"With more than 200 fiction titles in our annual Books We Love guide, it's tough to narrow our 2025 favorites down into one single-digit list. But there are always a few standouts, and in the picks below you'll find a little bit of everything that we enjoyed this year: romance, fantasy and sci-fi, oh my! Curious about the rest of our fiction recommendations? Head to the full Books We Love site to browse hundreds of selections from 2025, and thousands from years past."
"This thrilling fictional portrayal of NASA's space shuttle program in the 1980s doesn't miss. It opens with Joan in Mission Control managing a catastrophe on the shuttle. Then readers flash back almost five years to learn how each of the astronauts earned their place on the mission. The novel is immediately complex, compelling and high stakes. I recommend listening on audiobook so readers don't destroy a paper copy with tears. Themes include sexism in the workplace, LGBTQ relationships and found family."
"Archivist and mother Sara T. Hussein gets detained at an airport. Her crime? A dream deemed too high risk by an AI algorithm. Writing incisively, Laila Lalami brilliantly builds a world where a pre-crime system collides with surveillance capitalism. With the novel's compelling cast of characters and endless parallels to today, I found The Dream Hotel instructive for navigating a society beset by mass surveillance where the only escape can be found in shouldering risk together."
A curated single-digit selection highlights standout fiction across genres including romance, fantasy, and science fiction. Atmosphere portrays NASA's 1980s space shuttle program through Joan in Mission Control, using flashbacks to reveal astronaut backstories and addressing sexism, LGBTQ relationships, and found family. The Dream Hotel follows archivist Sara T. Hussein, detained for a high-risk dream under an AI pre-crime system, and examines surveillance capitalism and collective risk-sharing. Inheriting The Everlasting delivers razor-sharp emotional impact designed to move readers deeply and provoke catharsis. Some recommendations emphasize audiobook listening to enhance emotional experience.
Read at www.npr.org
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