December is often when “best of the year” lists are compiled. With more than 275,000 books published in the United States in 2025, readers and list-makers alike have options. This year-end list consists of books that generated conversation or buzz. Pick up one or more of the books listed below to join the chats.

 

The Guardian and the Thief by Magha Majumdar tells the story of two desperate families in Kolkata, India. Ma’s life is thrown into chaos as she discovers her family’s immigration papers stolen on the morning of their escape to the United States. Boomba, the thief in equally desperate circumstances to stave off starvation for his own family, escalates his crimes but he cannot foresee the consequences.

 

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy is a memoir about Roy’s complicated relationship with her indomitable mother, Mary. “The memoir crystalizes a theme that runs through Roy’s work: how politics and social order shape, and often warp, our capacities for love and empathy,” states The New Yorker.

 

The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien is a “novel that leaps across centuries past and future, as if different eras were separated by only a door,” states Goodreads. Young Lina and her father find themselves at The Sea – a temporary place where little possessions exist and time is fluid. There Lina is tutored by her new neighbors – all great thinkers – where she finds a depth of soul strong enough to face her family’s history and future.

 

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong explores the meaning of community while surviving on the fringe. Teenage suicidal Hai is saved from throwing himself from a bridge by the shouts of Grazina, an elderly widow suffering from dementia. They form an unlikely bond as Hai moves in and becomes Grazina’s caretaker. Hai’s new reality is quickly filled with a myriad of coworkers at a fast food job; they bond over past hardships and pain.

 

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is set in the near future. Landing at LAX after a conference, Sara is pulled aside by Risk Assessment Administration agents and detained on the grounds of her monitored dreams. The RAA algorithm flagged her dreams for imminent violence against her husband. The ever changing and strict rules of the detainment facility seems to be working against Sara and other women similarly incarcerated…until a new resident arrives.

 

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams is an explosive memoir about her career deep in corporate Facebook. It “exposes both the personal and political fallout when unfettered power and rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite,” states the book back.

 

Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing is a deeply researched look at the intertwining of racism and education since the founding of our country. Informative, historical and social commentary, Ewing argues for a “profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do and for whom,” states the book blurb.

 

Black in Blues: How Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry, written with blue threading through Black lives throughout history, from the indigo dyes from West Africa, the blue candles ritually used in hoodoo to the way the color is used in pop culture. The New Yorker states: “Perry illuminates how the color has been variously associated with mourning, spiritual strength, and forces of freedom and oppression.”

 

Audition: A Novel by Katie Kitamur. “Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day,” describes the blurb.

 

The River Has Roots by Amar El-Mohtar is a retelling of The Twa Sisters folk ballad. This short fantasy story is set in Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie. The Hawthorn sister’s singing tends the ancient willow trees, but “when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…” describes the story blurb.

 

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang is a dark academia fantasy book about Alice Law, a graduate student in the field of Magick at Cambridge. Alice is the top of her class but when she accidentally maybe kills her professor Jacob Grimes during a lab experiment gone wrong, she will stop at nothing to retrieve him from the underworld and earn his recommendation to set up the rest of her life. But Hell is literally a university campus that she must navigate to find Grimes. Her academic rival is also on her trail.

 

By Celeste McNeil; courtesy photos