Who says you can’t have it both ways? Barnes & Noble, which has already named its Best Books of 2025 (which is not one list, but 19), revealed its Book of the Year late last week. Turns out, the book of the year is not one book, but four.

B & N’s Book of the Year has always been pretty transparently about gifting, and we can’t fault them for that. If “best of” lists weren’t such good sales tools, retailers wouldn’t release them earlier with each passing year. Historically, B & N’s Book of the Year picks have been Swiss Army-esque one-size-fits-many recommendations: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse; World of Wonders; Lessons in Chemistry; James; and that one weird year when they picked a $100 coffee table book of Paul McCartney lyrics.

This year, rather than trying to ring all the holiday gifting bells with a single pick, Barnes & Noble expanded their selections:

• 🏆 Book of the Year went to Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser, which follows a 10-year-old girl and her grandfather as they set out to see 52 works of art in 52 weeks as the girl is losing her sight
• 🎁 Gift Book of the Year, a new designation, honors Samin Nosrat’s Good Things, which will definitely make you want to invite a few friends over for a simple, delicious meal
• 👧 The Children’s Books of the Year, also a new standalone category, highlight Growing Home by Beth Ferry and I Am Rebel by Ross Montgomery. In case you’re wondering: yes, the dog survives.

See all of this year’s finalists and past Book of the Year winners.

The fall flood of big new books is winding down, but romance never rests. Here are just a few highlights for your snuggle season TBR.

• And Then There Was You by Sophie Cousens: A woman who isn’t quite where she wants to be in life hires a date for her 10-year college reunion, and he turns out to be pretty perfect.
• The Cuffing Game by Lyla Lee: A YA rom-com remix of Pride and Prejudice through the lens of K-drama and a reality TV dating show
• Secret Nights and Northern Lights by Megan Oliver: Childhood besties who were each other’s first loves get a second chance on a work trip to Iceland.

Also hitting shelves: Cynthia Erivo’s memoir Simply More and Joy Williams’s National Book Award longlisted collection of short stories, The Pelican Child.

📚 Find more new releases to bust your TBR.

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Originally published in 1993, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower didn’t hit bestseller lists until 2020.

The story, set between 2024 and 2027, imagines a version of the United States in which climate change has made water and food scarce and expensive, the basic institutions of American life are eroding or broken, and fire and police services are for-profit. People have no choice but to rely on each other, but trust is hard-won and easily compromised.

In this future, now our present, change is constant. So 15-year-old Lauren Olamina pulls a philosophical “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” and creates a new religion of sorts. After catastrophe strikes the walled neighborhood outside L.A. where she’s been living with her family, Lauren makes her way up the California coast in search of safety, resources, and a new community.

Octavia Butler was the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur ‘genius’ fellowship, and this book’s enduring power is a testament to her vision and understanding of the world.

🎧 Hear our conversation about this novel that predicted much of what we’re living through today on Zero to Well-Read.

Google Play’s Best of 2025 just dropped, featuring 17 books for readers of all ages. The picks, which represent a wide array of genres and subject matter, include a few titles you’ll recognize from other year-end lists alongside many that have flown more under the radar.

Among the highlights:

• 🐦‍⬛ Favorite fantasy: The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (ebook)(audiobook)
• 💕 Favorite romance: Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone (ebook)( audiobook)
• 🦇 Favorite horror: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zheng by Kylie Lee Baker ( ebook)(audiobook)
• 🇺🇸 Favorite memoir: This American Woman by Zarna Garg (ebook)( audiobook)
• 🖼️ Favorite picture book: Wind Watchers by Micha Archer ( ebook)

→ Check out the whole list.

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Today is National High-Five a Librarian Day, so if you have a librarian in your life, give them a little extra love today. And in honor of librarians both past and present, here’s a historical high-five to the The Pack Horse Library Project.

A WPA program that ran from 1935 to 1943, The Pack Horse Library Project was created to serve communities in rural Appalachia with no access to books. For $28 a month (about $700 in today’s dollars), pack horse librarians, who were mostly women, would load up a mule or horse (that they had to provide themselves) with about 100 books and travel their route, which was generally 120 miles. Twice.

At the program’s peak in 1936, more than 30,000 books circulated between more than 50,000 families. Children’s books were among the most popular works, followed closely by the Bible, the works of Mark Twain, books about health, and magazines. My personal favorite: binders of hand-written recipes and quilting patterns that women would contribute and circulate along the route.

There have been a few bookswritten about The Pack Horse Library Project, with the novel The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek being the best-known. On the nonfiction side, PBS produced this short documentary. – JO

You have not time warped, it is 2025, but I want to rewind and look back at my favorite science fiction book of five years ago. Once in a while a book comes along that makes you worry that nothing else you read again will ever be as good. That’s how I felt about Micaiah Johnson’s debut novel.

I really love a twisty plot and I love a mashup of mystery and science fiction. This book isn’t an outright space mystery, but it has a sort of thrilling Memento-flavored vibe. More than that, it explores the complexity and complicated nature of identity and place, and how class plays into both. Johnson sets a sleek, hypermodern city against a Wild West/Mad Max wasteland and centers a character at odds with the place she once called home and how the dust of the wasteland sticks to her.

Why do Cara’s multiverse doppelgängers keep dying? What is the Eldridge Institute really doing with all that multiverse data? Why won’t Cara and Dell get over themselves and get it on? These are the questions that kept me turning the pages, and Johnson’s ability to thread a nuanced story involving many worlds and timelines into a thrilling cinematic space adventure made this one of my most memorable science fiction reads of all time. – SW

🌀 Read on…

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If you’ve always wanted to give Margaret Atwood a try, here is a reading pathway to get you going.

☕️ Fuel up for your next reading marathon with Peet’s Coffee’s 12 Days of Peet’s Advent Calendar.**

🙋‍♀️ Test your knowledge of award-winning books.

📘 Get the backstory on one of the breakout books of 2025.

🐥 Revisit the glory days of Book Twitter.

🏳️‍🌈 Read the rainbow with TIME’s best queer books of the year.

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Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, and Sharifah Williams. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

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