It may still be in the 70s in New York, but autumn, they assure me, approaches. This means it’s time for Literary Hub’s annual Ultimate Fall Reading List, in which (in case you’re new) I read all (or at least many) of the seasonal literary recommendation/anticipation/best of lists on the internet, and then collate them for you in a handy list-of-lists.
This season, I processed 28 lists, which collectively recommended a total of 466 books. 95 of these were included 3 times or more, and these I present to you in descending order of popularity. The list of list surveyed is, as ever, at the bottom. Have fun, and see you in the winter.
15 lists:
Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness
14 lists:
Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You?
Susan Orlean, Joyride
13 lists:
Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me
12 lists:
Elizabeth Gilbert, All the Way to the River
Ian McEwan, What We Can Know
Thomas Pynchon, Shadow Ticket
11 lists:
Margaret Atwood, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
10 lists:
Oyinkan Braithwaite, Cursed Daughters
Lily King, Heart the Lover
9 lists:
Mona Awad, We Love You, Bunny
8 lists:
Quan Barry, The Unveiling
Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune
Mary Roach, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy
Salman Rushdie, The Eleventh Hour
7 lists:
Dan Brown, The Secret of Secrets
Gish Jen, Bad Bad Girl
Harper Lee, The Land of Sweet Forever
Jill Lepore, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution
Beth Macy, Paper Girl
Catherine Newman, Wreck
6 lists:
Bolu Babalola, Sweet Heat
Nathan Harris, Amity
Mick Herron, Clown Town
Olivia Laing, The Silver Book
Julian Brave NoiseCat, We Survived the Night
Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation
Bryan Washington, Palaver
5 lists:
Jen Hatmaker, Awake
Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham, The Academy
Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder
Ilana Masad, Beings
Samanta Schweblin, tr. Megan McDowell, Good and Evil and Other Stories
Joan Silber, Mercy
Zadie Smith, Dead and Alive
Patti Smith, Bread of Angels
Sam Sussman, Boy from the North Country
Souvankham Thammavongsa, Pick a Color
Alejandro Varela, Middle Spoon
Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben, Gone Before Goodbye
4 lists:
Cameron Crowe, The Uncool
Mark Z. Danielewski, Tom’s Crossing
Jaquira Díaz, This Is the Only Kingdom
Cory Doctorow, Enshittification
Mariana Enriquez, Somebody is Walking on Your Grave
Stephen Greenblatt, Dark Renaissance
John Grisham, The Widow
Kamala Harris, 107 Days
Ali Hazelwood, Mate
Joe Hill, King Sorrow
Quiara Alegría Hudes, The White Hot
Ada Limón, Startlement
Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief
Adam Nicholson, Bird School
Louise Penny, The Black Wolf
Priscilla Presley, Softly as I Leave You
Erin Somers, The Ten Year Affair
Nicholas Sparks with M. Night Shyamalan, Remain
Brandon Taylor, Minor Black Figures
Sarah Weinman, Without Consent
Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
3 lists:
John U. Bacon, The Gales of November
Claire-Louise Bennett, Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
Stephanie Burt, Taylor’s Version
Jeff Chang, Water Mirror Echo
Dan Chaon, One Of Us
Jelani Cobb, Three or More is a Riot
Susan Coll, The Literati
Michael Connelly, The Proving Ground
Zoe Dubno, Happiness and Love
Rose Dommu, Best Woman
Ken Follett, Circle of Days
Michael J. Fox, Future Boy
Janice Hallett, The Killer Question
Gabrielle Hamilton, Next of Kin
Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting
Ana Huang, The Defender
Chris Kraus, The Four Spent the Day Together
R.F. Kuang, Katabasis
Christine Kuehn, Family of Spies
David McCullough, History Matters
Marisa Meltzer, It Girl
Kristen Miller, The Women of Wild Hill
Lauren Morrow, Little Movements
Jen Percy, Girls Play Dead
Steven Pinker, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…
Philip Pullman, The Rose Field
Olga Ravn, tr. Martin Aitken, The Wax Child
Ron Rindo, Life, and Death, and Giants
Patrick Ryan, Buckeye
SenLinYu, Alchemised
Charlie Sheen, The Book of Sheen
John Fabian Witt, The Radical Fund
Adrienne Young, Fallen City
List of lists surveyed:
Kirkus’s 60 Most Anticipated Books of the Fall • Publishers Weekly’s Adult Books for 2025 (Top 10s in all categories) • TIME’s The 24 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2025 • Boston Globe’s Forty new books for the best fall reading • The New York Times’ 21 Nonfiction Books Coming This Fall and 27 Novels Coming This Fall • The Washington Post’s A fall preview for readers of all kinds • Los Angeles Times’ 30 books to read this fall • W’s 18 Must-Read Books for Fall • The Guardian’s The biggest books of the autumn • Newsday’s Fall books preview 2025 • People’s Must-Read Books of Fall 2025 • Oprah Daily’s The 25 Best Books of Fall 2025 • The Toronto Star’ fall book preview • Goodreads Readers’ Most Anticipated Fall Books • AP’s The fall’s 10 most anticipated books • BookPage’s Our most anticipated books of fall 2025 • AARP’s Big Fall 2025 Book Preview • The New York Post’s 30 exciting new books to read this fall • LibbyLife’s The most anticipated books of Fall 2025 • E News’s Fall Into Reading With These Cozy Autumn Books • Our Culture’s Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2025 (Part 1) • Bustle’s The Most Anticipated Books Of Fall 2025 • Vulture’s 10 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Fall • The Chicago Tribune’s Books for fall 2025 • Town & Country’s The 49 Must-Read Books of Fall 2025 • Chatelaine’s Your Fall 2025 Reading List • and of course, Lit Hub’s 15 Novels You Need to Read This Fall
