10 "Must-Reads" From The NYT Best Books List That Are Actually Worth The Hype In 2026

Heart the Lover by Lily King

College love triangle tales never get old, a fact epitomized by Heart the Lover. This novel, penned by Lily King, follows a female senior college student, later nicknamed Jordan, who hopes to become a writer.

But in her 17th-century Lit class, she meets two charming best friends, Sam and Yash, who woo her with their friendship and soon begin battling for her affection. And with graduation looming, certain choices will forever leave their mark on the trio.

“Decades later, Jordan is living the life she dreamed of, and the vulnerable days of her youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news bring the past crashing into the present, Jordan returns to a world she left behind and is forced to confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self,” per the synopsis.

Isola by Allegra Goodman

Historical fiction fans shouldn’t sleep on Isola, which is inspired by a real-life 16th-century French noblewoman named Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval.

At first, her fate seemed promised since she was the heir to a lofty fortune. Yet, she becomes orphaned instead, and her new male guardian blows her inheritance. He also forces her to join him on a trip to New France, where she finds herself romantically involved with his servant.

“But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue. Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature,” the synopsis reads.

Katabasis by RF Kuang

This dark academic fantasy follows Alice Law, a graduate student at Cambridge studying the field of Magick, who sacrificed everything to work with the most revered magician in the world: Professor Jacob Grimes.

However, the professor dies and gets sent to hell following an accident, for which Alice might be to blame. That, coupled with the fact that his recommendation could hold the key to her future, is why Alice decides to rescue him. The only problem is that her rival peer, Peter Murdoch, set his sights on the same mission.

“With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like,” per the synopsis.

Silver Elite by Dani Francis

Romantasy meets riveting dystopia in Silver Elite, published in May by Dani Francis. It centers on Wren, a secretly powerful “Mod” psychic who’s forced to join an elite military training program known as Silver Block. But the setback gives her the rare opportunity of fighting for the resistance from the inside.

There, she’s trained to track down other Mods like herself while keeping her abilities hidden and trying to prove her worthiness to her new peers.

“But that’s easier said than done when your commanding officer is the ruthless and infuriatingly irresistible Cross Redden, who doesn’t miss anything when it comes to her. And as war rages between Mods like her and those who aim to destroy them, Wren must decide just how far she’s willing to go to protect herself… and how much of the Continent is worth saving,” the synopsis reads.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins’ latest book in the Hunger Games series, Sunrise on the Reaping, is a prequel that goes back in time to the 50th iteration of the deadly competition, when double the number of tributes were taken from each district.

Young Haymitch Abernathy, who calls District 12 home, is hoping he doesn’t get called and forced to leave the girl he loves behind. But his name is drawn anyway, and he’s transported to the Capitol to embark on the literal fight of his life.

“As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight… and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena,” per the synopsis.

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean

In These Summer Storms, Alice broke the mold of her affluent family and left behind their Rhode Island riches to pave her own way. Yet, following the death of her billionaire father, she has no choice but to return to their private island.

Initially, she plans to lie low, pay her respects, and get out of there as soon as possible. However, her late father’s last will and testament thrusts Alice and her siblings into a week-long competition for their slice of the estate instead.

“The eccentric, manipulative patriarch left his widow and their grown children a final challenge: an inheritance game designed to humiliate, devastate, and unravel the Storm family in ways both petty and life-altering. The rules of the game are clear: stay on the island for one week, complete the tasks, receive the inheritance,” the synopsis reads.

Awake by Jen Hatmaker

Jen Hatmaker first gained fame as a Christian writer and podcaster. Then, the wife and mother of five found out she’d been betrayed by her own pastor husband, Brandon, in 2020.

At 2:30 a.m. one July evening, she heard Brandon speaking to another woman on the phone, while literally lying right next to her in bed. Suddenly, their 26-year marriage came crashing down, and her mental health plummeted as she tried to keep their kids (and herself) afloat.

Awake is a thought-provoking memoir that follows how Jen, who’d served as a guidepost for millions of women, dug into her own playbook and rose up from the ashes of her ruined relationship.

“In candid, surprisingly funny vignettes spanning 40 years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, she lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife–the implosion of marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies unasked-for change,” per the synopsis.

Books of Lives by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood may be best known for penning The Handmaid’s Tale, but in her new memoir, Books of Lives, the author looks within. She reflects on her childhood in the forest of northern Quebec, marked by her scientific parents and the independence they instilled in her.

Thereafter, Margaret leads readers through the whirlwind of her personal life and literary career, which brought us classics like Cat’s Eye and The Blind Assassin.

“In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors, and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel,” the synopsis reads.

Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert

Any Millennial or Gen Zer who feels they were victimized by the Y2K era must read Girl on Girl, a striking cultural commentary that asks, “When did feminism lose its way?”

According to Sophie Gilbert, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and staff writer for The Atlantic, it was the turn of the millennium when sexualization, hyper-objectification, and infantilization became the key products sold to young women by those in power trying to shape the mainstream.

By compiling research on trends and cultural phenomena now often seen as nostalgic, Sophie connects the dots between facets of fashion, music, film, television, and more that led to the regression of feminism.

“And what she recounts is harrowing, from the unattainable aesthetic of Victoria’s Secret ads and explicit music videos to a burgeoning internet culture vicious towards women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren’t,” per the synopsis.

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

Finally, for the horror buffs out there, we have one final pick for you: Victorian Psycho. It centers on a governess named Winifred Notty who cares for two children, Drusilla and Andrew, at the Ensor House. But the longer her duties drag on, the larger her urge grows to murder the family she’s employed by.

In fact, her deepest desire is even revealed only a few pages into the novel, with Virginia writing, “In three months, everyone in this house will be dead.”

“Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winidfred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning,” the synopsis reads.

​Browse the rest of the 100 Notable Books of 2025 (Fiction)

Fiction:

• Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
• August Lane by Regina Black
• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker
• Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
• The Colony by Annika Norlin
• Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza
• The Director by Daniel Kehlmann
• The Doorman by Chris Pavone
• The Feeling of Iron by Giaime Alonge
• Flesh by David Szalay
• A Gentleman’s Gentleman by TJ Alexander
• The Good Liar by Denise Mina
• A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
• Heartwood by Amity Gaige
• Hollow Spaces by Victor Suthammanont
• The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
• How to Dodge a Cannonball by Dennard Dayle
• Killing Stella by Marlen Haushofer
• King Sorrow by Joe Hill
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
• Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu
• Maggie: Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee
• Night Watch by Kevin Young
• On the Calculation of Volume: Book III by Solvej Balle
• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
• Playworld by Adam Ross
• The Rarest Fruit by Gaëlle Bélem
• The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje
• Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
• The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
• The Slip by Lucas Schaefer
• The South by Tash Aw
• Startlement by Ada Limón
• Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
• To Smithereens by Rosalyn Drexler
• The Tokyo Suite by Giovana Madalosso
• Trip by Amie Barrodale
• Venetian Vespers by John Banville
• We Do Not Part by Han Kang
• What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
• A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

Remaining NYT 100 Notable Books of 2025 (Non-fiction)

• Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
• The Age of Choice by Sophia Rosenfeld
• All Consuming by Ruby Tandoh
• Apple in China by Patrick McGee
• The Arrogant Ape by Christine Webb
• Baldwin by Nicholas Boggs
• Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Beinart
• Black Moses by Caleb Gayle
• Born in Flames by Bench Ansfield
• The Broken King by Michael Thomas
• Buckley by Sam Tanenhaus
• The Call of the Honeyguide by Rob Dunn
• Capitalism by Sven Beckert
• Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams
• Claire McCardell by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
• The Containment by Michelle Adams
• Crumb by Dan Nadel
• Dark Renaissance by Stephen Greenblatt
• Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick
• Empire of AI by Karen Hao
• Every Day Is Sunday by Ken Belson
• The Fate of the Day by Rick Atkinson
• A Flower Traveled in My Blood by Haley Cohen Gilliland
• The Gods of New York by Jonathan Mahler
• I Seek a Kind Person by Julian Borger
• John & Paul by Ian Leslie
• King of Kings by Scott Anderson
• The Last Manager by John W. Miller
• Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
• A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst
• Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
• Mother Emanuel by Kevin Sack
• Motherland by Julia Ioffe
• Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
• 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
• The Peepshow by Kate Summerscale
• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
• Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope by Brandon M. Terry
• The Spinach King by John Seabrook
• There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone
• Things In Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
• The Tragedy of True Crime by John J. Lennon
• We The People by Jill Lepore
• What Is Queer Food? By John Birdsall
• Wild Thing by Sue Prideaux
• The Zorg by Siddharth Kara