After 2024 seemed to be a year of reading constriction, 2025 saw even less reading. This was good news for my own work but could have proven to depress this obsessive reader. Instead, I ended up with many fine novels and a number of rewarding nonfiction books. Only two of the Top 10 ended up being nonfiction and theyare nothing like each other. Five outstanding genre books were balanced by three literary fiction gems.
I present ten books of outstanding merit (the links are to my reviews, which themselves contain links to information about each book):
- Author Mick Herron had a bumper year on the screen but his fans know he is best appreciated in print. Number nine in the Slow Horses/Slough House/Jackson Lamb series is Clown Town and it is a ripper, constructed in two parts with the second half unexpectedly dark.
- Probably the most low-key offering ever from wonderful scribe Helen Garner is her sublime look at suburban football, The Season.
- No doubt many of you know full well the magic of Irish novelist Niall Williams. He was new to me, however, and I was surprised to swoon at his immersive, love-filled Time of the Child.
- Is stylistic artistry genetic? Nick Harkaway’s Karla’s Choice, penned by the son of the deceased master of spy fiction, John Le Carre, offers up a new tale of superspy George Smiley, and it reads as if written by the father.
- 2025 saw plenty of splendid sci-fi on the screen, less so on the page, but the latest Murderbot book, System Collapse, is magnificent.
- Daniel Kehlmann’s multi-viewpoint novel of Nazi collusion, The Director, seems apt for our age.
- Australian crime fiction master Garry Discher keeps pumping out his outback noir series featuring smalltown policeman Hirsch. Mischance Creek is gradual and low-stakes until … until it’s not. An especially skillful plot and rich characterization.
- I’m new to British crime writer Simon Morgan’s “mismatched duo” procedural series. The latest, A Voice in the Night, is a 2025 standout in this genre.
- Roisin O’Donnell’s novel featuring a struggling mother beset by a misogynist, Nesting, stuns due to its bewitching voice.
- We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, by renowned journalist/author Michael Grunwald, is mandatory 2025 reading, both for its revelatory and horrifying message, and for its superb storytelling.