With another year coming to an end, another cycle of book awards has also closed out. However, just because the year’s almost over, there’s no need to leave these fantastic, award-winning reads in the past. Whether you’re an avid follower of bookish/publishing news and book award coverage, or the type to find out a book’s won a coveted award thanks to a sticker on its cover, we are sure these 2025 award-winners are ones you will not want to miss out on. Next to that, every book on this list — and on the much longer lists provided by each award organization — rightfully deserves its praise. From captivating historical fiction that spans generations to audacious, raw literary fiction about sexuality and self-identity, discover seven award-winning books to add to your 2026 TBR!
James by Percival Everett
This electrifying and brilliant reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from one of the most distinguished writers in contemporary American literature, Percival Everett, was highly predicted to be the 2025 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction since its initial release. And now, James is officially a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — and for good reason. James broke new ground as it turns Huckleberry Finn on its head by retelling it from the enslaved Jim’s perspective, placing the character’s cleverness, self-emancipation, and compassion front and center, and shifting the narrative of one of liberation. An important and ingenious novel that is perfect for avid readers of American literature.
Flesh by David Szalay
This 2025 Winner of the Booker Prize is part-immigrant story, part-bildungsroman. Flesh starts when fifteen-year-old István and his mother move to a new town in Hungary, and he struggles to become socially acquainted at his brand new school. Soon enough, István becomes isolated from his peers and seeks solace in the companionship he has formed with his neighbor, a married woman who is closer to his mother than his own. Soon enough, the companionship turns clandestine, and István’s life becomes completely re-altered by this. As the years go by, readers will watch István as he navigates trauma, joins the army, and leaves to succeed in the world of London’s ultra-elite. A raw, intimate, and hypnotic meditation on trauma and its scars, Flesh is a quintessential read for anyone who prefers realism-based page-turners.
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
2025 Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, The Safekeep is a remarkable yet unnerving historical fiction novel, set in early 1960s Netherlands, during the summer. The novel follows the shared inexplicable desire, consuming obsession, and underlying suspicions two women, Isabel and Eva, develop towards each other while staying in the same countryside home. Filled with brilliant representations of repressed sexuality in women, flawed and deeply layered female characters, and an insightful exploration of post-WWII trauma and how it grows into intergenerational trauma, The Safekeep is a must-read for your 2026 reading list.
The Story of a Heart by Dr. Rachel Clarke
This heartbreaking yet heartfelt true story took home the 2025 Women’s Prize for Nonfiction. This nonfiction narrative weaves together the story of Kiera, a nine-year-old who suffers from catastrophic brain injuries after a horrific car accident. As her body gradually shuts down, her heart refuses to stop beating, and this leads to Keira’s family placing her name on the organ donor list. This sudden, selfless act of generosity connects Keira’s narrative, as well as her heart, to Max, a nine-year-old boy in need of a heart transplant and a medical miracle. Profound, compassionate, and deeply humane, The Story of a Heart is essential reading for nonfiction readers and those in need of a moving, tear-jerker.
The Slip by Lucas Schaefer
Lucas Schaefer’s bestselling novel, The Slip, took home the 2025 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Compared to the works of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill, The Slip follows the story of the sudden vanishing of sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein in late 1990s Austin, Texas, and the impact one tip that forces Nathaniel’s uncle Bob to reopen the case a decade later has. Audacious, daring, and utterly fearless in his writing about sexuality, gender, class, and race issues, The Slip is a one-of-a-kind American novel that cannot be missed.
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell
Garth Greenwell joins the likes of Ann Patchett and John Updike with his well-deserved 2025 PEN/Faulkner win. Garth’s literary fiction/LGBTQ+ fiction novel, Small Rain, was crowned the winner of the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and tells the story of a poet whose world is turned upside down by a sudden, excruciating bodily pain. Thrown into the precarious American healthcare system and confined to bed rest, this poet is forced to confront what exactly is going on inside his body. This sweeping novel shows readers human vulnerability, the limits of sympathy, and the fragility, as well as the façade, of the so-called “American dream.”
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls
Tessa Hull’s critically-acclaimed debut graphic memoir won numerous, much-deserved accolades this year — including the 2025 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book. Feeding Ghosts weaves together three different stories of three generations of women from Tessa’s family. Beginning with her grandmother, Sun Yi, a Chinese journalist who wrote a sweeping memoir about surviving the 1949 Communist victory, and suffered from a mental health breakdown — one that she would never recover from. As Tessa grows up, she struggles to watch her mother and grandmother grapple with the weight of undiagnosed mental illness and repressed trauma, which leads her to flee. Still, as she reaches thirty, she realizes she cannot stay away from home any longer. Illuminating, vivid, heartbreaking, Feeding Ghosts is a must-read for anyone who has felt the weight of inheriting trauma, or enjoys an enrichening, female-centered multigenerational story.
From a groundbreaking reimagining of an American classic to a genre-defying, familial memoir about three generations of women, these 2025 award winners are rich in diversity and tell meaningful stories that must be heard. We hope you pick up at least one of these titles and see for yourself simply how deserving of these awards these authors and their stories are.
Looking for more prize-winning books? Check out our list of 2023 award-winning must-reads right here!
Shop our 2025 New Releases You Need to Grab Today Bookshelf on our Bookshop for more titles you should bring into the new year!
