Best Books of the Year season is officially upon us! Barnes & Noble kicked it off with their picks for the best books of 2025, and now Publishers Weekly has put out its own top ten list.

Some of these titles will look familiar, because they’ve been getting a ton of buzz leading up to this point. There are likely books you haven’t read—and possibly haven’t even heard of—here as well, though. The Publishers Weekly picks skew more literary than the bestseller list does.

Included in the top ten is Indigenous horror, a history of capitalism, “the gayest love story ever told,” a time loop novel, autofiction, a Bruce Lee biography, and more. Publishers Weekly also has a list of their top 50 children’s and young adult books of 2025, separated into Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult.

Here are the Publishers Weekly picks for the best books of 2025.

Audition by Katie Kitamura

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History, from the Industrial Revolution to AI by John Cassidy

Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told by Jeremy Atherton Lin

On the Calculation of Volume, Book 3 by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhini Vara

The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America by Jeff Chang

When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas

Your Name Here by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff

Check out the full list along with the reasons for their picks at the Publishers Weekly website.

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