Last week, The New York Times shared their 100 Notable Books of 2025. Now, they’re back with their overall top 10 books of 2025: five fiction and five nonfiction. As you might expect, the fiction books are all literary fiction, including a stream-of-consciousness World War I novel, a book about an Austrian filmmaker in World War II, and a 700-page family saga.

You can listen to The New York Times Book Review podcast to hear editor Gilbert Cruz and his colleagues discuss their process of narrowing the 100 notable picks to these top ten. They also talk about what made these ten titles stand out.

Here are the ten best books of 2025, according to The New York Times.

Fiction:

Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Nonfiction:

A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst

Mother Emanuel by Kevin Sack

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone

Wild Thing by Sue Prideaux

You can find the full list at The New York Times.

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