This list of favourites I read in 2025 should help light the way to some fabulous holiday reading for you.

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst – Actor Dave Win recreates episodes from his life as a gay, mixed-race person. Dave’s tenderest portrait is of his mother Avril, a seamstress, who brought him up alone in an English market town. This novel glows!

Time of the Child by Niall Williams – An abandoned baby is taken to the doctor’s surgery in Faha where it is showered with his daughter’s love. The doctor meddles, then recognises his hubris, but will the baby be exiled? Extraordinary writing.

Cairn by Kathleen Jamie – Jamie writes beautifully about landscape, ecology and ethics. She doesn’t preach but she does show her leanings. A slim volume of gems: ‘But a quartz pebble. Volcano spit. Stuff of the earth. A stone like a blind seer’s eye.’

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller – In December 1962, cottages in the West Country hold local doctor Eric Parry and his pregnant wife and Rita Simmons and her dairy farmer husband. Even before the blizzard hits, they’re faltering. Brilliant.

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks – Three years after the sudden death of her husband, Brooks booked a flight to remote Flinders Island off the coast of Tasmania to give herself time to mourn. She also wrote this heartrending and beautiful memoir.

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo – ‘Twelve very different people, mostly black and female, more than a hundred years of change, and one sweeping, vibrant, glorious portrait of contemporary Britain.’ Big, bold and breathtaking.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy – Dominic and his three children are living on a remote island, when a woman washes ashore. As storms gather, will they shut each other out or work together to protect the world’s last seed bank? Dazzling.

Snow Road Station by Elizabeth Hay – Lulu escapes to Snow Road Station in rural Ontario having blanked her lines on stage in a Beckett play. In her 60s, and making maple syrup with and near her friend Nan, she wonders if she’s a has-been? Perfect.

Flashlight by Susan Choi – The night Louisa’s father disappeared he was holding a flashlight. North Korean history filters through the tales of Louisa, her father and mother, as do the lies and silences that shape families and prop up empires. Great.

Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell – If you want to know how hard it is for a young mother to take her two children and leave her coercively controlling husband, this is the novel. Ireland’s draconian laws and housing crisis add difficulty. Unforgettable.

Looking Back: A Book of Memories by Lois Lowry – Lowry is perspicacious, funny, gentle and compassionate. I quote: ‘There would be no more wars if everyone just got into a giant bathtub together and played with the soap.’ A wonderful autobiography.

Also great: Dark Mode by Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton, Obit by Victoria Chang, Unsettled by Kate Grenville, Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, Chameleon by Robert Dessaix, The Slip: Stories by Miriam Webster, Walking Ghosts by Mary O’Donnell, Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton, Place of Tides by James Redbank, Service by Sarah Gilmartin, Nightingale by Laura Elvery.

Second tier favourites: Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides by Adam Nicolson, The Registrar by Neela Janakiramanan, The Art Thief by Michael Finkel, Are You Somebody? by Nuala O’Faolain, Luster by Raven Leilani, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, Consolation of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson, Seasons on Harris by David Yeadon, Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse, Death in Black and White by SG Bryant, Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser, The Last Summer in Ireland by Noelle Harrison.