Books I've Read: Q3 2025

Books lined up, pages facing the camera, spines away.

In the order I turned the last page and closed the book, here’s a list of the books I finished reading in the third quarter of 2025:

  1. Eldorado Drive, by Megan Abbott

  2. Flood, by Andrew Vachss

  3. True Grit, by Charles Portis

  4. The Compound, by Aisling Rawle

  5. Circular Motion, by Alex Foster

  6. Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney

  7. Rainbow Black, by Maggie Thrash

  8. No Gods, No Monsters, by Cadwell Turnbull

  9. Conclave, by Robert Harris

  10. A Short Stay in Hell, by Steven L. Peck

  11. The Bulgarian Training Manual, by Ruth Bonapace

  12. Dark Neon & Dirt, by Thomas Trang

  13. The Tusks of Extinction, by Ray Nayler

  14. River East, River West, by Aube Rey Lescure

  15. Have You Eaten?, by Sarah Gailey

  16. The Test, by Sylvain Neuvel

  17. The Usual Desire to Kill, by Camilla Barnes

  18. Rosewater, by Tade Thompson

  19. Sky Daddy, by Kate Folk

  20. The Deepest Fake, by Daniel Kalla

  21. The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray, by Walter Mosley

  22. One Yellow Eye, by Leigh Radford

  23. Good Material, by Dolly Alderton

  24. Artificial Wisdom, by Thomas R. Weaver

  25. Dwelling, by Emily Hunt Kivel

  26. Steering the Craft, by Ursula K. LeGuin

  27. This is the Year You Write Your Novel, by Walter Mosley

  28. Elements of Fiction, by Walter Mosley

  29. Out, by Natsuo Kirino

  30. Monstres en Cavale, by Cloé Mehdi (French language edition)

  31. Where I End, by Sophie White

  32. Awakened, by Laura Elliott

  33. We Like It Cherry, by Jacy Morris

  34. The Paradox Hotel, by Rob Hart

  35. House of Idyll, by Delilah S. Dawson

  36. Coffin Moon, by Keith Rosson

  37. The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), by Rabih Alameddine

  38. Crooks, by Lou Berney

  39. The Shining, by Stephen King

  40. It All Felt Impossible, by Tom McAllister

  41. They Never Learn, by Layne Fargo

  42. The Forest for the Trees, by Betsy Lerner

I bold the books that particularly stood out to me and lingered long after the last page, though I really enjoyed many of the titles I didn’t bold. Ask away if you want to talk through whether you should read one of these titles, bolded and unbolded. And if you’ve read one of these and want to discuss, I’m always game for that.

At the start of the year, I published a list of the best books I read in 2024. Via that list, you can find my lists of my favorite books each year for all the years I’ve published a list.

To check out what I read in 2025’s previous quarters, you’ll find the links to the lists below:

Happy reading!