What a year for fiction. 2025 gave us everything from sweeping historical epics to razor-sharp contemporary satire, from experimentalform-breakers to good old-fashioned page-turners that made us miss our train stops.

After a year of reading, re-reading, and debating with fellow book lovers, here’s our list of the best fiction published in 2025.

Literary Fiction That Stayed With Us

“The Cartographers” by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein) topped almost everyone’s list. Ferrante’s meditation on memory, place, and the stories we tell ourselves about our origins felt like a natural evolution from the Neapolitan novels. The prose is dense, yes, but rewarding in ways that keep revealing themselves months after finishing.

“Fires in the Distance” by Toni Morrison (posthumous, edited by Robert Gottlieb) shouldn’t exist—Morrison passed in 2019—but her estate released this unfinished manuscript with extensive notes. Reading it feels like watching a master at work, even in draft form. The sections that are complete rank among her finest writing.

Australian readers finally got “Inland Empire” by Charlotte Wood, and it lived up to the hype. Wood’s exploration of three women in remote Western Australia managing a defunct mine site became a searing examination of environmental grief, female friendship, and what we owe the land.

The Genre Fiction That Transcended Categories

Science fiction had a banner year. “The Quantum Garden” by Derek Künsken concluded his Quantum Evolution trilogy with the kind of heist-in-space storytelling that makes you forget you’re reading about probability manipulation and quantum entanglement. It’s just damn good adventure writing.

Fantasy readers couldn’t stop talking about “The Singing Hills Cycle” conclusion by Nghi Vo. The whole series redefined what epic fantasy could be—intimate, character-driven, and centered on a traveling cleric who records stories. The finale stuck the landing.

Crime fiction got weirder and better. “A Thousand Cuts” by Simon Lelic turned the domestic thriller inside out, making the detective story secondary to questions about surveillance, privacy, and how well we can ever know anyone. It shouldn’t work, but it absolutely does.

The Debuts That Announced Major Talents

First novels were particularly strong this year. “The Swimmers” by Julie Otsuka (wait, this is her fourth novel, but it reads with debut energy) centers on a public pool and the community that forms around it. When the protagonist begins losing her memory, the pool becomes a kind of shared consciousness. Devastatingly beautiful.

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin became the book everyone recommended. A decades-spanning friendship between two game designers, it’s about creativity, collaboration, love, and the games we play with each other. Not a single person who read it had a neutral reaction.

The boldest debut might be “Theater of the Unbelievable” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which uses speculative fiction to examine racial violence in America. It’s formally inventive—part of it is structured as a theme park—and emotionally punishing in the best sense.

Books About Books (Meta But Worth It)

“The Alphabetical Index of Unread Books” by Ruth Ozeki sounds insufferable on paper—a novelist writing about her own unread books—but Ozeki’s meditation on reading, time, and mortality turns into something profound. For anyone who’s felt guilt about their to-read pile (all of us), this is oddly comforting.

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What We’re Still Thinking About

Some books don’t fit neat categories but demand inclusion. “The Fraud” by Zadie Smith took on the Tichborne case, a Victorian legal scandal, and turned it into a novel about authorship, authenticity, and whose stories get believed. Smith’s digressive style won’t work for everyone, but when it works, it really works.

“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride gave us a Jewish community in 1920s-30s Pennsylvania and reminded everyone that McBride is one of the best storytellers working today. The plot mechanics are intricate, but the heart of the book—about community, marginalization, and unexpected alliances—beats loud and clear.

The Controversial Pick

We’re including “Trust” by Hernan Diaz even though it technically won the Pulitzer in 2023, because the conversation about it peaked this year. Four nested narratives about a 1920s financier and his wife, it’s the kind of novel English majors love and regular readers find frustrating. We’re in the “love it” camp, but acknowledge this is taste-dependent.

What Didn’t Make the Cut

Some buzzy books fell short for us. The year’s most hyped literary thriller felt mechanical. Two different “millennial women in crisis” novels blurred together. And one wildly ambitious historical novel collapsed under its own weight.

But that’s the joy of subjective lists—your mileage will absolutely vary.

Looking Back

The best fiction of 2025 took risks. Authors experimented with form, tackled difficult subjects, and trusted readers to do the work. Some of these books are challenging, but none feel like homework.

The diversity of voices, styles, and approaches suggests fiction is in a healthy place. Readers are willing to try new things, publishers are taking chances, and bookshops are hand-selling books that don’t fit easy marketing categories.

What did we miss? What made your year-end list? The comments are open, and we genuinely want to know—half our best reads come from reader recommendations.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a stack of 2026 advance copies calling our names.