2025 BIPOC Book Releases to Add to Your Reading List
Ordering books helps BIPOC authors place on bestseller lists like the NYT bestseller list. It tells the publishing industry that books written and illustrated by POC matter and the readership for them isn’t a trend.
Looking for BIPOC authors to order and add to your bookshelves in 2025? Here are books written by Black, Indigenous, and POC authors and illustrators so you can preorder and support BIPOC authors!
Related Reading
- Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
In a near-future Kolkata, Ma, her two-year-old daughter, and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After...
- by Nghi Vo
- Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
Wandering Cleric Chih of Singing Hills and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant come to the river town of Baolin chasing stories of a legendary famine. Amid tales of dishes served...
- by Ken Liu
- Fiction, Science Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Former “orphan hacker” Julia Z is thrust into a high-stakes adventure where she must use her AI-whispering skills to unravel a virtual reality mystery, rescue a kidnapped dream artist, and...
- by C.L. Clark
- Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Set in the blockbuster and award-winning universe of League of Legends: Arcane and written by award-winning author C. L. Clark, discover a thrilling epic fantasy novel where Ambessa Medarda truly...
- Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Award-winning journalist Natasha S. Alford grew up between two worlds as the daughter of an African American father and Puerto Rican mother. In American Negra, a narrative that is part...
- by Kamilah Cole
- Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Romantic Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
A modern-day dark academia fantasy with a twist. Warren University has stood amongst the ivy elite for centuries, built on the bones―and forbidden magic―of its most prized BIPOC students…hiding the...
- by Ed Park
Gilt-edged stories that slice clean through the mundanity of modern life, written by Ed Park. In “Machine City” a college student’s chance role in a friend’s movie blurs the line...
- Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love. Two people...
- by Imani Perry
- Demographic Studies, History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has...
- Black Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A riveting literary novel with the sharp edges of a thriller about the abuses of history and the costs of revenge, set between Washington, D.C., and Johannesburg, South Africa. Prudence...
- Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel...
- by Zadie Smith
- Essays, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A profound and unparalleled literary voice, Zadie Smith returns with a resounding collection of essays. In this eagerly awaited new collection, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist...
- Family Life, Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Science Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises,...
- Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Crime & Mystery
- Publication Year: 2025
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Liliana’s Invincible Summer, a dreamlike, genre-defying novel about a professor and detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence. A city is...
- American Literature, Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Romance
- Publication Year: 2025
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her...
- by Karen Hao
- Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman’s OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race...
- Activism and Social Justice, Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
This is not the story you think you know. It’s the one I’ve been waiting to tell. Thrust onto the public stage at fifteen years old after the Taliban’s brutal...
- by Susan Choi
- Coming of Age, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked...
- Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible. Growing up, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian felt most at...
- by Mai Korland
- Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Romantic Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
The King of Yusan may be the greatest liar of them all. His sister’s ring is in his sights, and he will do anything to get what he wants. Even...
- by Somia Sadiq
- Fiction, Immigration Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
With stunning lyricism, Gajarah tells the story of a fearless woman torn between two worlds—Pakistan and Canada—whose life is upended by sexual violence. Emahn is big haired, mischievous, and larger...
- Family Life, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Sanjana Satyanandais trying to recover her life. It’s been a year since she walked out on her husband, a struggling actor named Killian, at a commune in India, after a...
- Family Life, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from Charmaine Wilkerson. When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman...
- by Aria Aber
- Fiction, Friendship Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
An electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of self-discovery—“a stunning coming-of-age story” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a portrait of the artist as a...
- by Rob Franklin
- Black Fiction, City Life Fiction, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A gripping debut from an electrifying new voice about an upwardly mobile and downwardly spiraling Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamourous parties and sudden consequences, a...
- Fiction, LGBTQ+ Romance, Murder Thrillers, Romance, Science Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Ocean’s 8 meets Blade Runner in this trail-blazing debut science fiction novel and swashbuckling love letter to Hawai’i about being forced to find a new home and striving to build...
- Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom—and her family’s ties to it—in this enthralling novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So...
- Fiction, Historical Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance, written by Victoria Christopher Murray. In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to...
- Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Fortune always left whatever room I walked into, which is why I don’t leave my place much these days… Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn’t need much―least of all trouble―but...
- by Vanessa Le
- Teen Fantasy, Teen Romance, Young Adult
- Publication Year: 2025
These Violent Delights meets Divine Rivals in the explosive finale to The Last Bloodcarver duology — with a riveting medical magic system and lush Vietnam-inspired romantasy world. Kochin is a...
- Mystery, Science Fiction, Suspense Thriller, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
A Native American first contact story and gripping thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse. On the Great Plains of Oklahoma, in the heart of the Cherokee...
- by Karissa Chen
- Asian American Fiction, Fiction, Romance
- Publication Year: 2025
An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find...
- Nonfiction, Self-Help
- Publication Year: 2025
Have you ever paused to think about what the hustle is costing you? · an approach to sustainable wellness that meets you where you are · let go of perfectionism...
- by Jacque Aye
- Fantasy, Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction, Magical Realism
- Publication Year: 2025
“I only know of true love because of the witch.” Ceciline lives to serve her Mistress—the wise, warm, and mysterious witch who raised her. Together, they live a peaceful life...
- Black Fiction, Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction, LGBTQ+ Romance, Romance, Romantic Comedy
- Publication Year: 2025
With his funny, big-hearted adult rom com debut, bestselling, award-winning YA author Julian Winters shows sometimes fake dating your ex can turn into a second chance. When Denzel “Denz” Carter’s...
- by Ayana Gray
- Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fairy Tales & Folklore, Fantasy, Fiction, Folklore Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A captivating villain story reimagining one of the most iconic monsters in Greek mythology as a provocative and powerful young heroine. Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote...
- by Hala Alyan
- Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
The rich and deeply personal debut memoir by award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan, whose experience of motherhood via surrogacy forces her to reckon with her own past,...
- by Sue Lynn Tan
- Fairy Tales & Folklore, Fantasy, Romantic Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
A young ruler must forge a delicate alliance with the untrustworthy yet magnetic God of War to protect her kingdom in this stunning romantic fantasy filled with dangerous secrets, forbidden...
- by Daniel Black
- Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A poignant, emotionally exuberant novel about a young queer Black man finding his voice in 1980s Chicago—a novel of family, forgiveness and perseverance. Isaac is at a crossroads in his...
- by Liann Zhang
- Asian American Fiction, Psychological Thrillers, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
In this razor-sharp, diabolical debut thriller, a young woman steps into her deceased twin’s influencer life, only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade. Julie Chan has...
- by R.F. Kuang
- Dark Fantasy, Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
Two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own. Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek: The story of...
- Family Life
- Publication Year: 2025
Returning to Kaua‘i, park ranger Makalani finds her family divided and their way of life at risk in this rich and emotional adventure. After ten years as a national park...
- by Jayci Lee
- Fantasy, Fiction, Romantic Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
Korean folklore and modern culture entwine in this epic fantasy about a reluctant heroine who must deny her fated love to battle the dark forces that threaten to end her...
- by S.A. Cosby
- Fiction, Murder Thrillers, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
King of Ashes is a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama. When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger...
- History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Legacies of Incarceration provides a holistic view of the incarceration experience of Hawaiʻi’s Japanese by exploring the factors that shaped the circumstances of confinement on each island before, during, and...
- Fiction, Short Stories, Teen Friendship Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Featuring the voices of both new and acclaimed Indigenous writers and edited by bestselling Muscogee author Cynthia Leitich Smith, this collection of interconnected stories serves up laughter, love, Native pride,...
- Coming of Age, Fiction, Friendship Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the glamorous early ’90s art world in New York City, where only...
- by Danica Nava
- Fiction, Romantic Comedy
- Publication Year: 2025
A Muscogee pop star and a cowboy who couldn’t be more different come together to strike a deal in this new romantic comedy by Danica Nava. Pop singer Avery Fox...
- by Jackie Lau
- Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Romance, Romantic Comedy
- Publication Year: 2025
A jaded woman falls for her sunshine neighbor in this cozy Christmas romance. Nora Blackburn is suspicious of everything she sees and hears. Is it fake? Is someone trying to...
- Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
The story of a gay Black painter navigating the worlds of art, desire, and creativity. New York simmers with heat and unrest as Wyeth, a painter, finds himself at an...
- Fiction, Horror Fiction, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
Welcome to Rivers Solomon’s dark and wondrous Model Home, a new kind of haunted-house novel. The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where...
- Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A bold and inventive novel about real romance in the virtual workplace—bringing Castillo’s trademark wit and sharp cultural criticism to an irresistible story about the possible future of love. Girlie...
- Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces her complex relationship with her mother,...
- by Kevin Nguyen
The paths of four family members diverge drastically when the U.S. government begins detaining Vietnamese Americans, in this “rich, gripping novel that lands squarely as a mirror of our contemporary...
- Young Adult, Young Adult Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
In this debut speculative YA mystery, a Black teen with premonition-like powers must solve her friend’s disappearance before she finds herself in the same danger, perfect for fans of Ace...
- by Joseph Lee
- Demographic Studies, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
From award-winning journalist Joseph Lee, a sweeping, personal exploration of Indigenous identity and the challenges facing Indigenous people around the world. Before Martha’s Vineyard became one of the most iconic...
- by Nicole Cuffy
- Black Fiction, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
An engrossing novel that sweeps from present-day California to the Vietnam War and back, where a grieving young man is drawn into the orbit of a charismatic cult leader who...
- Nonfiction, Political Commentary
- Publication Year: 2025
From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. On October 25, 2023,...
- Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington. In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor and drinks his nights...
- Demographic Studies, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
This empowering book blends history, storytelling, and culturally grounded techniques to equip readers with the tools needed to promote self-reflection, personal growth, and diasporic healing. Asian Americans represent the fastest...
- by Jason Mott
- Black Fiction, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
People Like Us is Jason Mott’s electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason’s life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with...
- Cultural Heritage Fiction, Family Life, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class, an intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don’t...
- by Mai Der Vang
- Poetry
- Publication Year: 2025
Mai Der Vang’s poetry―lyrically insistent and visually compelling―constitutes a groundbreaking investigation into the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities, the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of...
- Biographies, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
An original memoir in essays that interrogates how identities are shaped and informed in online spaces and how the relationship between race and the Internet has changed in his three...
- Fiction, LGBTQ+ Romance, Multicultural Romance, Romance, Romantic Comedy
- Publication Year: 2025
Jade Dunn has spent years trying to climb her way to the top of the southern high school football food chain. Now, the only thing standing between her and that...
- by Anita Desai
- American Literature, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
From “world-class writer” (The Washington Post) and three-time Booker finalist Anita Desai, an exquisitely written stunning exploration of love, place, memory, history, and the secrets between a mother and her...
- by Yume Kitasei
- Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Science Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
From the acclaimed author of The Stardust Grail comes the epic tale of two sisters who sail across oceans to find their missing third sister―and Earth’s environmental salvation. In Earth’s...
- Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction, Sociology
- Publication Year: 2025
In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard University. Determined not to let her assault derail her goal of joining NASA...
- by Tiana Clark
- Poetry
- Publication Year: 2025
The striking sophomore poetry collection from award-winning author Tiana Clark. Dive between the borders of ruined and radical love with this lyrical poetry collection that explores topics as expansive as...
- by Van Hoang
- Coming of Age, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
It’s the golden age of Hollywood. For two Vietnamese dreamers, success means conjuring a magical break in a spellbinding novel about the frightening price of fame by Van Hoang. More...
- Asian American Fiction, Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A glittering, bold, darkly funny novel about two sisters—one in New York, one in Singapore—who are bound by an ancient secret. Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads...
- Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Romantic Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
A steamy paranormal romance set in the Black South—a bold new foray that takes us on a journey of magic and fantasy, from the whispering creeks outside the city of...
- by Michael Luo
- Cultural Anthropology, History, Immigrant Stories, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
From New Yorker writer Michael Luo comes a masterful narrative history of the Chinese in America that traces the sorrowful theme of exclusion and documents their more than century-long struggle...
- by Scaachi Koul
- Essays, Humor Essays, Memoir, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
The long-awaited follow-up from one of the most original and hilarious voices writing today. Scaachi Koul’s first book was a collection of raw, perceptive, and hilarious essays reckoning with the...
- Black Fiction, Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Romance
- Publication Year: 2025
Two exes. One summer wedding. Zero chance of escaping the heat. Prepare to laugh, swoon, and fall head over heels with this irresistible standalone romance from bestselling author Bolu Babalola....
- Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Crime & Mystery, Suspense Thriller, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
When a Native teenager vanishes from her small town—a place with dark ties to an elite historical society—archaeologist Syd Walker is called to investigate…from bestselling author Vanessa Lillie. In the...
- Fiction, Immigration Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A novel that leaps across centuries past and future, as if different eras were separated by only a door. Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea,...
- Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
A chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran...
- Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A darkly whimsical debut about women daring to live and create with impunity. Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother...
- Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Romantic Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
A god’s wrath is unforgettable. Her love, even more dangerous. Kaivara Megidrail was once worshipped as the Grand Defender of Vallendor―until betrayal, punishment, and exile left her Diminished. Now, the...
- Fiction, Short Stories, World Literature
- Publication Year: 2025
A spiky, edgy collection of five wickedly funny stories spotlighting clear-eyed and “difficult” women who are navigating their identities as workers and women in contemporary Japan—a feminist, anti-capitalist modern classic...
- by K.X. Song
- Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Romantic Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
A young woman who wields the unimaginable power of a dragon spirit must decide where her loyalties lie—and where her heart belongs—in this enthralling fantasy that reimagines the legend of...
- by Laila Lalami
- Fiction, Political Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance. Sara has just landed at LAX, returning...
- Family Life, Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Set between Nigeria and New Orleans, The Edge of Water tells the story of a young woman who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and...
- by Ocean Vuong
- Asian American Fiction, Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. One late summer evening in the post-industrial town...
- by Sophie Kim
- Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fantasy, Fiction, Paranormal Fantasy, Romantic Fantasy
- Publication Year: 2025
In this swoony sequel to The God and the Gumiho, a trickster god must work with his reincarnated lost love to solve his brother’s murder on board a luxury underworld...
- Black Fiction, Family Life, Fiction, Historical Fiction
- Publication Year: 2025
In this poignant retelling of The Great Gatsby, set amongst L.A.’s Black elite, a young veteran finds his way post-war, pulled into a new world of tantalizing possibilities—and explosive tensions....
- Fiction, Horror Fiction, Thrillers & Suspense
- Publication Year: 2025
Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under...
107 Days
For the first time, and with surprising and revealing insights, former Vice President Kamala Harris tells the story of one of the wildest and most consequential presidential campaigns in American...