We already gave you our picks for best books of 2025, but as our editors continue to look back on the books published this year, we thought it would be worth shouting out these under-appreciated gems. These nine books might have flown slightly under the radar, but they’re not to be missed. Below, our editors make their pleas for your consideration.
Call and Response: Stories of the Fantastic
I really loved Caldwell's debut short story collection, which demonstrates his impressive range—from surreal, dreamlike fairy tales to raucous weird westerns—while still managing to feel like a cohesive whole, due in part to its echoing structure: the characters and themes introduced in part one return in unexpected ways in part two. I can't wait to see what Caldwell does next. —Phoebe Cramer, SFF, horror, and romance reviews editor
Every Day Is Sunday: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut
Growing up in Dallas, I never questioned the NFL’s prevalence. It wasn’t until I read this captivating deep dive from New York Times reporter Belson that I really understood how and to what extent the league has become an overpowering force. Belson paints an entertaining history of how the NFL grew into “essentially a Fortune 500 company masquerading as a sports League” and deftly chronicles present-day controversies, from sports betting to football-related head trauma. —Marisa Charpentier, science and pop culture reviews editor
Happiness and Love
This year, outside of the mystery and memoir beats, I was drawn to novels of extreme interiority. Castillo’s Fresh, Green Life and Claire-Louise Bennett’s Big Kiss, Bye-Bye both made big impressions, but this Thomas Bernhard homage about a former downtown darling who’s roped back into the scene she once escaped stirred my strongest feelings of recognition, melancholy, and disgust. —Conner Reed, mystery and memoir reviews editor
The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties
Former Grateful Dead publicist McNally delivers anything but a hazy trip down memory lane in this rigorous, comprehensive, and eye-opening catalog of the various intellectual and artistic threads that coalesced into the 1960s counterculture. Anyone with an interest in the era's music, art, fashion, and literature will find a treasure trove of insights here, and plenty of rabbit holes to go down, from the Fugs to Far-Fetched Foods. —David Adams, reviews director
Palace of Deception: Museum Men and the Rise of Scientific Racism
This deep dive into the history of the big mammal collection at New York’s American Museum of Natural History is stylistically an absolute pleasure to read and full of totally eye-opening new ways of thinking about how eugenics spread its nefarious tendrils into every aspect of the natural sciences. It’s a vital cautionary tale about how ideology can influence science—a must read for museum curators and attendees alike! —Dana Snitzky, history and current affairs reviews editor
A Trick of the Mind: How the Brain Invents Your Reality
As society becomes weirder and increasingly online, I have been thinking about how people construct and change the way they see the world. Yon addresses those questions here, marshaling accessible neuroscience to unpack how the brain forms perceptual models that govern the ways we see reality—and the circumstances that dismantle them, giving rise to mental distortions and bizarre belief systems. It’s a fascinating peek into the brain’s complexities, with thought-provoking implications for what it might mean to combat misinformation and foster communication across social divides. —Miriam Grossman, religion and self-help reviews editor
Twist
Granted, this one’s a bit subtler and less character-driven than McCann’s previous blockbusters. Still, with its meaty exploration into lost men and their desire for connection, I thought it would receive more attention. It’s about a journalist named Fennell who's in search of a story while on board a deep sea cable repair ship off the West African coast, and the elusive and mercurial chief of mission, Conway, whom Fennell hopes to befriend. I found the whole thing artful, funny, and sad, especially the way in which McCann fashions Fennell as a Nick Carraway–style narrator, one who’s always grasping for his Gatsby, in this case Conway, and whose frustrated obsession is fueled by a stale interest in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. —David Varno, literary fiction reviews editor
The Weight
There’s a brutal simplicity to Mendes's storytelling in this grey-washed rendering of a girl named Edie’s coming of age in a Depression-era rural landscape, where violent men and tragedy punch into her every milestone. I’ve been filling in my belated viewing of Kelly Reichardt films this year, whose slowly unfolding lens was recalled in how Mendes’s comics pan over fields or pause on a rabbit in a trap. This collection has been long-awaited for fans of Mendes’s indie comics; despite the weight of The Weight (it’s a substantial tome), like Reichardt’s films, time moves in such a realistic pace here that it’s over tragically fast. —Meg Lemke, comics and graphic novels reviews editor
The Wilderness
I expected Flournoy's sophomore novel to reach an even bigger audience, and maybe there's still time—it was longlisted for recognition by the NBF and now NBCC. But I don't feel it got its real due. Flournoy has such insight into our present moment and surveillance state, she incorporates a critique of Octavia Butler's vision in her account of L.A., and she does brilliant work of braiding the characters' relationships and personalities across decades.
