Is it time for a road trip? Well, according to our booklist, yes!
Our 12 Must-Read Books of April 2025 list is filled with stories of exploration, travel, and searching for either the rock bottom of our current moment or (hopefully) something better for the future. Whether you’re looking for a modern fable, nonfiction that weaves personal and collective history with literary criticism, or an emotionally powerful work of fiction, there’s something to take your imagination to new destinations.
As we dive into spring, we hope you find something to take with you on your warmer days ahead!
Sour Cherry
By Natalia Theodoridou
Tin House Books
In this carefully nestled and interweaving tale, a mother tells a young lord who smells of soil and grows into a man who brings a plague with him wherever he goes. Haunting and harrowing, Sour Cherry explores the complicated cycles of abuse and the ghosts that linger in its wake. Natalia Theodoridou has written a fairytale for the ages, subverting the tale of Bluebeard to deconstruct the systems of gender, power, and the excuses people make for bad men. Sour Cherry is sure to be on our list of favorite books by the end of 2025.
The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
By Sarah Schulman
Thesis
Sarah Schulman—acclaimed writer, AIDS historian, and endowed chair in creative writing at Northwestern University—delivers a powerful call for action in The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity. Calling upon her work as a longtime social activist and critic of the Israeli war on Gaza, Schulman argues that to understand solidarity, we must recognize its inherent fantasies. True solidarity is not a dream of relief through bystander intervention or that intervention will come without costs, but instead deliberate and continual action toward a shared goal. The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity is the book we desperately need, delivered by an author who intimately understands the difficulties and possibilities of this important work.
When the Harvest Comes
By Denne Michele Norris
Random House
From Electric Literature Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris comes a vibrant debut about Davis, a young Black gay man who must confront his estrangement from his father and his painful past when he learns on his wedding day that his father has been in a terrible car accident. Risking his own happiness and future with his fiancée, Davis begins to unearth the trauma that begins to resurface in light of the news. Denne Michele Norris’s emotional insightfulness and astounding talent are on display in When the Harvest Comes, making this debut a can’t-miss in April.
The Last American Road Trip
By Sarah Kendzior
Flatiron Books
Nothing highlights the deep divisions of modern America quite like a road trip. In her latest essay collection, Sarah Kendzior explores the fall of American democracy through the lens of her trips with her family, including their pursuit to see every national park and their drives down Route 66. While the topic has been explored from many different angles in recent years, what The Last American Road Trip does better than most books is create a striking image of national decay. From struggling roadside spectacles to shuttered national parks, Sarah Kendzior shows readers where the fault lines lie.
To Save and To Destroy
By Viet Thanh Nguyen
Belknap Press
In To Save and To Destroy, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen explores the idea of being an outsider through a variety of lenses, including literary, historical, political, and personal. Originally delivered as the prestigious Norton Lectures, Nguyen’s essays carefully weave his own life and the story of his late mother’s mental illness and literary analysis of greats such as Ralph Ellison and Herman Melville to create a new model for a more radical solidarity with those devastated by imperialism. Both a gifted fiction writer and an astute literary critic, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s latest is a welcome addition to his catalogue of works.
Blood Wolf Moon
By Elise Paschen
Red Hen Press
In Elise Paschen’s sixth poetry collection, she explores her Osage heritage and grapples with the lingering traumas of “The Reign of Terror,” when outsiders murdered individual members of the Osage for their oil headrights. The poems in Blood Wolf Moon are lyrical time travelers, transporting readers through a long history of personal and collective loss and the transformation of land and home. Paschen’s work crackles with purpose, as she searches for identity and language to confront the history of violence.
Hellions
By Julia Elliott
Tin House Books
Hellions is a captivating collection that blendsbrings a blend of surreality and Southern gothic horror intoto every short story. In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript. In rural South Carolina, a girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over The Exorcist. Julia Elliott masterfully crafts these haunting tales, bringing both comedy and a dreadful sense of eeriness to every page.
Bad Nature
By Ariel Courage
Henry Holt and Co.
When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her fortieth birthday, she decides to abandon her life and drive to California to kill her estranged father. Traveling between five-star Midwestern hotels and cultish Southwestern compounds, she must reckon with her choice and question whether she wants to follow through with her audacious goal. Filled with rage and heart, Bad Nature is a fascinating mix of road-trip novel, revenge tale, and ecological lament.
Big Chief
By Jon Hickey
Simon & Schuster
Aspiring political fixer Mitch Caddo works alongside his childhood friend and tribal president Mack Beck to run the government of the Passage Rouge Nation and the tribe’s Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. But on the eve of Mack’s reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her aide Layla Beck—Mack’s estranged sister and Mitch’s former lover. Jon Hickey’s debut, Big Chief, is a gripping and twisting political intrigue story that details the search for ancestral and spiritual home and sovereignty in our current political moment.
The Perturbation of O
By Joseph G. Peterson
University of Iowa Press
The Perturbation of O tells the story of how a loser became a winner with the publication of his memoir and the chaotic aftermath that the book and an encounter with Oprah Winfrey have had on him and his memoir’s primary subject. Told mostly in a single conversation, Chicago author Joseph G. Peterson crafts a moving picture of the complications of fame, intimacy, and storytelling.
In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf
By Heather Christle
Algonquin Books
For lovers of Virginia Woolf and nonfiction, you don’t want to miss In the Rhododendrons. When Heather Christie realizes that she, her mother, and Virginia Woolf share a traumatic history, she begins to rewrite and intertwine each of their stories to find a more hopeful narrative and future she can live with. Christie ties together these three narratives like a finely built nest to illuminate key moments in each life. In the Rhododendrons has us wondering why every memoir doesn’t include more conversation about Virginia Woolf.
Exit Zero
By Marie-Helene Bertino
FSG Originals
Marie-Helene Bertino follows up her novel Beautyland with Exit Zero, which features twelve charming and strange stories about vampires, ghost girls, day-old peaches, and more. Bertino has cemented herself as a writer to watch in recent years, and Exit Zero continues this trend with even more luminous tales of haunting absurdity.
