Most Beautiful Fiction Books of 2025 – A Holiday Gift Guide
A Holiday Gift Guide
Prettiest Fiction & Poetry Books of 2025
On this page:
After eight years of making “Most Beautiful Books of the Year” annual holiday gift guides, I’m trying something new and splitting my favorites into genre-based lists.
This page gathers my standout fiction picks from 2025 – bundled with poetry and mystery and loosely sorted by genre. Any book with a star (★) next to it is also visually reviewed in the video. If I recommend a book in this list, you can rest assured it’s not just the physical beauty that counts – I do also read the books I recommend on this site, and I only include books where I think the contents are beautiful too ツ .
Bookshop links are included below if you are interested in buying any of the books for yourself. Some of the links are affiliate links (and thank you if you use them!) but please do support your local bookstore as a priority if you can. If you’re new here, and you’d like more regular recommendations, you might also like to check out my regularly updated lists of special editions, pre-order offers, and/or subscribe to my very occasional newsletter.
And now, on to the books!
Video Overview
Fiction
Poetry
★ Dwell - Simon Armitage, illustrated by Beth Munro
Poet Laureate Simon Armitage was inspired to write these poems by the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, and he uses riddle and folkore to animate animal dwellings in verse accompanied with beautiful illustrations.
➤ Find it at Amazon | Waterstones
★ Poetry Cards
Candlestick Press release new collections of these beautiful poetry cards every year. Each pretty booklet contains 10 lovely poems on a particular theme, and they come with an envelope and a place to write your note. They are such a lovely way to share a message that is also a beautiful keepsake – so much nicer than a card that might otherwise be thrown away.
➤ Find Ten Poems About Cats Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Dogs Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Wishes and Lights Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Chocolate Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Birds Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Mothers at Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Fathers Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Babies Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Herbs Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Vegetables Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Snowdrops Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Weeds Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems About Weather Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Ten Poems for Wellbeing Amazon | Waterstones
Contemporary & a touch of Magical Realism
★ McSweeney’s Issue 79
This is a fully embroidered cloth-bound volume with art made by Marta Monteiro using over 133,000 individual stitches. It has nine short stories, letters, an essay and excerpt from a graphic novel.
➤ Find it at Amazon | B&N | McSweeney’s
★ A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
Follows four college friends who move to New York. On the surface, it’s the story of these men as they grow older, build careers, fall in and out of love, and navigate changing friendships in the city. But it focuses in on the childhood trauma of one of the characters and how that has shaped him. It’s an unusually intense book about male relationships – friendship, family and intimacy – that doesn’t sugarcoat the aftermath of trauma. This 10th anniversary collector’s edition has cover artwork painted by artists RF. Alvarez and Linus Borgo and a Q&A with the author.
➤ Find it at Amazon | Waterstones
★ The Cat Who Saved Books – Sosuke Natsukawa
A reclusive teen called Rintaro inherits his grandfather’s bookshop. A talking tabby named Tiger shows up and drags him into a series of “mazes” to rescue books from people who misuse or misunderstand them The stories that follow celebrate books as the foundation for relationships and attention, and include warnings about what happens when they become status objects, productivity hacks, or purely commercial products. .
➤ Find sprayed edge edition at Amazon
★ The Cat Who Saved the Library – Sosuke Natsukawa
This follow-up focuses on 13-year old Nanami and books disappearing from the library, and continues Natsukawa’s blend of whimsical talking-cat fantasy with a meditation on what it means to have the freedom to read.
➤ Find sprayed edge edition at Amazon
★ Before We Forget Kindness - Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The books in this series centre around a tiny back‑street café in Tokyo where, if you sit in one particular chair and follow a strict list of rules, you can travel in time – but only until your coffee gets cold. In this volume, we meet a father who couldn’t allow his daughter to get married, a woman who never managed to give chocolates to the person she loved, a boy who wants to show his smile to his divorced parents, and a wife holding a baby with no name. The book is magical realism rather than science fiction, with a focus on relationships, and it leans heavily into the idea of kindness as an active choice.
➤ Find standard edition at Amazon | B&N | Waterstones
➤ Find sprayed edge edition at Barnes & Noble
Thriller
★ Dan Brown - Secret of Secrets
Dan Brown is back with another Robert Langdon novel, this time sending him through Prague, London, and New York after the disappearance of noetic scientist Katherine Solomon, whose research on human consciousness may be world-changing – and dangerous. I love the way these books blend real art, architecture, and historical ideas with highly speculative science.
➤ Find UK ed at Amazon | Waterstones
The Inheritance Games series - Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Avery Grambs is an ordinary, cash-strapped teenager who suddenly inherits the fortune of billionaire Tobias Hawthorne – a man she’s never met. The catch? She has to move into his sprawling mansion, now overflowing with his disinherited (and very suspicious) family, including four grandsons who love riddles, secret passageways, and mind games. Lots of fun clues and puzzles, amid an interesting lens on class and privilege. This is the book that launched the series, and they’ve started releasing all the volumes a special package.
➤ Buy from Amazon | Waterstones | Blackwells
☞ In series with The Hawthorne Legacy and The Final Gambit
Historical
★ Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn
The Bridgerton novels sit at the intersection of historical romance and pop culture phenomenon, thanks to the Netflix series. These new special or collector’s editions give the original Regency romances a very modern, decorative upgrade: sprayed edges, foil detailing, ribbon bookmarks, and patterned endpapers that make them feel like keepsakes. These are full-fledged Regency romance books with plenty of intimate scenes.
☞ See the Bridgerton Collector’s Guide for links to the books in this series.
Babylonia – Costanza Casati (Jan)
Babylonia takes us to the 9th century BCE and follows Semiramis, the legendary queen associated with Assyria and later Babylonian myth – probably inspired by the historical queen Sammuramat.
➤ Find it at Amazon | B&N | Waterstones Exclusive | Blackwells
Mystery and Crime
Bookish - Matthew Sweet
Bookish is a more recent entry into the “meta-mystery-about-books” category. It’s a warm-hearted, witty mystery (or rather, a trio of linked novellas) that revolves around books, murder, and the secrets people stash between the shelves. The story is set in London, 1946, and follows Gabriel Book, who uses his shop and a special letter from Churchill to help police, all while navigating a marriage of convenience with his wife, Trottie. The mysteries are more of a how-dunnit rather than a who-dunnit. It’s a novelisation of the TV show.
➤ Find US edition at Amazon | Barnes & Noble
➤ Find UK edition at Amazon | Waterstones
Slow Horses (Slough House) - Mick Herron
The book that inspired the TV show Slow Horses about a team of disgraced MI5 agents who have been sent away to shuffle paper.
The US illustrated hardcover collector’s edition has a die-cut cover that peers through to the full color endpages, a fold-out poster and page edges decorated with a London street map motif. The UK special anniversary edition is signed by the author with purple sprayed page edges, a ribbon bookmark, illustrated endpapers and a bonus essay from Tim Shipman.
➤ Find US edition at Amazon | Barnes & Noble
➤ Find UK edition at Amazon | Waterstones
The Impossible Fortune - Richard Osman
Osman’s pensioner protagonists get tangled up in wedding preparations that go predictably, murderously wrong. It’s fun to have some older protagonists, and Osman is clever at introducing the impossible crime elements that seem unsolvable until a clever twist reframes everything.
➤ Find US ed at Amazon | B&N | B&N Exclusive
➤ Find UK ed at Amazon | Waterstones | Waterstones Exclusive
Murder in the Cathedral - Kerry Greenwood
This is the 23rd and final Phryne Fisher mystery, a posthumous farewell to a beloved sleuth as we lost Kerry earlier this year. Set in 1930s Bendigo, the novel sees Phryne travel to the goldfields to watch her old friend Lionel installed as bishop. Of course, the ceremony doesn’t go to plan. The fantastic 1920s rich fashion covers for the Australian editions of these books are designed by Beth Norling and are all based on descriptions of Phryne’s frocks and jewellery from the text.
➤ Find it at Amazon AU
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie, adapted by Bob Al Greene
A really nice hardback reissue of the original graphic novel paperback release from 2023. It is adapted by Bob Al-Greene and has full-colour artwork and illustrated endpapers – it’s a great adaptation for anyone who’d prefer the graphic novel format.
➤ Find it at Amazon | Waterstones
A Case of the Claws - Classic Tales of Feline Crime - Catherine Aird
This is a fun stocking stuffer – an anthology of classic cat-themed crime stories by Catherine Aird, Edmund Crispin, Patricia Highsmith, and Ellis Peters. Each story even includes an illustration of the cat in question.
➤ Find it at Amazon | Waterstones
Agatha Christie Special Editions
UPDATE
“Textured paper covers with decorative endpapers, and touches of foiling on the covers and spines.”
This year saw publication of the final two ‘seasonal’ collections of Christie’s short stories, and the introduction of several new volumes with a new painterly cover style (but note that the new volumes are a slightly different size than the previous editions in the series!).
☞ See the Agatha Christie Special Editions page for more in this series.
Modern Classics
★ Faber YA Illustrated Modern Classics
If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s set in a future where firemen don’t put out fires; they burn books. Our main character, Guy Montag, stars as one of those book-burning firemen until he begins to question why books are banned and what’s missing from his life. Despite being written in 1953, it’s still an interesting springboard for thinking about censorship, the impact of mass media, and individuality – so relevant for today’s debates on social media, algorithmic feeds, and whether simply having access to information is the same as engaging with it.
Special features: Special edition with “striking” slipcase (see the video to see what I think about that), sprayed page edges and fiery endpapers.
➤ Find A Room With A View at Amazon | B&N | Waterstones
➤ Find Maurice at Amazon | B&N | Waterstones
➤ Find 1984 at Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find The Bell Jar at Amazon | Waterstones
➤ Find Orlando at Amazon | B&N | Waterstones
★ Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s set in a future where firemen don’t put out fires; they burn books. Our main character, Guy Montag, stars as one of those book-burning firemen until he begins to question why books are banned and what’s missing from his life. Despite being written in 1953, it’s still an interesting springboard for thinking about censorship, the impact of mass media, and individuality – so relevant for today’s debates on social media, algorithmic feeds, and whether simply having access to information is the same as engaging with it.
Special features: Special edition with “striking” slipcase (see the video to see what I think about that), sprayed page edges and fiery endpapers.
Penguin Clothbound
All the books in the series have distinctive covers featuring a repeating pattern made from a motif from the story stamped in foil onto a linen-like cloth cover.
This year’s titles include My Brilliant Career – Miles Franklin; The Phantom of the Opera – Gaston Leroux; Four Tragedies – William Shakespeare; Dubliners – James Joyce; The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe; My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell; The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky; The Spy Who Came Out from the Cold – John le Carré; Sanshiro – Natsume Sōseki; and a Waterstones exclusive edition of The Complete Jane Austen.
☞ See the Penguin Clothbound Classics page for a complete list of their titles over the years, including 2025.
2 Comments
Patricia Bloom · 25 February 2026 at 10:32 pm
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