The 10 Best Books of 2025

All year long, the staff of The New York Times Book Review conducts a running discussion over what belongs on its year-end Top 10 list. In this week’s episode, host Gilbert Cruz gathers a group of fellow Book Review editors to talk about the most exciting fiction and nonfiction of the year. 

Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:

Fiction

• “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” by Kiran Desai
• “Angel Down,” by Daniel Kraus
• “The Sisters,” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
• “The Director,” by Daniel Kehlmann
• “Stone Yard Devotional,” by Charlotte Wood

Nonfiction

• “A Marriage at Sea,” by Sophie Elmhirst
• “Wild Thing,” by Sue Prideaux
• “Mother Emanuel,” by Kevin Sack
• “There Is No Place for Us," by Brian Goldstone
• “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” by Arundhati Roy

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