Best Books to Gift 2025 - Adult Nonfiction

We have a book for everyone on your list. You might want a few for yourself, too!

Updated November 26, 2025
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Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
Atwood, Margaret.
Paper Book
'She's taken our times and made us wise to them' ALI SMITH 'She's Margaret Atwood and she can do anything' ANN PATCHETT 'She saw it all coming' TIME 'The outstanding novelist of our age' SUNDAY TIMES Immerse yourself in the...
Future boy : back to the future and my journey through the space-time continuum
Fox, Michael J.
Paper Book
Joyride: ; a memoir
Orlean, Susan.
Paper Book
From the beloved New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, Joyride is a masterful memoir of finding her creative calling and purpose.
Maurice and Maralyn : a whale, a shipwreck, a love story
Elmhirst, Sophie
Paper Book
**WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARDS NON-FICTION AWARD 2024** **A Guardian, Observer, Economist & Waterstones Best Book of 2024** ** A Financial Times BEST SUMMER READ** 'One of those very special books that makes you put everything on hold so...
Mother Mary comes to me
Roy, Arundhati
Paper Book
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 The incredible first memoir from the Booker-winning radical icon Arundhati Roy,...
The art spy : the extraordinary untold tale of WWII resistance hero Rose Valland
Young, Michelle
Paper Book
* Publishers Weekly Best Books of Summer 2025 * Bookbub Best Non-Fiction Release of the Season * MSNBC/Afar Magazine 10 Best Books for the Summer Traveler * Newsday's Top Must-Read Book for Summer * Christian Science Monitor Best Book of May 2025 * Longlisted for...
Between Two Rivers: ; Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History
Al-Rashid, Moudhy.
Paper Book
The breath of the gods: ; the history and future of the wind
Winchester, Simon.
Paper Book
Dinner with King Tut : how rogue archaeologists are re-creating the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of lost civilizations
Kean, Sam
Paper Book
LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER | INDIE BESTSELLER | The New Yorker's Best Books of 2025 From "one of America's smartest and most charming writers" (NPR), an archaeological romp through the entire history of humankind--and through all five senses--from...
The Golden Road : how ancient India transformed the world
Dalrymple, William
Paper Book
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A Waterstones and TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR A SPECTATOR and History Today BOOK OF THE YEAR A revolutionary new history of the diffusion of Indian ideas...
The place of tides
Rebanks, James
Paper Book
We are all in need of lights to follow. One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that...
Enshittification : why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it
Doctorow, Cory
Paper Book
Enshittification: it's not just you--the internet sucks now. Here's why, and here's how we can disenshittify it. We're living through the Enshittocene, the Great Enshittening, a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit...
The mission : the CIA in the 21st century
Weiner, Tim
Paper Book
'No one has opened up the CIA to us like Weiner has, and The Mission deserves to win him a second Pulitzer' JOHN SIMPSON, GUARDIAN The epic successor to Tim Weiner's National Book Award-winning classic, Legacy of Ashes: a gripping and revelatory history of the CIA in...
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
Becker, Adam.
Paper Book
'Disconcerting . . . a disturbing and important book' NEW SCIENTIST 'Smart and wonderfully readable' NEW YORK TIMES The bad science and sinister ideas behind Silicon Valley's foolish obsession with immortality, AI paradise and...
Murderland crime and bloodlust in the time of serial killers
Fraser, Caroline
Paper Book
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history. As Murderland maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers, Fraser uncovers an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. Evidence mounts that the plumes of lead,...
The genius of trees : how trees mastered the elements and shaped the world
Rix, Harriet
Paper Book
'Wondrous. Gives us trees as we've never seen them before' ISABELLA TREE, author of Wilding 'If I was dazzled by nature and in awe of trees before, I now know how much we are indebted to them' KIRSTY WARK The Genius of Trees tells the mind...
Is A River Alive?
Macfarlane, Robert.
Paper Book
SHORTLISTED FOR BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING 2025 From celebrated writer Robert Macfarlane comes this brilliant, perspective-shifting new book - which answers a resounding yes to...
The mind electric : stories of the strangeness and wonder of our brains
Anand, Pria
Paper Book
Replaceable you : adventures in human anatomy
Roach, Mary
Paper Book
The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what's available--sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet...
The science of pets
Ingram, Jay
Paper Book
In the tradition of The Inside of a Dog, top science writer and TV personality Jay Ingram shares new insights into the hearts, minds, and bodies of the animals who love us (or do they?). More than one billion pets live in homes around the world, sleeping on dog beds,...
Dead and alive : essays
Smith, Zadie
Paper Book
An illuminating new essay collection from one of the most distinctive, exciting and acclaimed writers of her generation, Zadie Smith 'Zadie Smith is a wonderful essayist. She is a natural. She writes as she thinks, and she thinks crisply and exactly' - Tessa Hadley,...
Moral ambition: ; how to stop wasting your talent and start making a difference
Bregman, Rutger.
Paper Book
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER - FROM THE 2025 BBC REITH LECTURER A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE SUMMER 2025 'Gives us hope, humour and guidance at a time when all are in short supply' TIMOTHY SNYDER 'The rare read that might...
Strong ground : the lessons of daring leadership, the tenacity of paradox, and the wisdom of the human spirit
Brown, Brené
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Brené Brown returns with an urgent call to reimagine the essentials of courageous leadership. In a time when uncertainty runs deep and bluster, hubris, and even cruelty are increasingly framed as acceptable leadership, Brown delivers practical, actionable...
Tiny experiments: ; how to live freely in a goal-obsessed world
Le cunff, Anne-laure.
Paper Book
A transformative guide to rethinking our approach to goals, creativity and life itself from a neuroscientist and entrepreneur
Good things: recipes to share with people you love
Nosrat, Samin.
Paper Book
Once I hand them off to you, these recipes are no longer mine. They're yours, to do with as you please. And maybe, in the act of receiving, a little thread of connection will be woven between me and each of you. How can a recipe express the joy of sharing a meal in...
Something From Nothing: A Cookbook
Roman, Alison.
Paper Book

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