Fave Reads of 2025!

ANOTHER YEAR, another list of favourite reads. Some were crime fiction, some mainstream. Some were released in 2025, such as Anthony Bidulka’s Home Fires Burn, the final book in his charming Merry Bell trilogy, and Giles Blunt’s Bad Juliet. Others have been around for a few years. I caught up on Colm Toibin’s offerings, and read four more of the Irish novelist’s works last year.

A friend introduced me to two outstanding American writers. Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You and Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, both literary mysteries, were my top favourite reads of 2025.

Here's the list:

• Donna Jones Alward, When the World Fell Silent

• Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook

• Anthony Bidulka, Home Fires Burn

• Giles Blunt, Bad Juliet

• Gail Bowen, The Solitary Friend

• Richard Chartrand, Bad Karma

• Lisa de Nikolits, Mad Dog and the Sea Dragon

• Joy Fielding, The Housekeeper

• Barbara Fradkin, Shipwrecked Souls

• Bruce Gates, Regan’s Ghost

• Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

• Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

• Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You

• Hannah Mary McKinnon, Only One Survives

• Liz Moore, The God of the Woods

• Liane Moriarty, Here One Moment

• Desmond P. Ryan, Dangerous Assumptions

• Colm Toibin, Brooklyn

• Colm Toibin, The Heather Blazing

• Colm Toibin, Nora Webster

• Colm Toibin, The Blackwater Lightship

• Angela van Breemen, Revenge is Not Enough

• Jacqueline Winspear, Leaving Everything Most Loved