Favorite reads of 2025 by Eric Beetner

It’s that time of year when I realize I need to do a better job of keeping track of what I read in any given year. I can’t give you a specific number, but I read well over 100 books this year. Here are some favorites:

WHAT ABOUT THE BODIES - Ken Jaworowski

Probably my book of the year. Definitely the one that I knew almost nothing about and sat in awe as it blew me away with every page. I immediately went out and bought Jaworowski’s previous debut novel, Small Town Sins. This book is everything I love about crime fiction.

YOU WILL NEVER SEE ME - Jake Hinkson

I love Jake Hinkson’s writing like few other authors. This one took a few left turns I had no idea were coming. It’s dark, doesn’t care if you like the characters or not, and will surprise you at every turn. Trust me, you have no idea what this book really is.

THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING - Jon McGoran

Few writers create believable near-future worlds like Jon McGoran. In The Price Of Everything he wraps a breakneck thriller plot in just enough sci-fi and cyberpunk ornaments that you get something completely new. And none of it feels forced or like he has to do “world-building” because he’s writing about our world here and now, but with a few tiny augmentations to add to the thrills.

THE LENGTH OF DAYS - Lynn Kostoff

Like WHAT ABOUT THE BODIES, this novel balances multiple storylines that intersect in interesting ways. Any great book is all about characters, and this one has some great ones. Seeing how it all intertwines is a fascinating process and kept me glued to the pages. A stellar crime novel.

SAINT OF THE NARROWS STREET - William Boyle

Boyle is one of contemporary Noir’s best practitioners and his new novel is his epic. Again, character takes center stage along with location, as in all of Boyle’s work. Epic is code for long and it is a slow burn, but something about Boyle’s prose just goes down so easy for me. He makes you ache and long with the characters. He makes you smell and hear the Brooklyn on the page. When someone talks of “literary crime novels” this is what they mean.

THE GALLERY ASSISTANT - Kate Belli

I don't read a ton of traditional mysteries, but when I come across one that keeps my interest and is rooted in a world I find fascinating (in this case the high end art world) I can see the appeal. It's not new to have a character missing pieces of the night before, but Belli has crafted a main character who is deliciously flawed and increasingly annoyed at herself for being an unreliable narrator in her own life and the mystery she has unwillingly been thrust into as a result. This one is a winner for trad mystery fans.

GO F*CK YOURSELF - Lawrence Allan

The Jimmy Cooper series continues in this book 3 and Jimmy is just the funny, misanthropic, trainwreck of a P.I. you gotta love. Skewering Los Angeles and the entertainment biz while keeping the action and the chuckles come at you fast, Lawrence Allan's series is just the right pick when you want something fun to read. Ok, fine, it's less than cozy as the title might suggest, but even us tough guys need to laugh now and then.

It was a great for Westerns. I read some really great ones like:

LUCKY RED - Claudia Cravens

A revisionist western that is sumptuously written and features a main character I loved maybe more than any other this year. It’s forward and progressive, pushing the women to the front of an old west story, but doesn’t skimp on action, grit and the things that make us love westerns. Superb!

HIRED GUNS & NO HALLOWED GROUND - Steve Hockensmith

Hockensmith already earned his western bona fides with his Holmes On The Range series, and his launch of a new series kicks off in rollicking fashion with these two tales. His trademark wit is there in spades and the action comes fast and furious. A great entry into the western genre.

A SHORT ROPE FOR A TALL MAN & DEAD MAN’S TRAIL - Nate Morgan

Nate Morgan is a pen name for Victor Gischler, who has long been one of my favorite crime writers. These two novels are stellar western tales written with wit, pace and never skimping on a good plot turn. For some reason, the publisher mixed up the order of the two novels so I read book 2 first, but it didn’t make much difference. They’re both great in any order.

In other off-genre reading for me, I devoured five books from humorist Simon Rich, all on audio. Rich reads most of his own work, but John Mulaney read Glory Days and brought an extra something to it. Rich is so damn funny, but also an endlessly creative and inventive writer that these short stories (and one novel, Miracle Workers) are like candy filled with crack cocaine. I think there is no finer humor writer working today.

If you are new to his work, start with Glory Days or Man Seeking Woman. 

 

OFF-ROAD YEAR’S-END RECOMMENDATIONS

 

2025 was a year when the news cycle felt like a car alarm that wouldn’t shut up. During Covid and Trump 1.0, Murder, She Wrote offered refuge—Angela Lansbury restored moral order with a raised eyebrow. Trump 2.0 has been less cozy: Checks and Balances under strain, Far Right movements worldwide, and a lingering suspicion that something odd is in the drinking water.

The upside: it’s been my most productive year as a writer. I wrote to be constructive, not destructive. And along the way I found a handful of books and films that cut through the noise—crime fiction with teeth, nonfiction that reminds us history loves reruns, and movies whose literary roots make them doubly satisfying.

Think of these as clarity, escape, or—at the very least—a well-timed jolt to the system.

 

CRIME FICTION

 

1. Crimson Tide — Bruce Robert Coffin
A strong launch for a new series and a sharp contrast to Coffin’s Byron books. Book two arrives in January, book three next August—always a comforting thing to know.

2. Knave of Diamonds — Laurie R. King
The latest Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes novel introduces Mary’s Uncle Jake, whose past is a little… flexible. Watching him and Holmes circle each other, with Mary in the middle, is pure pleasure.

3. The Thursday Murder Club — Richard Osman
Retirees, cold cases, and wit sharp enough to leave a mark—proof that menace doesn’t retire. Now a Netflix film, making this a two-for-one recommendation.

4. Slow Horses — Mick Herron
The misfit spies of Slough House are equal parts tragic, hilarious, and terrifyingly plausible. Herron writes intelligence-world satire with a scalpel. Also an excellent Apple series.

5. The Silver Book — Olivia Laing

Queer love story, noir thriller set in Venice 1974, months before the murder of poet and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini. 

 

NONFICTION

 

5. The Age of Acrimony — Jon Grinspan
Nineteenth-century America was a carnival of political violence, election fraud, and institutional brinkmanship. Grinspan gently reminds us that history doesn’t repeat itself—but it does recognize familiar tricks.

6. The Outsider — Frederick Forsyth
Forsyth’s memoir proves the line between journalism, espionage, and crime fiction has always been thinner than we pretend. Read alongside le Carré’s The Pigeon Tunnel for a study in contrasts: le Carré broods; Forsyth shrugs, lights a cigarette, and keeps moving—passport already stamped.

7. A Resistance History of the United States — Tad Stoermer (June 2026)
From abolitionists to labor radicals to modern whistleblowers, Stoermer maps a lineage of resistance to abusive power. Not out yet, but worth saving to your Wish List.

 

FILMS INSPIRED BY BOOKS

(The two-for-one category: watch the movie, know the book)

 

8. The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)
Adapted from Eduardo Sacheri’s La pregunta de sus ojos. A noir romance spirals around justice, obsession, and wounds that outlive their explanations.

9. Killing Them Softly (2012)
From George V. Higgins’s Cogan’s Trade. A critique of capitalism delivered with Higgins’s trademark dialogue—no wasted words, no mercy.

10. Il conformista / The Conformist (1970)
From Alberto Moravia’s novel. A dazzling psychological thriller about the seduction of authoritarianism—gorgeously composed and disturbingly timeless.

 

BONUS HOLIDAY PICK

 

11. Spirit of Steamboat — Craig Johnson
A Christmas tale with a mystery engine: a blizzard, a WWII bomber, a desperate medical flight, and a story that earns its sentiment without a drop of sap. A perfect fireside read.

 

My Top 5 Reads of 2025

Tell us about your favorite reads of the year

 Well, I thought you’d never ask.

Here we are knocking on the door of 2026 and what a year it’s been. The news has been a horror show since January 2025, and sadly, unless my wee prayers are answered, 2026 looks to be much of the same. But through all the ugliness this timeline has spewed there have remained great books, and I for one am thankful for it.

It’s always been my habit to read when I find myself unable to write, and 2025, quite honestly, left me struggling to write more often than I care to think about. It could have been the new job, that turned out to be a far bigger job than I anticipated. It could have been the constant cycle of news that started as bad and somehow morphed into a never-ending cycle of hold my beer. I don’t know, but I am grateful to have had my constant besties right by my side, or rather in my book-bag, purse, or pocket, every step of the way. They did their job, keeping me sane, for the most part. I could probably list at least twelve books, one per month, fairly easily, but I’ll spare you all and stick with my top 5.

Number five was a new author for me, Faye Snowden, A Killing Rain. I picked this book up because I kept hearing it was good read. Turns out that was the understatement of the year. A former homicide detective with a serial killer father, returns home to a small Louisiana town after being fired, only to have her nephew kidnapped by a serial killer. I was hooked from the very first page. The descriptions were so well done, I could feel the humidity in the Louisiana air. I fell in love with the main character, Raven, and hated everyone who came for her. There were no slow parts. I gobbled this book up in less than a week and was so grateful that it is a series. This may have been my first read with this author but you can best believe, she’ll be a staple in my collection from now on.

 Number four was a story by my all-time favorite writer, Stephen King, Life of Chuck. It’s a story that I read in one day and have not been able to get out of my head since. Imagine if your whole life and everything around you were a product of your thoughts and experiences and when you die, it all goes with you. Whoa! Has old SK figured out the meaning of life and offered it up to us in the form of a novella? Maybe. Seems to make as much sense as anything else. It may take me another year to grasp the meaning of this story, or a lifetime. Something tells me I’ll be reading this one a few more times until my own lights go out.

 Number three on my list was Trouble in Queenstown by Delia Pitts. This one had everything I love. An imperfect bad-ass heroine, like really bad-ass. She’s sexy, she’s smart, and takes no crap from anybody. But with so much heart you can’t help but to root for her every step of the way. I love a good whodunit, especially when you’re never really sure who the guilty party is. I won’t tell. But I will say, you have to use all your willpower to stop yourself from peeking at the end. Don’t! You wouldn’t want to ruin this ride. It’s a great mystery, with a great leading character with a group of misfit friends that I look forward to following.

 Number two was another one of those reads that my thoughts return to often, Cheryl Head’s, Time’s Undoing. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys great storytelling, especially if you love history. A young reporter from Detroit, MI, decides to go down south to research the murder of her great-grandfather that occurred in 1929, Alabama. This story unfurled slowly, beautifully, like a movie in my head. Each character was so well developed they felt as real as a friend. I cried at their pain and celebrated their triumphs and grinned right along with them at each hint of success. This book had it all, love, loss, joy and pain. With each word I read, I found myself hoping for a different outcome even though I knew it wasn’t possible. The story itself was centered around tragedy, but the telling of it was all about strength, pride, and resilience. Oh, and there was even a little sprinkle of magic. I think we can all use that these days.

My favorite read of the year was an Indie read called What Would Rose Do, by Melissa Hintz. What would you do if the person you loved the most, your twin sister, had a life-threatening medical issue, but no means to seek treatment. Would you let her assume your identity to seek treatment and save her life? Yes? What if she dies leaving you trapped in her life? This is the premise for this story. And what a story it was. So many unexpected twists and turns and so much heart. I found myself laughing one minute and crying the next. Each character, good or bad will leave an imprint on your heart. And you’ll think of them long after you close the book. Maybe I’d still let my twin use my health insurance if it came to that, but boy would I think about it an extra second or two.

 All five of these books are available for purchase. If you’ve not read them, I am happily recommending you add them to your TBR list. Thanks to all the incredible authors, I’ll never finish my TBR list, but I’m happy to keep trying. Bring on 2026!

Some Great Books I’ve Read Recently from James W. Ziskin

Some Great Books I’ve Read Recently

Time to propose some great reads from the past year. Click on the book covers for the links. Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments section. And go buy some books!

NON-FICTION — In alphabetical order by author

In what can only be described as a fortuitous coincidence, the first two books on my list were written by siblings. I’ve known brother and sister Jon and Tina for a long time. Tina for about sixty years, and Jon a couple fewer, since he was born later. Our two families were as close as could be, and I think of the Glucks as cousins more than simply friends. Anyway, here are their books, both of which came out this year. I strongly recommend both.

Jonathan Gluck, An Exercise in Uncertainty

Honest, informative, intelligent, emotional, and gripping. Humorous, at times, as well. An extremely human account of living with a terrifying disease.

Tina Henderson, Centered

A lot of wisdom in this wonderful little book. An antidote for self-doubt and negativity. Perfect advice for all, but especially for young people.

Stephen King, On Writing

I don’t really need to tell writers how important it is to read this book, do I? An entertaining master class for anyone who wants to—has to—write.

Keith Raffel, The Raffel Ticket

Keith Raffel is a super writer and a pretty smart guy. He’s a syndicated newspaper columnist and his latest book, THE RAFFEL TICKET, is a collection of essays on the state of the world and all its warts. But Keith also writes fabulous thrillers, which make great doorstops once you’ve finished reading them.

FICTION — In alphabetical order by author

Liz Nugent, The Truth About Ruby Cooper (coming in 2026)

Liz Nugent is an absolute go-to author for me. She writes with complexity, nuance, and disquieting depth. Relentless and uncompromising, The Truth About Ruby Cooper weaves thorny moral challenges into an irresistible story. Truly memorable. This powerful novel will stay with you long after you’ve read the last page.

Wreck Your Heart, Lori Rader-Day

Another winner from one of my favorite authors, Lori Rader-Day. Wreck Your Heart is captivating from post to wire. A brilliantly painted portrait of a damaged soul trying to survive and make something of herself. But the past comes calling. A love letter to Chicago, with memorable characters galore and great music, this is a superior mystery novel. 

Fire in Boston,  Robert Rotstein (No pub date yet)

Can’t wait for this novel to come out. A fascinating reimagining of history that asks the question, “What if Babe Ruth stood trial for the murder of his former wife?” If you’d like to find out, look no further. a clever and always entertaining legal thriller, Fire in Boston is major league good!

Gabriel Valjan, Eyes to Deceit

A remarkable, fly-on-the-wall story of Cold War realpolitik, Gabriel Valjan’s Eyes to Deceit careers from Rockefeller Center to a Catskill resort to Rome and Teheran, giving readers a front-row seat to the plotting of the 1953 CIA and MI6 overthrow of the Iranian government. With noteworthy cameos from the famous, the powerful, and the ruthless, Eyes to Deceit is intelligent, high-stakes intrigue at its best.

Nancy G. West, Risky Pursuit

A gripping, page-turning mystery filled with tension and high emotional stakes. Proof that even young-adult heroes can have hidden heart and stores of great courage.

UP NEXT  — In alphabetical order by author

Edwin Hill, What Happened Next

Julie Mulhern, Murder in Manhattan

Hank Phillippi Ryan, All This Could Be Yours

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My Favorite Reads of 2025

by Dietrich

This has been another banner year of reading for me. These are my dozen favorites, books that spanned the dusty backroads of the American West in the 1940s, the frozen streets of a fictional Copenhagen, the moral rot of 1950s Los Angeles, and the slow, heartbreaking decay of a Beatles partnership, with generous detours into Wonderland, Florida swamps, Dublin pubs, and the bayous of Louisiana. My tastes refuse to get stuck on a single genre, so it’s a mixed bag of the ones that floored me, listed in order of their original publication date.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain – Wallace Stegner (1943) A restless dreamer drags his wife and sons across the early-20th-century West chasing one doomed scheme after another—gold mines, bootlegging, homesteading—while the family slowly fractures under the weight of his merciless vision of success. Stegner does families like nobody else.

Sula – Toni Morrison (1973) In a small Black neighborhood in Ohio, two girls grow up inseparable, then choose radically different paths—one marries and conforms, the other burns every bridge she crosses. Their bond becomes the town’s defining legend and its original sin.

The Big Nowhere (L.A. Quartet #2) – James Ellroy (1988) Three cops—one ambitious, one crooked, one haunted—get tangled in a triple murder investigation tied to union wars, Hollywood blackmail, and a serial killer who carves up his victims to a jazzy soundtrack in postwar Los Angeles.

Tell-All – Chuck Palahniuk (2010) A fading Golden Age movie queen and her too-loyal assistant spiral into a hallucinatory plot involving plastic surgery, blackmail, and a tell-all memoir that keeps rewriting itself—literally—every time someone dies.

After Alice – Gregory Maguire (2015) While Alice is off chasing white rabbits, her friend Ada Boyce tumbles down the same hole on a rescue mission and discovers a darker, more sardonic Wonderland where the Red Queen’s court is plotting something far worse than croquet.

A Man With One of Those Faces – Caimh McDonnell (2016) A Dublin everyman who looks like “every police sketch ever” agrees to visit a dying stranger in hospital for cash—only to wake up with gangsters, cops, and a bunny-wielding granny all convinced he’s somebody worth killing.

Mangrove Lightning (Doc Ford #24) – Randy Wayne White (2017) Marine biologist—and occasional government assassin—Doc Ford investigates a series of bizarre attacks on a charter captain's family, linking them to a near-century-old unsolved multiple murder in the Florida Everglades. 

Clown Town (Slow Horses #9) – Mick Herron (2025) Disgraced MI5 agent River Cartwright investigates a missing book from his grandfather’s library that unearths a decades-old, dangerous state secret from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. As MI5’s First Desk scrambles to contain the fallout, the 'slow horses' of Slough House get tangled in the mess, all under the watchful, cynical eye of Jackson Lamb..

The Usual Desire to Kill – Camilla Barnes (2024) In a dilapidated French farmhouse, a translator juggles the chaos of caring for her eccentric, aging parents and her estranged sister's arrival, forced to confront a lifetime of family secrets, sibling rivalry, and the complicated nature of love and death.

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs – Ian Leslie (2024) A lyrical, track-by-track chronicle of the Lennon-McCartney partnership—how two teenagers invented each other, rewrote pop music, and slowly, inevitably broke each other’s hearts, told almost entirely through lyrics and studio chatter.

Embedded – John Lansing (2025) Framed Army Ranger Dakota Judd goes undercover in a white-supremacist prison gang, then deeper into their armed militia, for the FBI. One mistake and he’s dead. Fast, brutal, redemptive.

Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie – James Lee Burke (2025) In the brutal dawn of the 20th century, young Bessie Holland—daughter of the indomitable Hackberry—navigates a Texas ravaged by oil barons, gangsters, and her own ghosts, finding fierce guidance from a suffragette teacher as she battles for justice, family, and the love she’s never known.

Here’s what’s on the Stack:

What in the World? – Leanne Morgan (2024) A stand-up comedian from Tennessee delivers a big-hearted, zero-filter memoir about raising kids, surviving divorce, hot flashes, Jesus, and why Dollar General is a legitimate food group. Basically therapy in book form, but funnier.

Bread of Angels – Patti Smith (2025) A spare, luminous blend of memoir and poetry: Smith trails her late husband’s ghost through Detroit and Tangier, communes with Joan of Arc, photographs graves, feeds cats, and turns grief into fleeting sacraments. Less a book than a whispered Polaroid sequence.

Here’s to the last of 2025 and the promise of 2026—may they both deliver armloads of books to wreck all our sleep schedules, hijack our commutes, and leave us muttering about characters like they’re real people.

All the best for the holidays and happy reading.