's detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies, but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot. Dorothy suspects the misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprieter--and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting--knows more than she's letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work--and if so, they've had three hundred years to perfect their schemes...--Publisher description.
Motheater by Linda H. Codega
Motheater
by Linda H. Codega

After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea 'Bennie' Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship, and her reputation to uncover what's killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it's right--but also because she hopes this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs. Instead, she brings more questions. The woman--called Motheater--can't remember her true name, or how she ended up inside the mountain. She knows only that she's a witch of Appalachia, bound to tor and holler, possum and snake, with power in her hands and Scripture on her tongue. But the mystery of her fate, her doomed quest to keep industry off Kire Mountain, and the promises she bent and broke have followed her a century and half into the future. And now, the choices Motheater and Bennie make together could change the face of the town itself--
Isola: Reese's Book Club by Allegra Goodman
Isola: Reese's Book Club
by Allegra Goodman

France, 1531. Orphaned by the age of five, Marguerite de la Rocque was heir to a chateau with its own village and lands. But her guardian, Jean Francois de la Rocque de Roberval, sells Marguerite's property to embark on an expedition to New France, bringing Marguerite and her maidservant with him. Aboard the ship, the women are limited to the company of the captain, the navigator, Roberval, and his secretary--a man whose musical talent, literary knowledge, and dark eyes intrigue Marguerite. It isn't long before the two of them are meeting secretly to declare their love for one another. When Roberval discovers this transgression, he is furious, seeing their affection as betrayal. As punishment, he maroons them on a small island off the coast, condemning them to certain death--
Death of the Author (Deluxe Limited Edition) by Nnedi Okorafor
Death of the Author (Deluxe Limited Edition)
by Nnedi Okorafor

A disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative.
The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang
The Rainfall Market
by You Yeong-Gwang

On the outskirts of Rainbow Town, there is an old, abandoned house. They say that if you send a letter detailing your misfortunes there, you could receive a ticket. If you bring this ticket to the house on the first day of the rainy season, you'll be granted entrance into the mysterious Rainfall Market--where you can choose to completely change your life. No one is more surprised than Serin when she receives a ticket. Lonely and with no real prospects for a future, Serin ventures to the market, determined to create a better life for herself. There she meets a magical cat companion named Issha and they search through bookstores, perfumeries, and magical realms while Serin tries to determine what her perfect life will look like--
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