The Best Books of 2025.   

It's THAT time of year again when we all look backwards to the highs and lows of the previous year's reads. As usual I’ll be splitting things into Fiction & Non-Fiction categories with the best of the best in BOLD. I reviewed a total of 102 books along with 2 DNF’s. 

Fiction:  

Poe’s Cat by Brenda Walker 

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 

Fifteen Hours by Mitchel Scanlon 

Desert Raiders by Lucien Soulban 

The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler 

News From Berlin by Otto De Kat 

By the Pricking of Her Thumb by Adam Roberts 

First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami 

Count Zero by William Gibson 

The Excursion Train by Edward Marston 

The Killing Ground by Elleston Trevor 

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue 

An Englishman in Madrid by Eduardo Mendoza 

Keane’s Company by Iain Gale 

Four Seasons in Japan by Nick Bradley 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus 

Sherlock Holmes & The Twelve Thefts of Christmas by Tim Major 

Non-Fiction: 

Divine Might – Goddesses in Greek Myth by Natalie Haynes 

The Possibility of Life – Searching for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green 

Hardboiled America – Lurid Paperbacks and the Masters of Noir by Geoffrey O’Brien 

First Steps – How Walking Upright Made Us Human by Jeremy Desilva 

Footmarks – A Journey into Our Restless Past by Jim Leary 

Nomads – The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World by Anthony Sattin   

How Markets Fail – The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy 

How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them by Barbara F Walter 

The Scout Mindset – Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef   

The Norman Conquest – William the Conqueror’s Subjugation of England by Teresa Cole 

The Shortest History of The Soviet Union by Sheila Fitzpatrick 

A Thing of Beauty – Travels in Mythical and Modern Greece by Peter Fiennes 

A Brief History of The Hundred Years War – The English in France, 1337-1453 by Desmond Seward 

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine – A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance by Rashid Khalidi 

That’s All Folks! - The Art of Warner Bros. Animation by Steve Schneider 

Prisoners of Geography – Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall 

By Tank into Normandy by Stuart Hills 

Churchill & Orwell – The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E Ricks 

Brolliology – A History of the Umbrella in Life and Literature by Marion Rankine 

Red Moon Rising – Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age by Matthew Brzezinski 

Foreign Devils on the Silk Road – The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk 

1914 – Fight the Good Fight: Britain, the Army & the Coming of the First World War by Allan Mallinson 

1923 – The Crisis that Led to Hitler’s Coup by Mark Jones 

As you can no doubt tell, I had a very good & very varied year of reading in 2025. I’m a bit disappointed that only around 20% of my reads had female authors and I’ll see if I can address that a bit this year. I am impressed, however, at how many of that 20% showed up in my best list though! As is often the case I was slightly non-fiction heavy in 2025 with a little over 55% being in that category but its near enough a 50-50 split that I won’t worry about it! I was pleased with the age range last year: from 2024-1827 which is 197 years. Pretty good. So, onwards to 2026...