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December 16, 2025

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of December 15th, December 29th and January 5th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our End-of-the-Year contest featuring Carol Fitzgerald’s Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2025. One Grand Prize winner will be awarded all 42 books, while seven other readers will receive six of these titles. The deadline for your entries is Monday, January 12th at noon ET.

In Friday's Bookreporter Weekly Update newsletter, we will share Carol's year-end Bets On video, where she talks about her 2025 Bets On selections and why she loved them so much. It also will be available as a podcast.

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December 16, 2025

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we know people will be talking about this holiday season. Read more about it, and enter our Holiday Cheer Contest by Wednesday, December 17th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of ORDER OF SWANS by Jude Deveraux, which is now available in paperback. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

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December 16, 2025

Reading Dostoevsky in India

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By Sarah Damoff
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THE BRIGHT YEARS is Sarah Damoff’s nationally bestselling debut novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love. Her second work of fiction, THE BURNING SIDE, releases in June 2026 and is a family saga suffused with humor, longing and heartbreak. In her holiday blog post, Sarah recalls the first Christmas she spent in India while working as a teacher and the classic book by Fyodor Dostoevsky that helped remind her of the true meaning of the season.

Bookreporter Reviewers' Favorite Books of 2025

We've asked our reviewers to provide us with a list of their favorite books from 2025. Included is a mix of fiction and nonfiction titles, all published for the first time this year. We always love hearing which books resonated the most with them! Please note that due to personal and professional commitments, some reviewers were not able to participate in this feature.

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Sarah Damoff

Sarah Damoff lives with her husband and children in Texas, where she worked for years as a social worker. Her debut novel, THE BRIGHT YEARS, was published in 2025.

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"Best Of" 2025 Lists

This is the time of year when “Best Of” lists are everywhere. These annual roundups always seem to spark lively discussions among readers as they reflect on their favorite books of the year.

We’ve compiled a number of them for you here. See which of your top picks appear on these lists and which titles you feel should've been included but weren't. Perhaps you’ll even find some books to add to your reading list for the new year!

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December 15, 2025

My Grandmother’s Quilt

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By Davis Bunn
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Davis Bunn’s latest novel, A SEA GLASS CHRISTMAS, is the ultimate holiday comfort read for fans of Nicholas Sparks and Karen Kingsbury. In it, a bracing Christmas on North Carolina’s Outer Banks opens the door to a second chance at love. When Davis received a wedding quilt from his grandmother, he was so moved by the gesture that he wrote a homily to her. Not only did he give a printed version of the story to his wife, Isabella, as a honeymoon gift, it served as the inspiration for one of his most popular books, THE QUILT.

Davis Bunn

An American, Davis Bunn is Writer-in-Residence at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University. His books have sold in excess of eight million copies in over 20 languages and have been Main or Featured Selections with every major US book club. Lately he has appeared on the cover of Southern Writers, Retailing Magazine and Publishers Weekly.

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Olga Tokarczuk, author of House of Day, House of Night

A woman settles in a remote Polish village where she knows no one. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the stories of the living and the dead. There’s the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers that he shares his body with a bird, and Franz Frost, whose nightmares come to him from a newly discovered planet. There’s the man whose death --- with one leg on the Polish side, one on the Czech --- was an international incident. And there are the Germans who still haunt a region that not long ago they called their own. From the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, these shards piece together not only a history, but a cosmology.

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Matthew Pearl, author of The Award

David Trent is an aspiring novelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, trying to navigate his ambitions in a place that has writers around every corner. He lives in an apartment above a Very Famous Author named Silas Hale. Beneath his celebrated image, Silas is a bombastic, vindictive monster who refuses to allow his new neighbor even to make eye contact with him. Until young David wins a prestigious award for his new book. Suddenly Silas is interested --- if intensely spiteful. But soon, the administrator of the award comes to David with alarming news, forcing the writer into a desperate set of choices. Fate intervenes --- with shocking consequences.

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