Reading list 2025

Maisy Hayes Is Not For Sale

Allayne L. Webster · 2025

A Treachery of Swans

A. B. Poranek · 2026

Madonna in a Fur Coat

Sabahattin Ali · 2021

The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James · 2007

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke · 2020

As Many Souls as Stars

Natasha Siegel · 2025

As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

Zoulfa Katouh · 2022

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop A Novel

Satoshi Yagisawa · 2023

A Murder Is Going Down

Kate Emery

The House of Rural Realness

Curtis Campbell · 2025

Stranger Things: One Way or Another A Nancy Wheeler Mystery

Caitlin Schneiderhan · 2025

The Worst Perfect Moment

Shivaun Plozza · 2025

The Boundless Sublime

Lili Wilkinson · 2016

What Have They Done to Liza McLean?

Amy Doak · 2025

Boy Swallows Universe

Trent Dalton · 2018

Death at Morning House

Maureen Johnson · 2024

A Guide to Falling Off the Map

Zanni L Arnot · 2025

Don't Let It Break Your Heart

Maggie Horne · 2024

Return to Sender

Lauren Draper · 2024

After three years away, seventeen-year-old Brodie McKellon has returned to live with her eccentric grandmother above the last remaining Dead Letter Office - the place letters go when no one is left to claim them. Soon, Brodie is consumed by an unsolved mystery - the unclaimed letters of a group of teens who seemed to vanish many years ago - while also attempting to reconcile with her former best friends, Elliot and Levi. As the trio is drawn into the riddle of the dead letter writers, they discover that the past is never truly past, and that it's never too late for old wrongs to be put right . . .

Summer Girls

Jennifer Dugan · 2025

If On A Winters Night A Traveler Invisib

Calvino, Italo

Our Wives Under the Sea

Julia Armfield · 2022

Boulder

Eva Baltasar · 2022

Chosen Family

Madeleine Gray · 2026

Bunny

Mona Awad · 2020

The Secret History

Donna Tartt · 1992

<b><b><b><b>ONE OF <i>TIME MAGAZINE</i>'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • </b>INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and "a<b>n accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (<i>Village Voice</i>)</b>, f<b>rom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <i>The Goldfinch.<br><br></i></b></b></b>One of <i>The Atlantic</i>’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years</b><br><br>Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.<br><br><b>“A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment . . . Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.” —<i>The New York Times</i></b>

Seed

Bri Lee

Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire

Amy Doak · 2025

Orbital

Samantha Harvey · 2024

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024<br/>Winner of the 2024 Hawthornden Prize<br/>Shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction<br/>Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction<br/>A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours<br/>"Ravishingly beautiful." — Joshua Ferris, New York Times<br/>A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.<br/>Profound and contemplative, Orbital is a moving elegy to our environment and planet.

The Island of Last Things: A Novel

Emma Sloley · 2025

A SOARING, PROPULSIVE, AND UNFORGETTABLE novel about two zookeepers at the last zoo in the world<br/><br/>“Sometimes a new author will sidle up and whisper in your ear, and sometimes she’ll grab you by the neck. Emma Sloley is in the latter camp.” ―REBECCA MAKKAI<br/><br/>Camille has always preferred animals to people. The wild has nearly disappeared, but as a zookeeper at the last zoo in the world, on Alcatraz Island, she spends her days caring for playful chimpanzees, gentle tree frogs, and a restless jaguar. Outside, resistance groups and brutal cartels fight to shape the world’s future, but Camille is safe within her routines. That is, until a new zookeeper, Sailor, arrives from Paris.<br/><br/>From their first meeting, Camille is drawn to Sailor, who seems to see something in Camille that no one has before. They bond over their shared passions and dream up ways to improve their lives. When Sailor whispers the story of an idyllic, secret sanctuary where wild animals roam free, Camille begins to imagine a new kind of life with Sailor by her side.<br/><br/>Sailor knows all too well the dangers beyond Alcatraz, but she increasingly chafes at the zoo’s rigid rules. She hatches a reckless plan to smuggle one of the most prized animals off the island to freedom, and invites Camille to join her. The consequences if they fail would be catastrophic, and Sailor’s contacts at the sanctuary go dark just as the threats from the cartels grow more extreme. Camille must decide if she’s ready to risk everything for the promise of a better world.<br/><br/>Propulsive and fiercely hopeful, with a heart-stopping final twist, The Island of Last Things is an elegy for a disappearing world and a gorgeous vision for the future.

A Sociopath's Guide to a Successful Marriage

M. K. Oliver · 2026

Dusk

Robbie Arnott · 2025

Cold Enough for Snow

Jessica Au · 2022

The inaugural winner of The Novel Prize, a new biennial award established by Giramondo (Australia), Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and New Directions (USA). Cold Enough for Snow was unanimously chosen from over 1500 entries.<br/><br/>Jessica Au’s novel will be published by Giramondo, Fitzcarraldo and New Directions in February 2022, and translated into fourteen languages around the world.<br/><br/>A young woman accompanies her mother on a holiday in Japan. The daughter has arranged their itinerary. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafés and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother’s family in Hong Kong, and the daughter’s allegiances in Australia. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken? Cold Enough for Snow is a reckoning and an elegy: with extraordinary skill, Au creates an enveloping atmosphere that expresses both the tenderness between mother and daughter, and the distance between them.

Katabasis [Special Deluxe Edition]

R.F. Kuang · 2025

The Underworld

Sofie Laguna · 2025

Martha Mullins is a misfit. Her mother is glamorous, aloof and judgemental. Her father, mostly absent. Academic and shy, Martha finds herself fascinated by the underworld, a place she learns about in Roman mythology classes at school. To Martha, the underworld and its divine inhabitants provide a place of refuge, escape, imagination and desire. But Martha also finds joy in friendship. Connection. Intimacy. It's Martha's band of friends who show her the value in spontaneity, fun, laughter. Until things go wrong. How will Martha find her way in the world where she cannot be herself? Will she ever find a home for the love she feels? The Underworld is a wondrous novel from an author who wields her considerable powers with assuredness and grace. Funny, brave, insightful and clever, Martha will break your heart - then mend it - many times over.

Signs Of Damage (paperback)

Diana Reid

Deep Cuts: A Novel

Holly Brickley · 2025

Not for the Faint of Heart

Lex Croucher · 2024

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE IN THE CITY

Rachael Lippincott · 2023

What if you found a once-in-a-lifetime love…just not in your lifetime?<br/><br/>Audrey Cameron has lost her spark. But after getting dumped by her first love and waitlisted at her dream art school all in one week, she has no intention of putting her heart on the line again to get it back. So when local curmudgeon Mr. Montgomery walks into her family’s Pittsburgh convenience store saying he can help her, Audrey doesn’t know what she’s expecting…but it’s definitely not that she’ll be transported back to 1812 to become a Regency romance heroine.<br/><br/>Lucy Sinclair isn’t expecting to find an oddly dressed girl claiming to be from two hundred years in the future on her family’s estate. But she has to admit it’s a welcome distraction from being courted by a man her father expects her to marry—who offers a future she couldn’t be less interested in. Not that anyone has cared about what or who she’s interested in since her mother died, taking Lucy’s spark with her.<br/><br/>While the two girls try to understand what’s happening and how to send Audrey home, their sparks make a comeback in a most unexpected way. Because as they both try over and over to fall for their suitors and the happily-ever-afters everyone expects of them, they find instead they don’t have to try at all to fall for each other.<br/><br/>But can a most unexpected love story survive even more impossible circumstances?

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Malinda Lo · 2021

Six Times We Almost Kissed

Sharpe Tess · 2023

Kiss Her Once for Me: A Novel

Alison Cochrun · 2022

Winner of Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ+ Romance<br/>A Best New Holiday Romance by PopSugar, BuzzFeed, Refinery29, and more!<br/><br/>The author of the “swoon-worthy debut” (Harper’s Bazaar) The Charm Offensive returns with a festive romantic comedy about a woman who fakes an engagement with her landlord…only to fall for his sister.<br/><br/>One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money.<br/><br/>Finding work at a local coffee shop, she’s just getting through the days—until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience that will give him his recent inheritance and alleviate Ellie’s financial woes and isolation. They make a plan to spend the holidays together at his family cabin to keep up the ruse. But when Andrew introduces his new fiancée to his sister, Ellie is shocked to discover it’s Jack—the mysterious woman she fell for over the course of one magical Christmas Eve the year before. Now, Ellie must choose between the safety of a fake relationship and the risk of something real.<br/><br/>Perfect for fans of Written in the Stars and One Day in December, Kiss Her Once for Me is the queer holiday rom-com that you’ll want to cozy up with next to the fire.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Ocean Vuong · 2021

A New York Times bestseller • Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction • Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read...Ocean Vuong is a master. This book a masterpiece.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There and Wandering Stars On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and more!

Reservoir Bitches: Stories

Dahlia de la Cerda · 2024

Infamous

Lex Croucher

King Cheer (Arden High)

Molly Horton Booth, Stephanie Kate Strohm · 2024

When the World Tips Over

Jandy Nelson · 2024

An explosive new novel brimming with love, secrets, and enchantment by Jandy Nelson, Printz Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of I’ll Give You the Sun<br/><br/>The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head.<br/><br/>Years ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame . . . or self-destruction.<br/><br/>Then an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls’ world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole.<br/><br/>With road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family’s complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures.

The Lovely and the Lost

Jennifer Lynn Barnes · 2020

Icon and Inferno

Marie Lu · 2024

The Girl in Question

Tess Sharpe

On Women

Susan Sontag · 2023

A pithy and brilliant introduction to Susan Sontag’s writing on women, gathering early essays on aging, equality, beauty, sexuality, and fascism<br/><br/>Susan Sontag was one of the most formidable, original, and influential thinkers of the last century. “The most interesting ideas are heresies,” she remarked, and indeed, her writing rejects the familiar and refuses party lines.<br/><br/>On Women presents seven essays and exchanges, spanning a range of subjects: the challenges and humiliations women face as they age; the relationship between women’s liberation and class struggle; beauty, which Sontag calls “that over-rich brew of so many familiar opposites”; feminism; fascism; and film. Taken together, these pieces―relentlessly curious, historically precise, politically robust, and allergic to easy categorization Sontag’s inimitable mind at work.

All Better Now

Neal Shusterman · 2025

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde · 2021

Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for the new mood in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic world view: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life.<br/>Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and records every sin.