You’re reading the calendar right: we’re only halfway through October, but the Best Books of the Year list season is upon us, starting with Barnes & Noble. They’ve named their picks for the best books of 2025 in 19 categories: Fiction, Gift Books, Mystery & Thriller Books, Biographies & Memoirs, Picture Books, Young Reader (Middle Grade) Books, Young Adult, Science Fiction & Fantasy, History Books, Horror, Romance, Cookbooks, Business Books, Sports Books, Personal Development, Science & Technology, eBook Series, Audiobooks, and libros en español.
The categories reflect the source as a bookstore; it’s easy to see why Gift Books is one of the first categories listed. There are more nonfiction categories than we’re likely to see in other Best Books of the Year lists. The odd category out is “eBook Series.” Perhaps the original intention was “Best eBooks” to match “Best Audiobooks,” but there isn’t the same consideration of format for eBooks—while an audiobook’s quality is heavily dependent on the narrator, the reading experience for an ebook is almost indistinguishable from print. This “eBook Series” category lets Barnes & Noble show that you can buy ebooks from them, but it doesn’t make much sense from a reader perspective.
Here is a selection of the Barnes & Noble picks for the best books of 2025:
The Best Fiction of 2025: The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong and Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Best Mystery & Thriller Books of 2025: The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown and King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby
The Best Biographies & Memoirs of 2025: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy and 107 Days by Kamala Harris
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2025: Katabasis by R. F. Kuang and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
The Best Horror Books of 2025: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones and You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
The Best Romance Books of 2025: Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry and Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory
The Best Science & Technology Books of 2025: Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green and Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao
The Best Audiobooks of 2025: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, narrated by Gem Carmella and The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb by Garrett M. Graff, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini and a full cast
Check out the full list at the Barnes & Noble blog.
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