The week-long rollout of the longlists for the 2025 National Book Awards concluded on Friday with the announcement of the 10 nominees in the Fiction category. The nominees are:

• The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) by Rabih Alameddine
• Flashlight  by Susan Choi
• The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
• The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
• A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
• Only Son by Kevin Moffett
• The Antidote by Karen Russell (on my fantasy league draft)
• North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther  by Ethan Rutherford
• Palaver by Bryan Washington (on my fantasy league draft)
• The Pelican Child by Joy Williams

🎧 Listen to our discussions of Flashlight and The Antidote on The Book Riot Podcast.

Finalists for the National Book Awards will be announced October 7, and the medals will be given in a ceremony on November 19th. See all of the 2025 longlists.

The wait is over. Angela Flournoy’s 2015 debut The Turner House was highly acclaimed and widely loved, and many readers—myself included—have been eagerly awaiting her follow-up ever since. Whatever you call the opposite of a sophomore slump, this is it.

The Wilderness follows a group of Black women through decades of friendship and into the near future, as they navigate the impacts of race, class, and gender on their lives in two of America’s biggest cities. It’s a masterfully written and often surprising story that confirms Flournoy as one of the most vital novelists working today.

Already named a finalist for the 2025 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the National Book Award, this one is sure to spark conversation and likely to take home some hardware. – RS

Also hitting shelves today:

• Replaceable You by Mary Roach – The only science writer who can pull off a footnote with a fart joke explores science’s quest to create replacement body parts for humans.
• The Bad Indians Book Club by Patty Krawec – A masterclass synthesis of Indigenous writers and the worlds they invite us to imagine
• We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore – A Harvard professor of American history and law delivers an essential examination of one of our most critical and confounding documents.
• Good Things by Samin Nosrat – The beloved chef and author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat returns with 125 new recipes just in time for cozy season.

More of the week’s best new releases.

Listening is reading. Whether you’re an auditory learner or just looking to make your commute or household chores more enjoyable, Audiobooks.com is the perfect way to devour your TBR list. With a massive library and seamless app, you can turn any mundane task into a literary escape. Start a free trial and get 3 free audiobooks.

Public libraries in Josephine County, Oregon were forced to close in 2007 when Congress failed to renew funding that supported communities in areas with declining federal forest revenue.

Josephine County citizens have now saved their libraries twice. In 2008, library advocates rallied to raise funds and secure a lease from the county that allowed them to reopen before the end of the year. When a 2014 ballot measure to secure tax funding failed, they got creative and proposed forming a noncontiguous library district that voters agreed to support in 2017.

These victories are under threat, as local politicians have been working since 2023 to discredit and defund the Josephine County Library District. Find out what’s happening now.

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The Queen of Crime was born 135 years ago yesterday.

Once described by her parents as "a well-loved afterthought" (oof), she went on to become the best-selling novelist of all time. Ain’t no revenge quite like moving two billion units.

In honor of her birthday, let’s play a round of Two Truths and a Lie about Agatha Christie. Can you spot the lie?

• She learned about poisons while working as a detective’s assistant.
• She wrote the longest-running play in history.
• She once disappeared for 11 days, sparking a nationwide search.

Answer in the end notes.

🎧 Take a journey into Agatha Christie’s life and history on this week’s Book Riot Podcast.

A fan-favorite with 12 million views and over 260,000 subscribers, the smash-hit webcomic Of Swamp and Sea is finally making its way to print! Blending rich, atmospheric art with a sizzling fantasy romance, this series has been in high demand since its inception. Readers who devour stories like The Witcher and Lore Olympus will be captivated by this stunning graphic novel.

The assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk is the latest example of political violence that appears to have been connected to a particularly nihilistic brand of meme culture.

In Black Pill, award-winning journalist Elle Reeves explains how online communities produce real-world violence. It’s a riveting, terrifying, essential read for understanding how we got here.

Read an excerpt.

Sasha Bonét is the author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters , a memoir in which she explores the history and meaning of America through three generations of Black mothers.

Here’s Bonét with three books that inspired her writing process.

• Boyz n the Void by G’Ra Asim : This collection maintains the balance of personal narrative and cultural criticism so seamlessly. As I prepared to write my memoir, I searched for works that were able to maintain this tricky balance. This book was a guide for me on how to illustrate the universe of a family while also zooming out to the ways that cultural norms impact how we live, and love, privately. 
• Black Meme by Legacy Russell: Black Meme connects the physical archive of the past to the present online world that we occupy. Russell ties the visual history of America to the ways that we engage with imagery online today. This was so helpful in helping me understand how to make connections with the nation’s origins and the ways that we live within its impact today. It’s a masterful work of history. 
• Heavy by Kiese Laymon : This book is filled with so much grace and care as the author writes about the strength and failures of his mother. The way the author bears witness to her life, and his own, is tender and fierce and honest. I don’t know if I would have been able to write about my mother in a true way without first reading Heavy. It gently opened the door for me to walk through. 

Celebrate the diverse array of Latine and Hispanic voices across the diaspora whose stories shape culture with great listens from Penguin Random House Audio.

😱 Horror fans won’t want to miss Isabel Canas’s The Possession of Alba Diaz, in which a demonic presence awakens in a Mexican silver mine in 1765.

🌆 Try a contemporary coming-of-age story set in Washington Heights about an ambitious young woman’s Broadway dreams in Natalie Guerrero’s My Train Leaves at Three.

💕 Swoon over bestselling author Mia Sosa’s latest rom-com, When Javi Dumped Mari, about two best friends, an engagement, and hidden feelings.

🇨🇱 Dive into masterful storyteller Isabel Allende’s historical novel My Name is Emilia Del Valle, in which a young writer travels to South America to uncover the truth about her father.

On this day in 1995 , Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity hit shelves and introduced the world to an unlucky-in-love record store owner named Rob who was obsessed with making top-five lists. Top five albums? Obviously. Top five films? Sure. Top five breakups? Now you’re talking.

In honor of the book that spawned the adaptation that gave us the most surprising "Let’s Get It On" cover of all time, here are five of the best books about music.

💓 If you’re a romantic: Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield

🏆 For a deep dive into one of the most award-winning albums of the 20th century: She Begat This: 20 Years of the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Joan Morgan

🤘Girls to the front: The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper

🎧 To understand America through music: Music is History by Questlove

🧠 One for the nerds: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

-RS

🧳 Protect the seven books you packed for your three-day trip from toiletry spills with these customizable, leak-proof capsules.**

👉 Everyone should join a book club.

🍿 Hamnet kicks off awards season with a win at the Toronto International Film Festival.

🖊️ Here is the next US poet laureate.

🔤 Is this the end of the dictionary?

_{**This is a product recommendation from the Book Riot team. When you buy through these links, we may earn a commission.}

☠️ Answer: The first one is the lie. Agatha Christie learned about poisons while working in a pharmacy during World War I.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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