The 25 Most Anticipated Books of 2025 (2025)

In her first novel since her 2013 global sensation Americanah, Adiche immerses us in the lives and longings of four women: Chiamaka, a Nigerian travel writer isolated in America during the pandemic; Zikora, her eternally high-achieving and recently broken-hearted best friend; Omelogor, Chiamaka’s publicly outspoken (and privately self-questioning) cousin back in Nigeria, and Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper who is struggling mightily to give her daughter a better life in a new country. Through these fully realized characters, we can more fully understand ourselves and the networks—both recognized and overlooked—that connect us all.

The second novel from the author of Oprah’s 96th Book Club pick Nightcrawling (published when Mottley was just 19 years old!) follows a group of outcast teenage mothers in rural Florida as they grapple with love, loss, friendship, and self-discovery. The town’s scorn for these girls is relentless, but so is their fierce commitment to one another.

Despite her violent compulsions, Winifred Notty—soon to be played by Margaret Qualley in a feature film adaptation already in the works—arrives at the Ensor House in Grim Wolds, England, determined to be the Victorian Mary Poppins. But when the kids she’s governessing turn out to be capital B Brats, the dad won’t stop leering at her, and the mom’s jealousy turns vicious, Winifred hatches a plan to give the family exactly what they deserve on Christmas morning. This book will be the bloody belle of the 2025 literary ball; preorder now and you’ll have the satisfaction of saying, “Oh yeah, I already read that one,” and the serenity of knowing you can go online without encountering spoilers!

Tina Knowles is best known as the mother of Beyonce and Solange, but in her aptly titled debut memoir, the matriarch of all matriarchs is finally telling her own story. From her upbringing in Galveston, Texas, to her time on the road with Destiny’s Child to watching her superstar children take flight on the global stage, Knowles offers a multigenerational epic of Black motherhood, human resilience, and creative genius.

The author of not one but two of Oprah’s Book Club picks (She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much is True) returns with an epic tale of an incarcerated father trying to survive the brutalities of prison and his guilt over the crime that got him there. Through the faith of a prison librarian, the unconditional love of his mother, and his connections with other inmates, he begins to pave a path for healing and redemption within the prison’s walls. But seeking forgiveness from those on the outside is another journey entirely. Yes, the premise of this book may sound grim, but longtime readers of Lamb’s work know that his incandescent writing can illuminate even the darkest of stories.

Aging is complicated for everyone. It is especially complicated if you are a woman if you are famous, and, in the case of Brooke Shields, if your youth has been fetishized and internationally commodified since the tender age of eleven. In this no-holds-barred memoir, the fifty-nine-year-old actress reveals, unfortunately, the all-too-common ageism she has faced throughout her career—as well as the all-too-rare insight that aging as a woman is actually freaking great. Empowering, optimistic, and insightful, this is the perspective on midlife we’ve been craving.

Why is the American school system neglecting so many of its students? In this damning investigation, the award-winning author and activist posits that it may be because schools were designed to do just that. Through examining the writings of the founding fathers, the history of Indigenous boarding schools, and the current educational gaps, Ewing uncovers how our school systems were set up not just to ignore Black and Indigenous students, but to actively sabotage them. Though the argument of this book is bleak, it illuminates a path for a more just future that is nothing short of dazzling.

The Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Time’s 2022 Woman of the Year, and soon-to-be first Vietnamese woman to go to space is now adding “author” to her unparalleled resume with this battle cry of a memoir about surviving sexual assault and fighting for legislative change. In 2013, Nguyen was raped at Harvard University, where she was completing the final semester of her undergraduate degree. An aspiring astronaut, Nguyen wanted to put the experience behind her as quickly as possible but soon encountered holes in our justice system that she could not ignore. Her activism led to Congress’ unanimous passage of the Sexual Assault Survivor's Rights Act in 2016, and her book chronicles her political activism—and her personal healing—with startling originality.

If you loved The Covenant of Water (and who didn't?) you will devour this sweeping debut, which follows a northern Indian family over generations of political upheaval and personal heartache. Beginning with an act of anti-colonial violence in 1943 and barreling toward a contentious homecoming in 2002, this is a moving portrait of a family and a nation divided.

In her first novel since her 2020 English language debut, Tender is the Flesh, took the world by storm, the Argentine queen of literary horror brings us into the fold of a violent convent that offers a perverse safety in a dystopian future wracked by climate catastrophe.

The latest novel from the author of Oprah’s bestselling twenty-fifth Book Club pick, The Reader, is another story that reckons with the legacy of German history and the trauma of realizing that you can love a person without ever really knowing them. Kasper and Birgit fall hard for each other at an East German youth festival in the spring of 1964. Decades later, after Birgit’s sudden death, Kasper learns that his wife had another life before they started theirs together—one that included an abandoned baby girl. Undone by his grief, Kasper sets off on a journey to find the child that will lead him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, a vulnerable redheaded girl, and a place of endless moral complexity.

Gregory Maguire wrote Wicked as the backstory to The Wizard of Oz. Now he’s written the backstory to the backstory: the tale of young Elphaba before her powers took hold. We already know that it “couldn't have been easy” to grow up green and out of wedlock, but now we’re getting the full tale, and it’s a lot more relatable than you might have guessed. If baby Nessarose’s iconic delivery of the line “yeah” has been playing on a loop in your head since you saw the movie, then you should definitely be holding space for this tender coming-of-age story come March.

Yup, you read that cover correctly. Josephine Baker—the nazi-spying, pet-cheetah-owning, banana-skirt-dancing global icon—has written a memoir, and somehow, we are just getting it now. First published in French in 1949, this book tells the intimate story of Baker’s evolution from a teenage heartthrob of the Harlem Renaissance to Parisian superstar entertainer (and decorated French Résistance intelligence officer) to the only woman to speak at the March on Washington. Whew. Finally, we English speakers are hearing how she did all that firsthand. It’s about time.

The debut novel from Jones, a senior editor and occasional viral essayist at The Atlantic, follows a young mother who, after her divorce, seeks refuge with her daughters in her childhood home. There, she uncovers long-buried family secrets, long-dormant sexual pleasures, and a space for selfhood that is all her own.

Amongst her endless accolades (Former First Lady of California, iconic news anchor, award-winning activist, the list goes on) Shriver also brags seven New York Times bestselling books. This one is undoubtedly her most intimate. Gathering her insights and poetry from the most trying moments of her life, it is a prayer for troubled times and in invitation for collective healing.

In this unflinching memoir, the cultural critic and author of Searching for Whitopia recounts the Haitian coup that ousted his grandfather and its lingering affects on his family, his psyche, and his political identity. Through uncovering these painful generational and national wounds, he presents a poignant critique of America's impact on migrants and the enduring bonds of family.

If you’re tired of watching postpartum women on Instagram who live in immaculate homes, wear Met Gala-worthy makeup, and make lasagna from scratch, this is the book for you. With blistering honesty, Hoover lays bare her own extremely messy journey to motherhood and through post-partum depression, all the while struggling to reconcile her own experience with the idealized narratives of motherhood she’s been fed since her own birth. A long overdue reality check.

In his first book since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, Gurnah returns to the country of his own birth to tell a story of three young Tanzanians reckoning with a changing nation—and world—at the dawn of the 21st century.

Ye Lian is content with her life in Beijing until her childhood friend Luo Wenyu returns after a decade in California sporting a millionaire American fiancé, a skyrocketing career as an influencer, and the deed to an impossibly stylish mansion just outside the city. As the title of this debut would suggest, this is a story about envy and desire, but even more, it is about long-term female friendship: a thing of beauty, pain, and constant evolution.

When her famous feminist mother, Fear of Flying author Erica Jong, is diagnosed with dementia, Jong-Fast (a superstar podcaster and political writer in her own right) must come to terms both with the reality of watching her parent disappear in fragments and the realization that her mother was never truly hers to begin with. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a story of a singular mother-daughter relationship that will resonate with anyone who grew up playing second fiddle to a parent’s passions.