🏆 David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker Prize for Flesh, a novel about “a man whose life veers off course due to a series of unforeseen circumstances.”

Praised for its spare prose and powerful explorations of modernity and masculinity, Flesh was also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. It has already claimed a spot on many Best of 2025 lists, including those from Barnes & Noble and Publishers Weekly .

Behind the scenes: As he prepared to announce the winner, Roddy Doyle, chair of this year’s judging panel, revealed that the committee read the six finalists three times each, an experience he described as “incredibly rewarding.” It was a sentiment shared by fellow judges Sarah Jessica Parker, who remarked upon the “nobility” of the exercise, and Kiley Reid, who noted, “It takes you back to understanding why you dedicated your life to literature in the first place.” Nice work if you can get it!

The other finalists were:

• Audition by Katie Kitamura
• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
• The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits.

New releases have begun their end-of-year tapering, but there are still quite a few new titles worth mentioning:

• 🇺🇸 A companion to a new PBS series that I, as a dad, can assure you many dads are excited for (and many others too, of course).
• 📚 A winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction writes a novel about imperial collapse, redemption, and the whole mess we seem to have put ourselves in. 
• ⚔️ The next installment in a charming series that pushed cozy fantasy as a category onto bestseller lists. 
• 🎁 A terrific gift book based on another book (which I loved) based on an email newsletter (which I also love). 
• 🕰️ The latest book in a series that I am stupidly, painfully waiting to read until the series is complete. Or at least until I cannot bear it any longer. (Apparently, it was originally going to be a trilogy, though now maybe there will be a fourth book. This is agony).
• 🏆 A short novel (176 pages) about a runaway mother’s ten days of freedom by a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. 
• 💍 A beloved author’s first book in a decade in one of my favorite literary micro-genres: novels about long marriages. – JO

Finding a high-end, crowd-pleasing present that doesn’t cost a fortune is simple this year. Le Creuset now has favorites under $50, like the bestselling Vancouver Mug with a handle dipped in real gold. It’s the perfect gift for that fancy special someone on your list. Shop Le Creuset today and enjoy free shipping on orders over $99.

The vibes are immaculate and the literary references flow as freely as the booze in Donna Tartt’s 1992 cult classic, The Secret History.

No spoilers : the narrator tells us on page one that his friend Bunny is dead, and it’s apparent within a paragraph or two that the old chap was murdered. How—and why— do a group of students who meet in a Greek seminar at a private arts college in New England end up killing their friend? We’re not going to say books are to blame, but we’re not not saying that, either.

Part campus novel and part psychological thriller, this page-turner is packed with nods to everyone from Aristotle to Edgar Allan Poe. It’s atmospheric, suspenseful, and an unforgettable reading experience. Truly a book nerd’s dream.

🎧 Listen to our conversation about this one-of-a-kind novel on Zero to Well-Read.

The Polar Express came out 40 years ago this week, though it is a book that feels like it could have come out 100 years ago: the dreamy landscape, the steam train, and the North Pole have a not-quite-timeless but still kinda-feel-timeless quality. It has become a full-blown Christmas tradition at this point, from a major film adaptation to real-life Polar Express train rides happening all around the world. Here are a few fun facts about the modern Christmas classic.

• Author-illustrator Chris Van Allsburg’s inspiration for the book was not originally Christmas-focused. Rather, he imagined a kid wandering around at night and coming across a massive train with steam billowing around it. The billowing steam suggested winter and Allsburg thought: “Where would a kid most like to go on Christmas Eve?”
• The book was an immediate hit, winning the Caldecott Prize and being named in the New York Times Best Books of the Year.
• The publisher, Holt, had solid expectations for the book, giving it an initial print run of 50,000 copies, but that turned out to be wildly low, with millions of copies now sold to date.
• The Polar Express is not the only one of Van Allsburg’s books to get the big-screen treatment: he is also the author-illustrator of Jumanji.
• Tom Hanks optioned the film rights in 1999 after reading the book to his own kids. 

Speaking of dark academia: Society of Lies by Laura Ling Brown, a Reese’s Book Club pick, is perfect for fans of page-turners like The Secret History, Bunny, and The Cloisters.

Julia Bartz, New York Times bestselling author of The Writing Retreat says, “A dark and haunting debut that explores secret societies, the bonds of sisterhood, and the intricacies of privilege at an elite college.” Pick up Society of Lies wherever books are sold.

‘Tis the season for holiday audiobooks on sale at Libro.fm. Among the highlights:

• The People Remember by Ibi Zoboi: A kids’ book that uses the principles of Kwanzaa to talk about African American history
• The Holiday Trap by Roan Parrish: If The Holiday is your favorite Christmas movie, you’ll love this queer story about swapping homes and finding love.
• The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett: It’s funny. It’s zany. It’s the 20th Discworld novel, but you can read them in any order. Why not start with a festive vibe?

🛍️ Shop the sale through November 20.

Ann Packer is an award-winning novelist and short story writer. Her new book Some Bright Nowhere is out today from Harper.

A friend recently asked me why I spelled the name of my main character “Eliot” rather than “Elliot” or “Elliott.”  It was an unanswerable question. I just did!

That’s how I feel about most aspects of the books I write, about trying to answer questions about why I make the choices I make, though it would be disingenuous to say I’m never thoughtful or analytical. Like most writers, I revise a lot, and it’s during subsequent drafts of a novel that I start to think about why. Why and also whether a different choice would be better. That’s when I make changes, minor and major.

Case in point…but let me back up a bit and describe the book. The idea for Some Bright Nowhere came from a situation I heard about many years ago: a wife had reached the terminal phase of a long illness, and her husband was deemed inadequate to the task of caring for her, so her women friends stepped in to do the job. I understood the idea of women taking care of women; and I thought I understood, or could imagine, the experience of a husband being removed from his wife’s death. It all seemed rich and novel-worthy. So my game plan, when I started to write, was that I’d include all the key points of view: that of the dying wife, those of her caretaking friends, and that of the ousted husband. 

But I couldn’t get the thing off the ground. I wrote a section from the wife’s point of view and started another from the point of view of one of her friends. I felt very strongly that the husband’s section had to be the final one, but I couldn’t get excited about what I thought I had to write before I got to him. He was the most interesting character to me. His passage from the beginning of the story to the end seemed the most dynamic. But was I going to do an entire novel from his point of view? I was.

Which raises the question: did I use the same characters I’d already begun to develop? In the discarded material, was it the same couple as the one in my finished book? The same dying wife? The same loving husband? 

No, not exactly. Though there were only a few dozen sentences about each of them in those pages, they were distinct in my mind. So when I switched strategies, I had to change the characters’ names. Jane and Tom became Claire and Eliot. 

That’s E-L-I-O-T.

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🎓 Pro-tip: if and when you find yourself in the market for a book for a graduation gift, give Oh, the Places You’ll Go a break and buy If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?. It’s a collection of nine of Vonnegut’s truly wonderful commencement speeches.

🥾 Shop Dr. Martens’ early Black Friday sale and take up to 25% off hundreds of styles, like the classic 1460 Leather Lace-Up Boot.**

🔥 Spice it up. Audio erotica is having a moment.

📽️ Watch Sir Anthony Hopkins recite “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

🌎 See how the Hamnet production designer built a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

🎧 Check out the audiobooks that were just nominated for Grammys.

_{**This is a product recommendation from the Book Riot team. When you buy through these links, we may earn a commission.}

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

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