The best books of 2025 — The Times Critics’ Picks
The major new book from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale
'She's taken our times and made us wise to them' ALI SMITH
'She's Margaret Atwood and she can do anything' ANN PATCHETT
'She saw it all coming' TIME
'The outstanding novelist of our age' **SUNDAY TIMES
Immerse yourself in the creative universe of Margaret Atwood for a riot of life, art and everything in between:** the greatest writer of our time tells her own story
Raised by scientifically minded parents, Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec: a vast playground for her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother. It was an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful.
From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would become Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.
**As she explores her past, Atwood reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art – and the workings of one of our boldest imaginations.
** THE ULTIMATE GIFT FOR ALL THE MARGARET ATWOOD FANS IN YOUR LIFE ****
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO WILD SWANS, THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION
A Book of the Year in The Times; Daily Telegraph; Financial Times and Waterstones
'A must-read … magnificent’ DAILY TELEGRAPH *****
'Beautiful and moving' ELIF SHAFAK, OBSERVER
Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation, an epic personal history of Jung, her mother and grandmother – ‘three daughters of China’. The book opens in 1909 with her grandmother’s birth – and foot-binding – when China was under the last emperor, moving through Mao Zedong’s rule, especially the Cultural Revolution during which Jung’s parents were subjected to horrendous ordeals because of their courage. It finishes in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping officially ended the Mao era and started the ‘reforms’. Jung, at that propitious juncture, became one of the first Chinese to leave Communist China for the West.
Nearly half a century on, China has risen from a decrepit and isolated state to a global power, the challenger to the United States’ dominant position in the world. Through those decades, Jung’s life has been intimately entwined with her native land. Her experiences dealing with the regime in those years were rich and revealing – especially so because all her books were (and are) banned.
Fly, Wild Swans is the follow-up to Wild Swans and brings the story of Jung’s family – along with that of China – up to date. The book is in many ways Jung’s love letter to her mother. It is inevitably also about her grandmother and father, both of whom died tragically in the Cultural Revolution but are often recalled in this book. In fact, the past is never far away in Jung’s subsequent life. It has shaped her, and moulded the present China, and what’s more, it promises to herald the future.
China is now at another watershed moment with the era of Chairman Xi Jinping greatly affecting the lives of Jung and her mother. Fly, Wild Swans is Jung’s heartfelt response to that experience, and a book filled with drama, love, curiosity and incredible history – both personal and global. Ultimately uplifting, told in Jung’s clear, honest and compelling voice, it is memoir writing at its best.
'Profoundly revealing as a portrait both of a family and of the deeper traumas that lie at the heart of modern China' RORY STEWART
'Another wonder book from Jung Chang…I am quite blown away by it' LADY ANTONIA FRASER
Era-defining obituaries of iconic film stars
**The long-awaited and highly anticipated conclusion to Philip Pullman’s bestselling The Book of Dust sequence . . .
‘A masterpiece for all eternity… Powerful, profound and utterly unforgettable: a stunning trilogy conclusion.’** - The Telegraph
‘Pullman’s uncanny ability to conjure place is once again in full evidence . . . And when we reach it, the novel’s final showdown is a fantastically nail-biting ride.’ - The Guardian
‘But for all its intricate interweavings of alchemy and folk tales, ballads and poetry, the book has the pacing of a thriller.’ - The Times
‘Lyra: what will you do when you find this place in the desert, the opening to the world of the roses?’
‘Defend it,’ Lyra said. ‘Die defending it.’
When readers left Lyra in The Secret Commonwealth she was alone, in the ruins of a deserted city. Pantalaimon had run from her – part of himself – in search of her imagination, which he believed she had lost. Lyra travelled across the world from her Oxford home in search of her dæmon. And Malcolm, loyal Malcolm, too journeyed far from home, towards the Silk Roads in search of Lyra . . .
In The Rose Field, their quests converge in the most dangerous, breathtaking and world-changing ways. They must take help from spies and thieves, gryphons and witches, old friends and new, learning all the while the depth and surprising truths of the alethiometer. All around them, the world is aflame – made terrifying by fear, power and greed.
As they move East, towards the red building that will reunite them and give them answers – on Dust, on the special roses, on imagination – so too does the Magisterium, at war against all that Lyra holds dear.
**Marking thirty years since the world was first introduced to Pullman’s remarkable heroine Lyra Belacqua in Northern Lights, The Rose Field is the culmination of the cultural phenomenon of The Book of Dust and *His Dark Materials.
'Ablaze with light and life . . . To read Pullman is to experience the world refreshed, aglow, in technicolour'*** - The Independent
The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s (SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2025)
The Times critics have selected the most outstanding books of 2025 — a carefully curated list of novels, histories, memoirs, biographies and standout non-fiction. These titles reflect the year’s most talked-about ideas, unforgettable storytelling and exceptional writing, chosen by one of Britain’s m...
