2025 Round Up: Favourite Debut Fiction

Resolve to read new authors. In 2025, these authors debuted with their first novels.

Updated January 9, 2026
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33 Place Brugmann
Austen, Alice
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Alice Austen uses her considerable gifts to remind us that the past and the present are more connected than we wish to believe, and that vigilance, loyalty and art hold the key to survival. This is a beautiful and deeply engaging novel." -- Ann Patchett, #1...
Old School Indian
Curtis, Aaron John
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * BUZZFEED BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "[An] entrancing new voice . . . Aaron John Curtis will be your new literary obsession." --Marion Winik, The Boston Globe "An inspired novel by an author whose voice absolutely sizzles on...
The three lives of Cate Kay
Fagan, Kate (Sports writer)
Paper Book
REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK | NATIONAL BESTSELLER Named a Best Book of 2025 by Time, NPR, Goodreads, and others. "[A] propulsive puzzle of a novel." --The New York Times Book Review "This story swept me away with its big...
Silver elite
Francis, Dani
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * In the first book of a sizzling dystopian romance series, psychic gifts are a death sentence and there are rules to survival: Trust no one. Lie to everyone. And whatever you do, don't fall for your greatest enemy.
The names
Knapp, Florence
Paper Book
THE YEAR'S BREAKOUT NOVEL AND WORD-OF-MOUTH HIT--A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND READ WITH JENNA PICK "Dazzling. . . Knapp tirelessly and beautifully replicates not just loss and grief but endless rebirth and delight." --The Washington Post "Elegant. . ....
These memories do not belong to us : a constellation novel
Ma, Yiming
Paper Book
"Ma's brilliantly inventive These Memories Do Not Belong to Us weaves worlds around a central question: What happens when technology enables a totalitarian government to break into the last private frontiers of the internal mind? Chilling, poignant, and uncomfortably timely, Ma's braided memory...
A killer wedding : a novel
O'Leary, Joan
Paper Book
*A NATIONAL BESTSELLER* "Fans of The White Lotus and Knives Out will gobble up this whip-smart whodunit... Good luck solving this especially twisty mystery before the big reveal--you'll need it."--Marie Claire  "The Riptons are American...
Food person : a novel
Roberts, Adam D.
Paper Book
For fans of Alison Espach's The Wedding People and Dolly Alderton's Good Material, a delectable comedy of manners about cooking, ambition, and friendship set in the food world as a young and socially awkward writer takes a job ghostwriting the cookbook for a famous (and...
Maggie; or, a man and a woman walk into a bar
Yee, Katie
Paper Book
A New York Times Notable Book. One of Time's 100 Must-Read Book of 2025. Summer's Best Beach Reads by The New York Times * Books You Should Read This July by New York magazine * Books We're Most Excited About by Today * Best Beach...

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