The Best Books of 2025

A singular, devastating debut novel, Dogs traces the fallout of one catastrophic night in the lives of five high school wrestlers, asking what can survive in the blast radius of latent trauma and violence. As night falls on the city of Carbon, Hal and his friends are cruising the backroads in their terrible car. From the wrestling gym to the gas station, from his mom’s kitchen to the mall parking lot, Hal bears quiet witness to the beauty and the horror he perceives in the slow, lonely world of his hometown. Withdrawn and reticent, Hal is haunted by the specter of violence. Safety and comfort are hard won in Carbon, a town dogged by stories of desperation and brutality, and his own home is a dark vault of troubled and unspoken memory. Hal’s greatest peace is found in the company of his dearest friend, Cody John, whose true compassion offers him a window to a better life. Over the course of a single night, a catastrophic chain of events is set into motion. Its devastating conclusion will explode the fragile balance that once kept the boys together. Unflinching, resolute, and beautifully rendered, Dogs is a stunning exploration of trauma, real love, and the limit of our ability to reach one another.

"E. Y. Zhao's Underspin is an eruption of a debut. This novel displays a wondrous ability that renders both the central sport and lives that weave around it with meticulous precision and tremendous heart. The beauty of sport, the spirit of desire and the sacrifice required for greatness are all captured here in this stunner." —Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars Stay True meets Headshot in this intimate, bruising coming-of-age novel about the short and tumultuous life of a charismatic and enigmatic table tennis prodigy, as seen through the eyes of those pulled into his orbit. Ryan Lo begins playing table tennis at age eight, under the tutelage of his brilliant but ruthless coach Kristian, who sees talent in him that might be nurtured into greatness. Throughout an adolescence circumscribed by Kristian's demanding behavior, Ryan forms jealousy-fueled and mutually adoring friendships with his teammates and competitors, falls in love with fellow table tennis star Anabel Yu, and above all, wins championships. By twenty-one, Ryan ascends all the way to the German Bundesliga, the highest echelon of international table tennis, just as he was supposed to, but he doesn't stay there. It is clear to all that Ryan Lo was meant to be the greatest in the world. Instead, he abandons competition and is dead before his twenty-fifth birthday. What happened? In crisp, evocative prose, Underspin masterfully delves beneath the relentless pressure that forges a champion, considering adolescence, estrangement, and the great injustices committed within our closest relationships. A love letter to an underdog sports circuit and a tender exploration of love, loss and abuse, Underspin is a bildungsroman and literary puzzle for readers of Rita Bullwinkel, Hua Hsu, Susan Choi, and Brandon Taylor.

“Lyrical and eerie . . . the prose is subtly alluring, such as the author’s description of nature as ‘a witch’s brew of mistrust.’ This sly and creepy drama is worth a look.”—Publishers Weekly A multigenerational and deeply autobiographical gothic tale of Hollywood dreams and upstate New York reality. Foreclosure Gothic reimagines the American Gothic against the backdrop of today's Hudson Valley. The story tells of ex-Hollywood actor Vic Greener as he falls in love with the elusive Heather Roswell and the couple, following in the footsteps of Vic's father, resolves to make a life restoring one foreclosed home after another. Then comes the uncanny, destabilizing arrival of new tenants in their duplex, and the Greener's shocking discovery upon their departure. With evocative and unsettling black and white photos throughout, this debut novel is at once a skewed portrait of three generations of Greener men, an intimate look at both childhood and parenthood and an examination of the friction between chasing one's dream and working to make money.

Open Wide will quite literally get under your skin - a weird, electrifyingly original love story about the mad, troubling and vulnerable things we do to get close to others 'Will leave you questioning the boundaries we draw around those we love' CHELSEA BIEKER 'Unputdownable' MARIE-HELENE BERTINO 'Smart, unsettling, sexy and hilarious' CLARE BEAMS 'Obsessed' Mirror Olive is desperate to get close to Theo – really, really close. Despite being a radio host, she’s always struggled to connect with people. And now she’s in her thirties, single, and so flustered by relationships that she secretly records her conversations, hoping to decipher social clues and find a way to be less alone. Then Theo turns up for a shift at the food pantry where she volunteers. He’s a surgeon fascinated by human organs, a former football player, and possibly as weird as Olive. For the first time, someone seems to crave and understand her. Every recording Olive makes of Theo is a balm – which just makes her more afraid of losing him. The only solution seems to be to bind him to her forever. Luckily, the gap between Theo’s front teeth is just wide enough for something – or someone – to slip inside. 'Strange, ominous and darkly alluring' PENG SHEPHERD 'Uncomfortably delicious' MEGAN MILKS
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An increasingly obsessive radio host tests the boundaries of her boyfriend's love in this unforgettable dark comedy that is by turns romantic, horrific, and profound Olive is desperate to get close to Theo--really, really close. She's always struggled to connect with people. And now she's in her thirties, single, and so flustered by relationships that she secretly records her conversations, hoping to decipher social cues and find a way to be less alone. Then Theo turns up for a shift at the same food pantry where she volunteers. He's a surgeon fascinated by human organs, a former soccer player, and possibly as weird as Olive. For the first time, someone seems to crave and understand her. Every recording of Theo is a balm, which just makes Olive more afraid of losing him. The only solution seems to be to bind him to her forever. Luckily, the gap between Theo's front teeth is just wide enough for something--or someone--to slip inside. Arresting and immersive, Open Wide explores the complexities of intimacy, love and consent, as universal human impulses bleed into the surreal.

AN LA TIMES BESTSELLER. Named a Most Anticipated Book by People, Vulture, A.V. Club and OurCulture. "Like a J.D. Salinger novel rolled in Hunter S. Thompson's hallucinogen dust." —Ann Powers, author of Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell "[Waiting for Britney Spears] transformed and transported me." ―Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year A frenetic, gonzo account of Britney Spears’s historic rise and equally tragic fall told by an iconoclastic music journalist. America, 2003: A country at war, its shiny veneer beginning to crack. Von Dutch and The Simple Life dominate. And on the cover of every magazine, a twenty-one-year-old pop star named Britney Spears. Tracking her every move for a third-tier gossip rag in Los Angeles was an unknown young writer taking whatever job he could while pursuing his distant literary dreams. He'd instead become an eyewitness to the slow tragedy of a changing nation, represented in spirit by “the coy it-girl at the end of history.” Years later, after finally establishing himself as a celebrated journalist, Jeff Weiss presents Waiting for Britney Spears, a gonzo, nostalgic, and “allegedly true” recounting of his years as a tabloid spy in the lurid underbelly of Los Angeles. Weiss follows America’s sweetheart through Vegas superclubs and Malibu car chases, annulled marriages and soul-crushing legal battles, all the way to Britney’s infamous 2007 VMA performance. As Weiss lives through the chaos leading to Britney’s conservatorship, he observes, with peerless style, cringe-inducing fashion waves, destructive celebrity surveillance, and a country whose decline is embodied by the devastating downturn of its former golden child. With the narrative flair that established him as a singular chronicler of modern pop culture, Weiss goes for broke in Waiting for Britney Spears, a descent into a neon hall of mirrors reflecting our obsession with fame, morality, and the mystery of what really happened to the last great pop star.

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR Named a Top 10 Book of the Year by Our Culture magazine Named a Publishers Weekly Editors’ Pick A most anticipated book from New York • Bustle • Lit Hub • The Millions • Foreign Policy • Our Culture • & more In his provocative, crackling new novel, Andrew Lipstein spins a wicked web through the heart of Copenhagen. You’ll question everyone and everything—even the very nature of truth. Cecilie is a fed-up New York Times reporter. Her husband, Reuben, is a disgraced former NPR host and grudging stay-at-home dad. Neither can wait to flee New York to spend the summer in Copenhagen, Denmark, Cecilie’s hometown. But their vacation begins to turn inside out as soon as they land: Cecilie’s first love, Jonas, has been diagnosed with a rare, fatal illness. All of Cecilie’s friends are desperate to get him help—except for Mikkel, a high-powered journalist who happens to be the only one Jonas will listen to. Mikkel’s influence quickly extends to Reuben, who’s not only intoxicated by Mikkel’s charm, but discovers in him a new model of masculinity—one he found hopelessly absent in America. As Mikkel indoctrinates Reuben with ever more depraved stunts, Reuben senses something is seriously amiss. Cecilie, too, begins to question who to trust—even herself. Drawn in by the gravity of the past, she can’t help but stray onto the road not taken. A twisting, thrilling tale of loyalty and deceit, lovers and fools, Something Rotten proves that sometimes to be kind you have to be cruel beyond belief.

Kyle Seibel's debut short story collection is a bracing look into the lives of society's misfits. Each story explores a different nuance of the modern day loser--soft-hearted alcoholics, cunning factory workers, and military veterans lost at sea. Seibel transcends these stereotypes, revealing the humanity within the worst of us and the tenderness beneath machismo. Hey You Assholes dismisses the notion of likability and instead presents individuals who are more flawed and, as a result, more realistic. Seibel sheds light on the trials of those most often ignored--the impoverished, the addicted, and yes, the assholes. Read as a whole, it's a record of a broken world's most difficult subjects. These unapologetic and unforgettable stories hold nothing back.

A cyberpunk fever-dream of climate catastrophe: the full-length fiction debut from one of the boldest new voices in Argentinian literature, thrillingly translated by Rahul Bery. After the last Antarctic icecaps melt, calamity follows. Landscapes are radically transformed, diseases mutate and spread with unprecedented speed, and, in response, forms the ghastly “virofinance” exchange—a market for corporations to profit from pandemics and global suffering. It’s in this grim near-future of 2272, where words such as “winter” and “cold” have no meaning, the Dengue Child grows. The monstrous humanoid mosquito emerges in newly tropical Argentina, carrying its namesake virus and despairing of its own existence. Bullies brutalize the child until a violent eruption of revelation and transformation takes place, shockwaves of which will extend far beyond the schoolyard into a society full of terrors and wonders enabled and exposed by climate collapse. Powerful telepathic stones from the bowels of the earth, sought after by smugglers, seem to hold a volatile, primordial wisdom. The meager remaining glaciers are harvested for skating rinks on luxury cruises. And the youth obsess over an immersive, addictive video game that presents a virtual world far more attractive than reality. In the tradition of Kafka, Cronenberg, and Philip K. Dick, Michel Nieva's brilliant, hilarious, and demented Dengue Boy draws on manga, body horror, and gaucho-punk science fiction to tell a delirious, frenetic, singular story about the ravages of capitalism and what hope might exist, if any, for revenge and rebirth.
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AN IRISH INDEPENDENT BOOK TO CATCH YOUR IMAGINATION IN 2025 'A psychedelic fever dream' ESQUIRE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 'A rip-roaring satire of late capitalism and humanity's unerring instinct for self-sabotage' IRISH TIMES 'An incandescent imagination' VALERIA LUISELLI The year is 2272. New York and Buenos Aires were submerged years ago and the Patagonian archipelagos are the only habitable lands on Earth. Here, Dengue Boy is a humanoid mosquito whose monstrous appearance repulses everyone, including his own mother. As the world spirals to its end, Dengue Boy searches for the meaning of his life and his true origins. Elsewhere, adults exploit the value of pandemics on the Stock Exchange and waste the last of Earth's resources, while their privileged children plug into virtual realities and stream violent video games. For readers of China Miéville, Samanta Schweblin and Mariana Enríquez, with joyful, savage flair, Dengue Boy blends body horror and cyberpunk to deliver an extraordinary portrait of a demented future. Translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery
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Uma história sobre um futuro cyberpunk tropical e latino, com Dengue boy: A infância do mundo, Michel Nieva se revela uma das vozes mais interessantes na literatura latino-americana contemporânea. No ano de 2272, a crise climática atinge um ponto intransponível. As zonas polares derreteram por completo, a temperatura média global é de 90°C e cidades como Nova York e Buenos Aires se encontram submersas. No extremo sul do continente, os Arquipélagos Patagônicos formam o Caribe Pampiano: de um lado, um balneário com belíssimas praias artificiais; de outro, uma miserável e tépida orla. É nesse cenário devastado que cresce o dengue boy. Ninguém gosta do dengue boy. Na escola, seu aspecto bizarro e nojento o transforma no principal alvo das zombarias comandadas pelo pequeno tirano Dulce. Em casa, sua situação não é muito melhor. A mãe, exausta de seus dois empregos, não aguenta a bagunça feito pelo filho, que não possui mãos. E assim, deslocado, o esquisito mosquito humanoide vai levando sua vida, dia após dia, no mormaço insuportável do único canto ainda habitável da Terra. Este é um livro sobre um fim do mundo. Uma prosa cyberpunk latino-americana, tropical e frenética. Um delírio de realidades moribundas, artificiais e virtuais, em que adultos negociam o valor de pandemias na Bolsa de Valores e esgarçam os últimos recursos terrestres. E, enquanto isso, crianças definem os rumos do que sobra como quem joga videogame. Michel Nieva, uma das vozes mais interessantes e singulares da literatura argentina contemporânea, é um autor de ficção científica gaúcho -punk. Mergulhado em influências do universo do mangá, do body horror e do absurdo, o autor trabalha, com humor, cenas da vida no século 21. E nos transporta a um novíssimo século 23, no qual sua estrela brilha próxima a nomes como Franz Kafka, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jorge Luis Borges, David Cronenberg e Junji Ito. Este Dengue boy: a infância do mundo, seu primeiro livro publicado no Brasil, com tradução de Joca Reiners Terron, autor finalista do Jabuti, e capa de Amanda Miranda, finalista do CCXP Awards, é um bizarro, mas verossímil, retrato do nosso presente. "Michel Nieva aposta forte com este livro steampunk que imagina o fim do sul da América Latina com literatura gauchesca, videogames monstruosos e pragas monetizadas. Inteligente, divertido e brutal." – Mariana Enríquez, autora de As coisas que perdemos no fogo. "Uma crítica contundente e divertida às irracionalidades do sistema capitalista e um convite à construção de um futuro diferente daquele predeterminado." – La Izquierda Diario
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For fans of David Cronenberg's films and lovers of Kafka, this gaucho-punk, sci-fi novel set in 2197 offers an explosive interpretation of an ultra-capitalistic society on the brink of climate collapse. The protagonist of this story has no understanding of the words “winter”, "cold”, or "snow" because he has never experienced the phenomena they describe. We find ourselves in Victorica, a province of La Pampa, Argentina, some time after 2197 – the year in which the last of the Antarctic icecaps melted and an unprecedented climate catastrophe ensued, radically transforming the landscape of the region into a Caribbean Pampas. It is here that the Dengue Child grows up, a mutant mix of child and mosquito, the result of crazy experimenting driven by ultra-capitalistic corporations racing against each other to own viruses and their cures, destroying even their very own children’s existence to cash in on the stock exchange. Another of the surprising effects of the thaw is the appearance of powerful telepathic pebbles from the bowels of the earth that seem to encapsulate the world's original wisdom, and which are the subject of lucrative smuggling. Meanwhile, the wealthy of the region chose to cruise around on ships where they can experience ice-skating and hand carve ice from valuable remains of glaciers. In their ultra-air conditioned homes, their kids play Indians vs Christians, a brutal video game set in the historical 19th century. The future according to Michel Nieva looks frenetic and shocking. His is one of the most exciting literary voices emerging from Argentina, packing punches in a deeply intelligent, informed, and humorful prose which takes root in Latin American storytelling and sci-fi tradition.

When two married professors tiptoe toward infidelity, their transgressions are brought to light in a graduate student’s searing thesis project. Simone is the star of Edwards University’s creative writing department: renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department. According to Simone and Ethan, and everyone on campus, their marriage is perfect. That is, until Ethan sleeps with the department administrative assistant, Abigail, and the couple’s faith in their flawless relationship is rattled. Simone, meanwhile, has secrets of her own. While Ethan’s away for the summer, she grows inordinately close with her advisee, graduate student Roberta “Robbie” Green. In Robbie, Simone finds a new running partner, confidante, and disciple—or so she believes. Behind Simone’s back, Robbie fictionalizes her mentor’s marriage in a breathtakingly invasive MFA thesis. Determined to tell her version of the story, Robbie paints a revealing portrait of Simone, Ethan, Abigail, and even herself, scratching at the very surface of what may—or may not—be the truth. Simultaneously provocative and tender, Seduction Theory exposes the intoxicating nature of power and attraction, and is a masterful demonstration of how love and betrayal can coexist
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For fans of Conversations with Friends and Vladimir comes a magnetic, fresh take on marriage and loyalty: when two married professors tiptoe toward infidelity, their transgressions are brought to light in a graduate student's searing thesis project. Simone is the star of Edwards University's creative writing department: renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department. But when Ethan and the department administrative assistant Abigail have sex, Simone and Ethan's faith in their flawless marriage is rattled. Simone has secrets of her own. While Ethan's away for the summer, she becomes inordinately close with her advisee, graduate student Roberta "Robbie" Green. In Robbie, Simone finds a new running partner, confidante, and disciple--or so she believes. Behind Simone's back, Robbie fictionalizes her mentor's marriage in a breathtakingly invasive MFA thesis. Determined to tell her version of the story, Robbie paints a revealing portrait of Simone, Ethan, Abigail, and even herself, scratching at the very surface of what may--or may not--be the truth. Innovative, witty, and tender, Seduction Theory exposes the intoxicating nature of power and attraction, masterfully demonstrating how love and betrayal can coexist.