Okay, yes, we already ran a list of the best books we read in 2025 last week. But here’s the thing: we left a ton of incredible books out, which pains us to do, so we’re offering another “best of 2025” list. Introducing the best debuts we read in 2025.
No Offense: A Memoir in Essays
By Jackie Domenus
ELJ Editions
Dealing with their coming out in 2014, Jackie Domenus’s No Offense: A Memoir in Essays blends personal experience with cultural critique to examine messages they received, both in their personal life and from the collective, about queer and trans lives from the 1990s to the present day. These essays are incredibly raw and honest, and, at a time when queer and trans lives continue to be under constant attack, this book is urgent and important.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Waterline
By Aram Mrjoian
HarperVia
I’m a sucker for well-told family sagas and Aram Mrjoian’s Waterline is a notable addition to the canon. Dealing with grief, but also perseverance, this beautiful story about an Armenian family is moving, heartfelt, and deeply reflective.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Ravishing
By Eshani Surya
Roxane Gay Books
I tend to shy away from science fiction for a variety of reasons, but I’m so glad I didn’t miss Eshani Surya’s Ravishing. It’s a gripping, surreal story that deals with capitalism, the beauty industry, desire, and chronic illness. I couldn’t put it down.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Pan
By Michael Clune
Penguin Press
This unique coming-of-age novel is a splatter pattern of images and light and color literally unlike anything I’ve ever read. Language in Clune’s writing is malleable, formable, turn-able, twistable, and the result is writing so unexpectedly fresh and original, it was hard for me to put this book down. Not because the plot was riveting, but just because I couldn’t wait to see what new joys the next sentence would bring. — Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
Leave: A Postpartum Account
By Shayne Terry
Autofocus Books
Shayne Terry’s Leave: A Postpartum Account tells of her heinous postpartum experience involving a painful obstetric anal sphincter injury. But it’s more than a birth story: it’s a profound and stunning meditation on death, our broken healthcare system, care, pain, intergenerational trauma, and family leave. This is a book that demands attention, reflection, and revisiting. Each time I do, I see something more. — Rachel León, Managing Director
If the Dead Belong Here
By Carson Faust
Viking
Carson Faust’s If the Dead Belong Here, is a dazzling novel that deserves to be on everyone’s TBR. It deals with the disappearance of six-year-old Laurel, and how her family navigates the aftermath of her loss, offering a moving meditation on grief and what it means to be haunted. (Yes, there are ghosts, and the novel is written with such gorgeous prose!) — Rachel León, Managing Director
Sky Daddy
By Kate Folk
Random House
Just when you thought there was nothing new under the sun in publishing, we get this incredible debut novel about a woman who is sexually attracted to planes. Folk really commits to the bit here, and makes it work all the way through—no small feat.
—Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women
By Christina Rivera
Curbstone Press
Christina Rivera’s essay collection, My Oceans: Essays of Water, Whales, and Women explores caring and mothering, but also our interconnection with the natural world. It deals with climate science, ecology, and our collective future and is so astute and moving. — Rachel León, Managing Director
Frontier: A Memoir & A Ghost Story
By Erica Stern
Barrelhouse Inc.
Erica Stern’s Frontier: A Memoir & A Ghost Story is a fascinating account that blends fiction, memoir, and research to portray the precarious landscape of childbirth, spanning centuries. Starting in a delivery room in Chicago and going back in time to the Wild West, this inventive and haunting hybrid memoir offers a chilling look at childbirth both in the present and past. It’s essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the industrialized birth industry.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Crawl: Stories
By Max Delsohn
Graywolf Press
A dazzling collection of short stories about transmasculine men in mid-2010s Seattle that is well-observed, emotionally astute, and often downright hilarious.
—Ruby Rosenthal, Social Media Manager
Mothers and Other Fictional Characters
By Nicole Graev Lipson
Chronicle Prism
These essays explore the maiden, mother, and crone archetypes, focusing primarily on the mother—Graev Lipson’s own, yes, but largely, her role and experiences with motherhood. This book says a lot, but mostly, it’s about how the role of motherhood does not define a woman—certainly not “a thinker who mothers” (a much more apt description than the old “a mother who thinks”). — Rachel León, Managing Director
Kaplan’s Plot
By Jason Diamond
Flatiron Books
Kaplan’s Plot is an absolute joy to read, and Jason Diamond brings so much heart and humor to this story about a man who begins to uncover his family story after reluctantly returning home to Chicago. The novel combines a powerful story about coming to and surviving in America and a tale about how sad the American dream has become in our contemporary times. It’s a fast read with a ton to chew on throughout! — Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Songs of No Provenance
By Lydi Conklin
Catapult
This novel is about an indie folk singer who flees to teach songwriting at an art camp after doing something sexual on stage she’s quite certain will get her cancelled, hitting that sweet spot of being character-driven, yet suspenseful. Songs of No Provenance dives into issues of identity, queerbaiting and appropriation, kink, fame, secrecy, art making, and more. — Rachel León, Managing Director
Great Disasters
By Grady Chambers
Tin House
I was so deeply moved by Grady Chambers’s debut. Great Disasters is an insightful and often elegiac story about a group of young men coming of age during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the bloodthirsty, warmongering culture that spread throughout the country at that time. Chambers traces tenderness in the lives of his characters even at their most fraught moments. This is an unabashedly bighearted novel in the best way. — Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Big Chief
By Jon Hickey
Simon & Schuster
I love a humorous political novel, and time and time again Big Chief delivers. The novel is about a presidential race for the Passage Rouge Nation, and Hickey makes the wise choice to make his main character Mitch Caddo the president’s “political fixer.” He’s intimately close to power but never quite has his hands on it, with all the responsibility and little of the praise. Big Chief offers plenty of laughs, but underneath the chaos of a combustible campaign lies an astute exploration of power, politics, and sovereignty. — Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Deep Cuts
By Holly Brickley
Crown
This story about collaboration, creativity, inspiration and young love is just an absolute delight. But the strength of this debut is how astutely Brickley writes about music—she is able to completely deconstruct a song and make us understand why it works (or doesn’t). The novel is also of such a specific time (the early 2000s) that the nostalgia is fierce! —Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
When the Harvest Comes
By Denne Michele Norris
Random House
When the Harvest Comes is a stunning, tender novel about the complications of family, love, trauma, and forgiveness. Weaving through time and written with multiple POVs and beautiful prose, this novel is one of the best I read this year, debut or not. — Rachel León, Managing Director
Hot Girls With Balls
By Benedict Nguyễn
Catapult
Hot Girls With Balls is such a funny and sharp satire that follows Six and Green, two Asian American trans women and stars of the men’s professional volleyball league. Together, they must navigate love, competitiveness, and a growing base of fans and transphobic critics. Nguyễn’s debut is a fantastic takedown of capitalism, social media, and conservative politics. — Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
The El
By Theodore C. Val Alst Jr.
Vintage
Plot is secondary to vibes in this 2025 CHIRBy Award for Fiction-winning novel set over the course of a single day in August 1979. This is a novel about the sounds and sights and smells of a city the author deeply loves. And it’s about how stories that don’t usually get told NEED to be told. —Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
Woodworking by Emily Stm James