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AARP’s Favorite Books of 2025 (So Far)
AARP’s books editor shares her top 10 standout reads, including ‘Good Dirt,’ ‘The Emperor of Gladness,’ and ‘Atmosphere’
AARP looks back at the best fiction and nonfiction books from the first half of 2025.
AARP (Courtesy Penguin Random House, 4; Courtesy Simon & Schuster)
There are already so many fantastic books out this year, and it looks as though there are loads more to come in the fall (including novels by Ian McEwan and Louise Penny, and memoirs from Lionel Richie and Michael J. Fox, to name just a few). Below are 10 standouts, released from January through June, that will likely appeal to adults of all ages. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
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Courtesy Penguin Random House
Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson
The author of the hit 2022 novel Black Cake had another bestseller in Good Dirt soon after its January release. It’s focused on the Freemans, a wealthy Black family and one of the few in their tony coastal town. The couple and their adult daughter, Ebby, are still reeling from the long-ago killing of Ebby’s brother, Baz, in their home, the perpetrator never found. The story deftly jumps back in time to their ancestors, from Africa to New England, following the journey of a stoneware jar that was passed through the generations — and shattered during the crime. (Meanwhile, the disturbing truth about Baz’s murder slowly grows clearer.)
Courtesy Penguin Random House
Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates
Gates, 69, tells his remarkable origin story from childhood through the beginnings of Microsoft, which he cofounded with Paul Allen at age 19, when he was still too young to rent a car. Gates paints a vivid self-portrait of a difficult (for his parents) little boy, then an awkward but clearly brilliant teen whose greatest joy is solving problems. His early life parallels and intersects with the story of the personal computer, whose rise was shaped by Gates and his pals’ radical idea: that the magic of computing was in the software, not the hardware. Whatever your thoughts on the man, it’s impossible to deny Gates’ vast influence on tech development, not to mention global health, thanks to the billions of dollars he’s donated to philanthropic causes worldwide. Two more volumes will follow in the coming years. (You can read our interview with Gates here.)
Courtesy Penguin Random House
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
The author of 2019’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (my favorite book that year) focuses his equally brilliant latest novel on Hai, a young Vietnamese-American man living in the down-and-out New England town of East Gladness (Gladness itself doesn’t exist) who forges an unlikely, lovely bond with Grazina, a Lithuanian widow who’s showing signs of dementia. The beautifully drawn characters are each struggling financially and emotionally — and living with lies in order to make their perceived failures bearable. The story (a bestseller and another fantastic Oprah’s Book Club pick) is no joyride, but you’ll surely close this book feeling richer for having read it.
Courtesy Penguin Random House
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.
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.
Courtesy Penguin Random House
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.
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).
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