Books I've Read: Q4 2025
In order of roughly the date I finished reading them, here’s the list of books I read in the fourth quarter of 2025:
Strega, by Andrew Vachss
One of Us, by Dan Chaon
The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre, by Philip Fracassi
Leverage, by Amran Gowani
The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean
Vigilance, by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans
The Road to Tender Hearts, by Annie Hartnett
Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King
Devil Was Fine, by John Vercher
Why I Love Horror, edited by Becky Siegel Spratford
Little Secrets, by Jennifer Hillier
Show Don’t Tell, by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Red Grove, by Tessa Fontaine
John Woman, by Walter Mosley
The Night that Finds Us All, by John Hornor Jacobs
The Eyes are the Best Part, by Monika Kim
Same as It Ever Was, by Claire Lombardo
Wild Town, by Jim Thompson
The Troupe, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, by Thomas Ha
The Passengers, by John Marrs
Blood Like Ours, by Stuart Neville
The Mad Wife, by Meagan Church
Writing as a Way of Life: A Book about Art, Craft, and Devotion, by Brian Morton
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after which Everything was Different, by Chuck Palaniuk
Willful Creatures, by Aimee Bender
The Long Low Whistle, by Laurel Hightower
We Need to Do Something, by Max Booth III
Stay Awake, by Megan Goldin
Creep, by Jennifer Hillier
The Auctioneer, by Joan Samson
Action: The Art of Excitement for Screen, Page, and Game, by Robert McKee
The One, John Marrs
Pet Sematary, by Stephen King
The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing, by Richard Hugo
Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes, by James Parker
I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger
The Artisan Author: The Low-Stress, High-Quality, Fan-Focused Approach to Escaping the Publishing Rat Race, by Johnny B. Truant
Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
Jonah of Olympic, by Nat Weaver
The Elementals, by Michael McDowell
The Theory of Bastards, by Audrey Schulman
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King
Foe, by Iain Reid
Lucky Seed, Justinian Huang
The Minders, by John Marrs
The White Hot, by Quiara Alegría Hudes
Stein on Writing, by Sol Stein
Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Aura, by Carlos Fuentes
The Living and the Dead, by Christoffer Carlsson
How to Grow a Novel, by Sol Stein
Blackwater (I): The Flood, by Michael McDowell
The Ghostwriter, by Julie Clark
The Best of Michael Swanwick, Volume One, by Michael Swanwick
Pomegranate, by Helen Elaine Lee
Shitshow, by Chris Panatier
Hollow Spaces, by Victor Suthammanont
When News Breaks: A Memoir of Love and War, by Carol Lin
As always, I’ve bolded the books that stuck with me the most this reading quarter, but that by no means indicates that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the nonbolded titles. And also as always, ask me if you want to know about whether any of these books would be good reads for you. In my college days, I worked as a bookseller; I love making personalized recommendations.
To see what I read earlier in the year, here are links to the prior three quarters:
You can also take a look at the best books I read in 2024 ahead of the post I’ll put together for 2025.
And on that note, now to look back over all four quarters of 2025 and put together my list of the best of the best books I read in 2025. Always a bear of a task to pick favorites!