Barnes & Noble’s Best Fiction Books of 2025 Revealed

Barnes & Noble jumped the gun—and beat everyone else to it—by releasing the first Best Books of 2025 list. And yes, we’re diving straight in. Below, we’ll break down their picks, share which titles stood out to us the most, and spotlight the books we think truly deserve the hype. Keep reading to see which novels made the cut.

Is it early for an end-of-year list? Absolutely. But that didn’t stop Barnes & Noble from making the bold move to publish theirs first. With more than two months still left in the year, this list will likely evolve—but that’s part of what makes it so interesting to look at now.

For this article, we’re zeroing in on Barnes & Noble’s Best Fiction Books of 2025. The full list is below, along with our thoughts on which picks we loved and which ones surprised us most.

Barnes & Noble’s Best Fiction Books of 2025!

• Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser
• Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
• Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee
• The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays by Harper Lee
• The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
• Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• My Friends by Fredrik Backman
• Circle of Days by Ken Follett
• What We Can Know: A Novel by Ian McEwan
• Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
• We Do Not Part by Han Kang
• The Artist and the Feast by Lucy Steeds
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
• Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Pretender by Jo Harkin
• Twice by Mitch Albom
• Audition by Katie Kitamura
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
• Parallel Lines by Edward St. Aubyn
• Flashlight: A Novel by Susan Choi
• Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond
• I, Medusa by Ayana Gray
• Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
• The Director by Daniel Kehlmann
• Heart the Lover by Lily King
• A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
• Wild Dark Shore: A Novel by Charlotte McConaghy
• Wreck by Catherine Newman
• We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat by Syou Ishida
• Flesh by David Szalay

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

This was a long list and it felt like almost every major fiction book released in 2025 made the list. Barnes & Noble’s list is good but it feels like they just wanted to focus on making a big list for customers to buy from them.

My favorite book on this list is The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wins the best fiction book of 2025 award. It is a powerful and beautiful novel about love, relationships, and of hope and trauma.

There are other big novels on this list but I have yet to read them but hopefully I can before the end of the year or early next year. Dream Count is going to be one of my next reads and I am excited for it. I am also eager to read Flesh by David Szalay, the winner of the Booker Prize Award in 2025.

Conclusion

These are Barnes & Noble’s best fiction books of 2025 list and it is a long one. If you are looking to read some of the biggest novels of 2025 then this list is a great place to choose from. But it doesn’t actually list the best fiction books of 2025 in my opinion.

What did you think of this list and how many of these new fiction books have you read or plan to read? Let us know in the comments below. With a list like at your disposal, you can keep reading and reach your reading goal in no time. Until next time, happy reading!

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook