AARP’s Favorite Books of 2025 (So Far)

Fox by Joyce Carol Oates (June 17)

Oates, 86, is a master of her craft, particularly when she draws up into the dark side of the human mind, as she so often does. (See her wonderfully creepy 2023 short story collection Zero-Sum.) Fox’s evil center is Francis Fox, a charming English teacher who entrances the head of the private academy where he works — and, disturbingly, some of the young girls in his classes. After body parts and Fox’s car are discovered in a local nature preserve, a pair of detectives begin an investigation into this enigmatic man, while the story flashes back to his sinister crimes. It’s literary, spellbinding, and another winner to add to this incomparable author’s long list of what I consider to be must-read tales. 

Courtesy Simon & Schuster

Yoko by David Sheff

The author of the bestselling 2008 memoir Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction was only 24 years old when he interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono shortly before Lennon’s 1980 murder. Sheff grew close to Ono in the aftermath and had an insider’s view of her life post-Lennon. The result is an attempt to break through the mythology and misconceptions surrounding his subject. Ono details her early years in Tokyo during World War II and her rise as an important avant-garde artist in the U.S., as well as her life with Lennon, the allegations that she broke up the Beatles, and beyond. It’s layered with Sheff’s memories of Yoko (now 92, she no longer gives interviews) and interviews with people close to her, including her son, Sean, and her daughter, Kyoko, 61. Sheff said he was inspired to write Ono’s biography after seeing a bumper sticker that read “Still Pissed at Yoko.”

Courtesy Penguin Random House

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Reid, a literary star since her 2019 novel Daisy Jones & the Six became a bestseller (and later an Amazon Prime Video miniseries), sets her new page-turner in 1980s Texas. We first meet Joan Goodwin, a young astronomer among astronaut trainees in the space shuttle program. She's one of the few women in the group, as NASA has just started accepting them into the fold. Joan is communicating with her teammates from Mission Control in Houston, trying to help them navigate a life-or-death crisis in space. The suspense builds as Joan’s backstory unspools, detailing the forbidden love she shares with Vanessa Ford, an aeronautical engineer whose space flight looks like it may end in flames. It’s an engrossing, romantic story, and likely to be one of this summer’s big hits.

Valley of Forgetting: Alzheimer’s Families and the Search for a Cure by Jennie Erin Smith

Smith tells the dramatic story of a remote community in Colombia that for centuries was known to have an unusually high percentage of people with early-onset memory loss. (In more recent years, they were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.) In the 1980s, this mysterious phenomenon spurred neurologist Francisco Lopera to investigate why so many residents experienced memory issues when they hit middle age and often died in their 50s. The book details the challenges Lopera faced in his 40 years of research into the rare genetic paisa mutation behind the cluster of cases, and shows how it has helped scientists solve some puzzles about the disease.

Courtesy Penguin Random House

Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld

Sittenfeld, author of the bestselling novels Prep and Romantic Comedy, is back with a wonderful story collection, many featuring beautifully drawn middle-aged characters struggling with very human insecurities, disappointments and conflicts with friends or lovers. One tale brings back Lee Fiora from Prep, now decades older and attending her boarding school reunion; in another, “A for Alone,” a woman tries an experiment (“a mixed-media project,” she calls it) where she sees if a man and a woman can spend time alone together as friends, without complications. The answer is … complicated.

Courtesy Grove Atlantic

Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie by James Lee Burke

Burke, 88, is an award-winning mystery writer known for his books featuring the troubled detective Dave Robicheaux, and his series about the Texas-born-and-bred Holland family. Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie is another Holland tale that can be read as a stand-alone (it’s the first Burke novel I’ve read, in fact). It’s centered around Bessie Holland, who’s just 14 but brave to a fault. The story begins in early 1900s Texas, an unforgiving land teeming with ruthless oilmen and violent outlaws. After making some nasty enemies, Bessie is forced to flee to New York, where her older brother is living in the city’s underbelly, and she faces a different kind of lawlessness. It’s an absorbing novel about good, evil and the busy space in between, with a fearless, compelling heroine.

Courtesy Hachette Book Group

Free: My Search for Meaning by Amanda Knox

She’s only 37, but Knox, who was wrongfully accused of murdering her roommate while studying abroad in Italy in 2007, has wisdom beyond her years after being subjected to incredible injustice and suffering: imprisoned for nearly four years, and vilified across the globe for a crime she didn’t commit. Within days, Knox went from being a slightly goofy, outdoorsy, book-loving college student to international tabloid fodder known as “Foxy Knoxy,” while the real culprit, a known burglar named Rudy Guede, was ignored. But what makes this book most moving and worth a thoughtful read are Knox’s eloquent descriptions of how she learned to cope with the pain, and, with remarkable inner strength, develop a perspective on suffering that has allowed her to forgive her main prosecutor. There are surely lessons for us all in her story (we highlighted some of them here).