Unabridged: Our Most Anticipated Books of 2025 with Sara Hildreth and Cree Myles

In this episode of The Stacks Unabridged, Cree Myles (All Ways Black) and Sara Hildreth (Fiction Matters) are back to reflect on 2024 as a year in books and share the titles they’re most excited to read in the first half of 2025. From last year’s standouts to exciting new releases, this conversation is a must-listen for book lovers updating their TBRs.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. You can also find what we talked about on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

• Fiction Matters Substack

• Fiction Matters Instagram

• Novel Pairings Podcast

• All Ways Black

• “Unabridged: Our Most Anticipated Books of 2024 with Cree Myles and Sara Hildreth” (The Stacks)

• James by Percival Everett

• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

• Cree’s IG Review of Good Girl

• Cree’s Good Girl Review on Substack

• True Grit by Charles Portis

• Reagan by Max Boot

• The 10 Best Books of 2024 (The New York Times Books Staff, The New York Times)

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

• @clumsywords

• Playworld by Adam Ross

• Brandon Taylor

• The Favorites by Layne Fargo

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

• Audition by Katie Kitamura

• Black in Blues by Imani Perry

• Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky

• Alfred A. Knopf

• We Do Not Part by Han Kang

• Human Acts by Han Kang

• Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

• Mrs. March by Virginia Feito

• The Echoes by Evie Wyld

• Ordinary Love by Marie Rutkoski

• Pure Innocent Fun by Ira Madison III

• Keep It! (Crooked Media)

• Normal Gossip (Radiotopia)

• You Didn’t Hear This From Me by Kelsey McKinney

• God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney

• Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

• Universality by Natasha Brown

• Assembly by Natasha Brown

• Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

• Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

• Belletrist

• World Without End by Christophe Blain & Jean-Marc Jancovici

• “Ep. 346 Curating Climate Conversations with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson” (The Stacks)

• “Ep. 303 The Culmination of My Psycho-Spiritual Self with Kaveh Akbar” (The Stacks)

• The Antidote by Karen Russell

• “The Best Things We Read in 2024” (The Stacks)

• Authority by Andrea Long Chu

• Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

• The Barn by Wright Thompson

• Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted by Ben Okri

• A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

• The Booker Prizes

• Sister Europe by Nell Zink

• Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah

• There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone

• Evicted by Matthew Desmond

• We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian

• I’ll Love You Forever by Giaae Kwon

• “The Hanya Yanagihara Principle” (Andrea Long Chu, Vulture)

• To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

• “How Zadie Smith Lost Her Teeth” (Andrea Long Chu, Vulture)

• Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet

• Fish Tales by Nettie Jones

• Toni Morrison

• Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt

• Somadina by Akwaeke Emezi

• “Ep. 324 The Psychology of Evil with Akwaeke Emezi” (The Stacks)

• The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

• Tupac Shakur

• Words for My Comrades by Dean Van Nguyen

• Love in Exile by Shon Faye

• Jackson Howard

• The Other Olympians by Michael Waters

• In Tongues by Thomas Grattan

• Open Throat by Henry Hoke

• Speaking in Tongues by J. M. Coetzee & Mariana Dimópulos

• The Last Supper by Paul Elie

• Beloved by Toni Morrison

• “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen

• Mark Twain by Ron Chernow

• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

• Lin-Manuel Miranda

• Flashlight by Susan Choi

• The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey

• Jesse Ball

• Liars by Sarah Manguso

• Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

• I’ll Tell You When I’m Home by Hala Alyan

• The Dry Season by Melissa Febos

• Their Accomplices Wore Robes by Brando Simeo Starkey

• Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin

• Waiting for Britney Spears by Jeff Weiss

• Hunter S. Thompson

• The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley

• Weepers by Peter Mendelsund

• A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge

• The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

• Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza

• Liliana's Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza

• Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson

• “Burned Out? Start Here” (The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times)

• Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray

• W. E. B. Du Bois

• Claude McKay

• Romance in Marseille by Claude McKay

• Jessie R. Fauset

Connect with Cree: Instagram | Twitter | All Ways Black | Substack
Connect with Sara: Instagram | Fiction Matters | Novel Pairings | Substack
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