AARP’s Favorite Books of 2025

Our books editor's top reads of the year include new works by Ian McEwan, Andrew Ross Sorkin and more

Christina Ianzito,

AARP

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Published December 18, 2025

a collage with images of the covers of books published in 2025

“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai was our books editor’s favorite novel in a year full of wonderful reads.

AARP (Courtesy Penguin Random House; courtesy Grove Atlantic; courtesy Penguin Random House, 3)

It’s been another stellar year for new books, and I’ve included 10 standouts below. As always, they are limited by the fact that I can only read so much in a year that also requires necessities such as sleeping and eating. (I wish, for instance, I’d had time to read The Correspondent by Virginia Evans!) Still, I hope you’ll add some of my picks to your to-be-read list and enjoy them as much as I did.

Then check out our winter books preview for some of the notable releases coming in the next few months.

These are my top picks for 2025:

the cover of Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia

“Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy,” a National Book Award finalist by Julia Ioffe.

Courtesy HarperCollins Publishers

Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy by Julia Ioffe

In this National Book Award finalist, Ioffe, a Russian-born American journalist, presents her home country’s dramatic and stunningly brutal history through a gripping human lens: the eyes of her remarkable female ancestors, starting with her great-grandmothers and grandmothers who experienced the brief promise of the Bolshevik Revolution (which incorporated remarkably feminist ideals), the devastation of World War II and beyond. She also includes fascinating stories of the rebellious women who’ve fought for changes within the patriarchal society, and the wives and daughters of the men who resisted reform. (Russian men do not look pretty in this frank portrait.) You can imagine Ioffe’s heartache in her descriptions of the human toll and brutality of these regimes as she makes clear her complex emotional ties to her motherland, where she’d likely be arrested for her truth-telling if she ever dared to return.

“Heart the Lover” by Lily King, author of “Euphoria.”

Courtesy Grove Atlantic

Heart the Lover by Lily King

The author is now in her 60s, but her many fans adore her in part for her uncanny ability to sensitively capture the confusion and longing of young love — likely eliciting a wave of nostalgia in her older readers — as she does in her latest novel. It’s centered on Jordan, a cerebral college student, and her love triangle of sorts with two male friends she’s met in her 17th-century literature class. Their conversations and interactions feel true as their relationships wax and wane. Decades later, Jordan’s reconnection with her friends is achingly bittersweet. King is the author of, among others, 2014’s Euphoria, a transporting novel I also highly recommend. It features another love triangle, between three anthropologists in New Guinea, with a magnetic female protagonist inspired by the famed anthropologist Margaret Mead.

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the cover of Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America

“Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America” by Bridget Read.

Courtesy Penguin Random House

Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America by Bridget Read

Read, a New York Magazine writer, dives into the world of multilevel marketing (MLM), famous for its be-your-own-boss promises and the need to rope in ever more sellers to feed the moneymaking beast. There are some 6.7 million Americans engaged in this form of “direct selling” through MLM companies like Herbalife, Tupperware and Amway, notes Read, who describes the sales model as quite possibly “one of the most devastating, long-running scams in modern history.” The book includes personal stories to illustrate her point, including a woman named Monique who, after being wooed by a diamond-adorned saleswoman at a you-go-girl!-style Mary Kay recruiting event, charged thousands of dollars to her credit card for Mary Kay products she was never able to sell. It’s a fascinating portrait of an industry that, as Read convincingly argues, has been given a free pass from regulators for far too long.

“Amity,” a novel by Nathan Harris.

Courtesy Hachette Book Group

Amity by Nathan Harris

Set in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War, Amity focuses on Coleman, an intellectual, quirky Black servant who sets out on a dangerous cross-country journey with Florence Harper, the spoiled daughter of his former enslaver. Coleman wants to reunite with his sister, who has trekked to Mexico with Florence’s father, the creepy Mr. Harper. (Florence mistakenly believes he wants her to join him.) Swindlers and bandits are around every corner as the pair doggedly head westward. It’s an adventure tale, social commentary, love story and vivid slice of Reconstruction-era history from the author of 2021’s The Sweetness of Water.

Ocean Vuong's “The Emperor of Gladness.”

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 in the down-and-out, fictional New England town of East Gladness (Gladness itself doesn’t exist) who forges an unlikely, lovely bond with Grazina, a Lithuanian widow with growing signs of dementia. The beautifully drawn characters are each struggling financially and emotionally, and living with lies to make their perceived failures bearable. The story (a bestseller and another fantastic Oprah Book Club pick) is no joyride, but you’ll surely close this novel feeling richer for having read it.

the cover of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All

“If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All” by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares.

Courtesy Hachette Book Group

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares

This one is fascinating and downright frightening; I couldn’t stop thinking about it long after I had read it. The authors, who have been studying artificial intelligence for decades, are among the tech leaders who signed an open letter to AI companies in 2023 calling for a pause in work on AI to assess the technology’s potential dangers. The letter reads, “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity.” Their book argues that AI companies’ unchecked charge toward superhuman AI will be disastrous; lays out some theoretical scenarios detailing how it could lead to our annihilation; and suggests what might be done to change our doomed trajectory. “We do not mean that as hyperbole,” they note of their premise (succinctly summed up in the book title). “We think that is the most direct extrapolation from the knowledge, evidence, and institutional conduct around AI today.” Even if there is a bit of hyperbole involved in their argument, they make a pretty convincing case that we are playing with fire.

“What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan, author of “Atonement.”

Courtesy Penguin Random House

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

Many novels have portrayed a future transformed by climate change, but this book, by the author of Atonement, describes one that’s chillingly conceivable. It weaves between two stories more than a century apart. One, set in 2014, is centered around the famous English poet Francis Blundy and his wife, Vivien, for whom he hosts a birthday dinner to read aloud an epic poem he’s written in her honor. His wine-drunk friends later spread rumors of its brilliance, but no copies appear to have been saved, so the poem’s reputation grows ever more mythic. The second story is set in 2119, where the world has been radically transformed by rising seas and the subsequent wars and disasters that arrived in their wake. In this depleted, waterlogged future, scholar Thomas Metcalfe becomes obsessed with finding the legendary poem and scours all that the couple left behind for clues. He’s stunned by what he discovers. It’s a memorable, prescient story about, among other things, how little we can truly know about the past, and the folly of believing that the future will be anything like today.

the cover of 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation

“1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation” by Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Courtesy Penguin Random House

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin

The author of Too Big to Fail, a dissection of the 2008 financial crisis, tells the story of the legendary stock market crash with dramatic flair. (A New York Times columnist, Sorkin also cocreated the hit TV show Billions.) Think of this as a true-crime tale revealing injustices far more complex than murder. The cast of characters (which the author lists at the start of the book, as in a play) includes stockbrokers, speculators, the heads of the Federal Reserve and banking industry, and political leaders like President Herbert Hoover and Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, who lost a fortune in the crash, and focuses less on average Americans, the real victims. “It’s about those who helped set [this calamity] in motion,” Sorkin explains, “because that’s where the responsibility lies, and where the lessons remain.” The book is worth a read even if you don’t count finance among your interests (I sure don’t).

the cover of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai.

Courtesy Penguin Random House

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Desai won the Booker Prize for her 2006 novel, The Inheritance of Loss, and her sweeping new novel was shortlisted for that prize. Sonia, an aspiring writer, leaves her family in India to study at an isolated Vermont college, where she develops a disturbing relationship with an abusive, soul-sucking older artist. Devastated and traumatized by the experience, she returns home to her ailing father. Sunny has also left his mother in India to become a journalist in New York but ends up adrift. Sonia’s and Sunny’s paths cross periodically, and a relationship develops, then pauses, while each struggles with their family obligations and the insecurity of having one foot in two countries as they try to find their place in the world. This gorgeously written, multilayered novel is a love story of sorts, but it’s arguably more about seeking identity and belonging while navigating two cultures and intense family ties that both pull and repel. Desai’s mother is the acclaimed novelist Anita Desai (Clear Light of Day, In Custody).

“Atmosphere,” a bestseller by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

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 miniseries), sets her new page-turner in Texas during the 1980s. We first meet Joan Goodwin, a young astronomer among the astronaut trainees in the space shuttle program, and one of the few women, as NASA has just begun accepting them into the fold. Joan is at the helm of mission control when her teammates face a life-or-death crisis in space. The suspense builds as Joan’s backstory unfolds, including the forbidden love she shares with Vanessa Ford, an aeronautical engineer who’s among the group whose space flight appears to be on the verge of disaster. It’s an engrossing, romantic story, and one of this year’s big summertime hits.

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