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 ****
SHORTLISTED FOR WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
GUARDIAN SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR
THE TIMES SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR
'A masterful work that will challenge your views on the physical capabilities of all women' – Sue Anstiss, author
What happens when women run beyond the marathon—and refuse to stop? Ultra Women is a gripping, behind-the-scenes journey into the high-stakes world of female endurance, where athletes race across deserts, over mountains, and through the night for 50, 100, even 200 miles at a time. Blending intimate profiles with cutting-edge science, it reveals how women runners, swimmers and cyclists are smashing records, shattering stereotypes, and redefining what "strong" looks like at every age and stage of life.
Meet the mothers balancing midnight feeds with dawn training runs, the champions who learned to turn pain into data, and the late starters who discovered their prime years—post-40, post-menopause—on the trail. Along the way, you'll learn how mindset, fueling, hormones, and smart recovery converge to create the conditions for extraordinary performance.
Inside you'll discover:
- Trailblazing stories from iconic races and previously unsung heroines of the sport
- Science you can use on nutrition, pacing, heat/cold adaptation, and injury resilience
- The mental toolkit — from micro-goals to "embracing the suck" — that carries competitors past the breaking point
- Life-phase insights on training through periods, pregnancy, postpartum, peri- and post-menopause
- Practical checklists for first ultras, crew strategy, and race-day problem-solving
Whether you're a curious newcomer, a seasoned marathoner eyeing your first 50K, or a reader who loves true stories of grit, Ultra Women will leave you inspired—and equipped—to go further than you ever thought possible.
Perfect for fans of Born to Run, Good for a Girl, and Endure —and for anyone who believes the horizon is just a starting line.
Take the long way. Find your edge. Join the Ultra Women.
Reviews
A meticulous and occasionally startling study of how modern sport is still shaped by a male perspective, from media coverage to bra design to scientific research. A celebration of female bodies, female pioneers and female endurance– Jonathan Liew, Guardian Sports Book of the Year
This absorbing book, shortlisted for the 2025 William Hill sports book of the year, combines history, reportage, science and polemic. Most enjoyable of all are the mini-biographies of endurance athletes, such as the British fell-running champion Jasmin Paris, who can "push on and endure" like few others. – Jason Cowley. Sports Books of the Year, The Times
It was a joy to read from start to finish, beautifully written and incredibly engaging. A masterful work that will challenge your views on the physical capabilities of all women. The must-read sports book of 2025. – Sue Anstiss, author
A fascinating exploration of female ultra-distance sporting achievement – and a fitting tribute to those pioneers who blazed a trail for us all to follow. Jasmin Paris, ultrarunner
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
**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A searingly honest memoir from Dexys’ iconic frontman, one of the great mavericks and creative geniuses of British music.**
At home, the prayerful eight-year-old altar boy was planning to attend college to train to be a priest. Elsewhere, he was thieving, lying, swearing, fighting and rarely out of trouble.
In this astonishing memoir, Kevin takes us from the juvenile courts of his troubled teenage years to the early days of the New Romantic scene in the late ’70s. An unwavering passion for music and highly tuned sense of fashion and style ignited an unstoppable drive within him, compelling him down a path that led to his huge chart successes with Dexys Midnight Runners in the early 1980s. However, despite being celebrated as a creative genius, inner turmoil was never far away, and a terrifying series of self-sabotaging events were to follow – including a serious cocaine addiction – leaving him in the wilderness in the 1990s, bankrupt, living in a bedsit, on the dole.
Always resilient in the face of adversity, after a massive upheaval Kevin found his way back. He charts his return journey, from shocking audiences with his pioneering embrace of gender fluidity with My Beauty, right through to Dexys’ triumphant appearance at Glastonbury in 2024.
Vividly detailed, and with a truly rare degree of self-insight, this is Kevin's own, deeply personal account of an extraordinary life, raw and unvarnished. A remarkable memoir, as compelling and original as you would expect from one of the pioneering icons of music history.
Unknown authorUnknown authorEra-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 TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
The late 17th century saw the rise of a new phenomenon that would transform Britain forever: party politics.
Beginning with a furious dispute over whether to allow a Roman Catholic - James II - to become king, the division between Whig and Tory marked the chief political battlelines of a ferociously polarised country for several tumultuous generations.
The Rage of Party traces the thrilling story of how these two parties - one representing the established social forces of squire, church and monarchy; the other the rising forces of financial power and Protestant Dissent - settled the defining debates of the age, culminating in a dramatic fight to the death over peace, piety and the Protestant Succession in the age of Queen Anne. Their bitter disputes over religion, economics and the constitution profoundly influenced many of the forces and institutions that shaped the modern world, ranging from the City of London and the Bank of England to the Union between England and Scotland and the British Empire.
From vicious pamphlet wars and some of history's most corrupt and riotous elections through a revolution, multiple assassination attempts and enough scandals to make even the most louche modern politician blush, this brilliantly researched book shows how a motley crew of rakes, hypocrites, cunning tricksters and scheming clergymen engaged in not only a political confrontation that threatened a second civil war, but a culture war that still finds echoes in 21st-century Britain.
'This is a lucid and exciting account of high and low politics in the crucial years of Whig and Tory battles following the Glorious Revolution, when Great Britain was created, and a new world of money, war and empire dawned. George Owers grippingly recounts the culture wars, paranoia, self-seeking and skulduggery that are "both recognisable and strange". Recognizable because "we are all still, in our heart of hearts, either Whig or Tory", and we are still grappling with their legacy' - Robert Tombs, author of The English and their History
'This book is a delight. Written with vivacity and veracity it sheds light on the miracle of English party politics' - Maurice Glasman
'We tend to think of our current age as uniquely fractious but as George Owers shows in his engrossing new book, it is a kindergarten compared to the "Rage of Party'' this country experienced in the late seventeen and early eighteenth centuries. The story he tells so vividly has it all: political divisions, religious strife, immigration controversies, fake news, arguments over foreign policy, Anglo-Scottish tensions - polarisation all round!' - Brendan Simms, author of Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present
'A highly readable account of the beginnings of the party system in Britain, with insights that are relevant for understanding of politics in any era. George Owers's vivid recreation of the conflict of Whigs and Tories illuminates what was a crucial period in the rise of Britain as a major European and global power' - David Hayton, editor of The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1690-1715
'Today's party politics absorbs us. When did British party politics begin and how? George Owers's book provides a compelling analysis, brilliantly interweaving vivid vignettes into a masterly narrative' - Mark Goldie, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Cambridge
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...
