Best Fiction of 2025

Short-listed for the Booker Prize Long-listed for the National Book Award “The first major American novel to be published this year.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal “Gorgeous . . . Almost impossibly heartbreaking.” —Sam Worley, New York Magazine A Must-Read: The New York Times, New York Magazine, Time, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The Chicago Review of Books, Forbes, Literary Hub, and Town & Country “A major world writer . . . Choi is in thrilling command.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Devastating.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “Ranks among her best work.” —Hamilton Cain, Los Angeles Times A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise. One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, is Korean, but was born and raised in Japan; he lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to North Korea. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her Midwestern family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences. But now it is just Anne and Louisa, Louisa and Anne, adrift and facing the challenges of ordinary life in the wake of great loss. United, separated, and also repelled by their mutual grief, they attempt to move on. But they cannot escape the echoes of that night. What really happened to Louisa’s father? Shifting perspectives across time and character and turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Flashlight chases the shock waves of one family’s catastrophe, even as they are swept up in the invisible currents of history. A monumental new novel from the National Book Award winner Susan Choi, Flashlight spans decades and continents in a spellbinding, heart-gripping investigation of family, loss, memory, and the ways in which we are shaped by what we cannot see.
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**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025** 'Ferociously smart and full of surprises' Eleanor Catton 'Instantly bewitching' Jennifer Egan 'A rich generational saga that teems with intelligence' Financial Times The astonishing story of one family swept up in the tides of the twentieth century, ranging from post-war Japan to suburban America and the North Korean regime One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, a Korean émigré, completes an academic secondment from his American university. When Louisa wakes hours later, she has washed up on the beach and her father is missing, probably drowned. The disappearance of Louisa’s father shatters their small family unit. As Louisa and her American mother Anne return to the US, this traumatic event reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened to Serk slowly unravels. 'Big, bold and surprising' Guardian ‘Engrossing... Choi is an astute, convincing writer’ Sunday Telegraph 'Susan Choi is a master of rendering relationships with utter particularity' Raven Leilani, author of Luster 'I couldn’t put it down, and once I finished, I couldn’t stop thinking about it' Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy

NATIONAL BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE “Feels less like reading a novel and more like sitting in a car beside a dear friend as he navigates the road up ahead. A profoundly moving experience.” —Ann Patchett “Deeply human...a beautifully quiet and devastating book.” —Sarah Jessica Parker A triumphantly life-affirming road trip novel about marriage, middle-age, and a man at a crossroads in his life. When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair twelve years ago, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child left the nest. Now, while driving his college-bound daughter to Pittsburgh, he remembers his promise to himself. He is also on the run from his own health issues and a forced leave from work. So, rather than returning to his wife in Westchester, Tom keeps driving west, with the vague plan of visiting people from his past—an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son—en route, maybe, to California. He’s moving towards a future he hasn’t even envisioned yet while he considers his past and the choices he’s made that have brought him to this particular present. Pitch-perfect, tender, and keenly observed, The Rest of Our Lives is a story about what to do when the rest of your life is only just the beginning of your story.
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 'Feels less like reading a novel and more like sitting in a car beside a dear friend . . . a profoundly moving experience.' ANN PATCHETT 'Deeply human ... a beautifully quiet and devastating book.' SARAH JESSICA PARKER 'Funny, wise and knowing.' CLARE CHAMBERS When Tom's wife had an affair, he resolved to leave her once their children had grown up. Twelve years later, after driving his daughter to university, he remembers his pact and keeps driving West to visit friends, family and an old girlfriend. But he also has secrets of his own - trouble at work and health issues - and sometimes running away is the hardest thing to do. What readers are saying about The Rest of Our Lives: 'What a powerful tale; a really unexpected treasure.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Highly recommended if you want to read something real and something that will resonate.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'The best novel I've read this year.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'The perfect mix of funny, poignant and thought-provoking.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Deeply heartfelt and engrossing . . . I can't stop thinking about it!' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'It packs an emotional punch . . . I know Tom will stay with me for a long time.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'I loved it - almost a coming-of-old-age story.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Gorgeous and a little unnerving. . .Reading it is a strange and wonderfully invigorating experience.”–The New York Times A woman confronts the afterlife of intimacy, in a deeply tender novel by one of our most acclaimed and inventive fiction writers The things that hold life in place have been lifted off and put away. Uprooted by circumstance from city to deep countryside, a woman lives in temporary limbo, visited by memories of all she’s left behind. The most insistent are those of Xavier, who has always been certain he knows her better than anyone, better than she knows herself. Xavier, whom she still loves but no longer desires, a displacement he has been unable to accept. An unexpected letter from an old acquaintance brings back a torrent of others she’s loved or wanted. Each has been a match and a mismatch, a liberation and a threat to her very sense of self. The ephemera left by their passage –a spilled coffee, an unwanted bouquet, a mind-blowing kiss—make up a cabinet of curiosity she inventories, trying to divine the essence of intimacy. What does it mean to connect with another person? What impels us to touch someone, to be touched by them, to stay in touch? How do we let them go? In yet another tour de force of fiction, Claire-Louise Bennett explores the mystery of how people come into and go out of our lives, leaving us forever in their grasp.

"Teenaged Istvâan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor--a married woman close to his mother's age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands--as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that Istvâan himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident thatleaves a man dead. What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees Istvâan emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London's billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, Istvâan is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant "success story," brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay's keen observation"--
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**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025** 'A masterpiece, told with virtuosic economy... Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence’ India Knight 'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey 'Spare, visceral, urgent, compelling. This book doesn't f**k around' Gary Stevenson ‘So brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London – in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, István’s life spirals out of control. Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London's super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely. ‘How do I get out of a reading slump? This is the book to do that’ Rhianna Dhillon, BBC Radio 4 'A revelatory novel' Sunday Times 'So much searing insight into the way we live now' Observer ‘Refreshing, illuminating and true’ Financial Times 'Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant' Tessa Hadley 'One of the year’s best novels to date' Daily Mail ‘Utterly engrossing and I read it all in a day’ 5* reader review ‘I was hooked and tried to read this book with any spare moment that I had' 5* reader review A ‘Best Book of 2025’ in the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail
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From Booker Prize-winning author David Szalay, comes a propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour—a married woman close to his mother’s age—as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control. As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the twenty-first century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely. Spare and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy “blends acerbic wit, shrewd insight and sharp-eyed observation [in this] bravura collection” (The Washington Post), including a story that revisits the main character from her iconic novel Prep “Each of these witty, intelligent stories is a slice of modern life.”—People A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Denver Public Library Best Book Of the Year In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned. In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school. Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy “blends acerbic wit, shrewd insight and sharp-eyed observation [in this] bravura collection” (The Washington Post), including a story that revisits the main character from her iconic novel Prep “Each of these witty, intelligent stories is a slice of modern life.”—People A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned. In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school. Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.

BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST • KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss “A transcendent triumph . . . not so much a novel as a marvel.”—The New York Times Book Review “A spectacular literary achievement. I wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever.”—Ann Patchett “Devastating, lyrical, and deeply romantic . . . an unmitigated joy to read.”—Khaled Hosseini One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Fall: The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Time, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Book Riot, Publishers Weekly, and more When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India. She fears that she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.
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Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that only served to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India, fearing she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists. ‘I wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever’ Ann Patchett Profound, sparkling, funny, exquisitely written, [The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny] teaches us how to live in full-throated exultation for the astonishments of this world’ Lauren Groff
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ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF PEOPLE’S TOP 5 BOOKS OF THE YEAR BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR, Time, Oprah Daily, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Economist, Harper’s Bazaar, The Globe and Mail, BBC, New York Post, Kirkus Reviews, Elle, Library Journal, Libby, Chicago Public Library, Lit Hub ONE OF BOOKPAGE’S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss “A transcendent triumph . . . not so much a novel as a marvel.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “A magnificent saga.”—Washington Post “Lavish, funny, smart, and wise, this is a novel that will last.”—The Boston Globe “A spectacular literary achievement. I wanted to pack a little suitcase and stay inside this book forever.”—Ann Patchett “A novel so wonderful, when I got to the last page, I turned to the first and began again.”—Sandra Cisneros “Devastating, lyrical, and deeply romantic . . . an unmitigated joy to read.”—Khaled Hosseini “A masterpiece.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review “A sweeping page-turner, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a kind of Romeo and Juliet story for a modern, globalized age.”—Publishers Weekly (Top 10 New Fall Books) When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India. She fears that she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From internationally renowned, award-winning author Salman Rushdie, a spellbinding exploration of life, death, and what comes into focus at the proverbial eleventh hour of life “An inventive and engrossing collection of stories which, though death-tinged, are never doom-laden. With luck this master writer has more tales to tell.”—Los Angeles Times A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work—India, England, and America—and feature an unforgettable cast of characters. “In the South” introduces a pair of quarrelsome old men—Junior and Senior—and their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In “The Musician of Kahani,” a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in Midnight’s Children uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In “Late,” the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. “Oklahoma” plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And “The Old Man in the Piazza” is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech. Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? Do we spend our “eleventh hour” in serenity or in rage? And how do we achieve fulfillment with our lives if we don’t know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Salman Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
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If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour. Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English college, an undead academic can't rest until he avenges his former tormentor. Following Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie's new fiction moves between the places he has grown up in, inhabited, explored, and left. In doing so, he asks fundamental questions we all one day face. How does one deal with, accommodate, or rail against entering the eleventh hour, the final stage of your life? How can you bid farewell to the places you have made home? The Eleventh Hour is the magisterial new work from one of our greatest living writers. It speaks deeply to what Salman Rushdie has come from and through, and strikes into the heart of our fractious times.
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Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to lifes final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his workIndia, England, and Americaand feature an unforgettable cast of characters. In the South introduces a pair of quarrelsome old menJunior and Seniorand their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In The Musician of Kahani, a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in Midnights Children uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In Late, the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. Oklahoma plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And The Old Man in the Piazza is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech. Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? Do we spend our eleventh hour in serenity or in rage? And how do we achieve fulfillment with our lives if we dont know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour probes life and death, legacy and identity, with wit, creativity, and keen insight.[Bokinfo].
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If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour. ‘Salman Rushdie is a genius’ A.M. Homes Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy during national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor. These five dazzling works of fiction move between the three countries that Salman Rushdie has called home – India, England and America – and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life. Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? How can we bid farewell to the places that we have made home? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Salman Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time. ‘More than 40 years after Midnight's Children, there is still nobody who spins a yarn quite like Salman Rushdie’ Spectator ‘Rushdie has not just enlarged literature’s capacities, he has expanded the world’s imaginative possibilities’ The Times

The wondrous, elemental new novel from a 'writer of show-stopping genius' - about nature, people and the sliver of time we have left.
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A Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, Financial Times, Independent, BBC and Daily Mail Book of the Year 'Vital, fierce and free.' Financial Times 'Incandescently good.' Sarah Perry 'Pulsing with life and lyricism.' Spectator 'Fiercely exuberant.' Observer 'Delightfully playful.' Andrew Miller 'A truly astonishing thing.' George Monbiot A wondrous, elemental novel from 'a writer of show-stopping genius'. Guardian SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE, THE GORDON BURN PRIZE AND THE WINSTON GRAHAM PRIZE Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind - a subject of folklore and wonder - who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time. This is Helm's life story, formed from the chronicles of those the wind enchanted: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate it, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish it, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture it - and the farmer's daughter who fell in love. But now Dr Selima Sutar, surrounded by measuring instruments, alone in her observation hut, fears the end is nigh. Vital and audacious, Helm is the elemental tale of a unique life force - and of a relationship: between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other. 'Sarah Hall's writing has conquered the body and the soul and now it conquers the wind itself.' DAISY JOHNSON 'I can think of no other British writer whose talent so consistently thrills, surprises and staggers.' BENJAMIN MYERS 'I'm awed . I wouldn't think a novel could be at once so taut and so multifarious, expanding one's sense of what fiction can do.' SARAH MOSS 'Helm is as vital, fierce and free as the phenomenon it describes.' FINANCIAL TIMES 'A spectacular epic tapestry. Nobody could tell the story of our inextricable relationship with wild nature as beautifully as Sarah Hall.' LEE SCHOFIELD '[Hall] sweeps from the cinematic to the specific, her prose pulsing with life and lyricism. Helm pushes both the boundaries of the novel and our relationship with nature.' SPECTATOR 'A big, celebratory book, in places delightfully playful, in others as tight and breathless as a thriller.' ANDREW MILLER

A New York Times Bestseller • A New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times, Vulture, TIME, The Guardian, The New Republic, and LitHub The new novel from Thomas Pynchon, author of Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and Inherent Vice. “A masterpiece.” —The Telegraph “Bonkers and brilliant fun.” —The Washington Post “Late Pynchon at his finest. Dark as a vampire’s pocket, light-fingered as a jewel thief, Shadow Ticket capers across the page with breezy, baggy-pants assurance — and then pauses on its way down the fire escape just long enough to crack your heart open.” —The Los Angeles Times Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a onetime strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he’s found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case, locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who’s taken a mind to go wandering. Before he knows it, he’s been shanghaied onto a transoceanic liner, ending up eventually in Hungary where there’s no shoreline, a language from some other planet, and enough pastry to see any cop well into retirement—and of course no sign of the runaway heiress he’s supposed to be chasing. By the time Hicks catches up with her he will find himself also entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them, none of which Hicks is qualified, forget about being paid, to deal with. Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can’t see his way around in or out of, the only bright side for Hicks is it’s the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he’s a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to Lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE 2025 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION • NOMINATED FOR THE 2026 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD • A Heather’s Pick • NPR’s Books We Love • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker • Barnes & Noble • Kirkus • Financial Times • The Washington Post • The Irish Times • The Observer A publishing event ten years in the making—a searing, exquisite new novel by the bestselling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires. Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.
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• NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST A searing, exquisite new novel by the bestselling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin Omelogor is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. Dream Count is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s searing, unforgettable story of these four women—a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself.