My Top Books (and Gifts) of the Year

Get ready for the lists. Hope they help!

I’m trying to make your holiday season easier. Why? Because I am in it with you. My head is spinning with everything that needs to be done, plus I’m in the waiting game for college admissions. So, here are a few curated book and gift lists that I hope will help all of us.

The fun thing about my best books of the year list is that I’ve interviewed all the authors — and you can listen! Links below.

To be honest, all these lists took me a while to make, so could you please at least look at them? ;-) Thanks! What sounds good?

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Gift Guides

Gifts for tweens, teens, and the young and heart: Click here.

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Gifts for Moms, Sisters, Aunts, Girlfriends… or YOU: click here.

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Hanukkah-Themed gifts for everyone? Click here.

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My Favorite Books of the Year

Everyone is posting their round-ups and I’ve been thrilled to see so many of the books I’ve featured on my podcast on everyone’s lists!

But if we were having dinner and you said, “Come on, Zibby, which books do I really have to read?” this would be my answer.

Fiction:

Click here to shop the list.

Heart the Lover by Lily King (podcast here)

My Friends by Fredrik Backman (podcast about his last book here)

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall (podcast here)

Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild (podcast here)

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (podcast here)

It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan (podcast here)

Lion by Sonya Walger (podcast here)

We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes (podcast here)

Table for One by Emma Gannon (podcast coming soon but last one with her here)

Twice by Mitch Albom (podcast here)

Boy from the North Country by Sam Sussman (podcast here)

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (podcast here)

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Non-Fiction:

Shop this list here!

How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast (podcast here)

Hostage by Eli Sharabi (podcast here)

Lessons from My Teachers: From Preschool to the Present by Sarah Ruhl (podcast here)

I Thought it Would Be Better Than This by Jessica N. Turner (podcast here)

Connecting Dots by Joshua A. Miele and Wendall Jamieson (podcast here)

How to Share an Egg by Bonnie Reichert (podcast here)

Cancer is Complicated by Clea Shearer (podcast here)

Awake by Jen Hatmaker (podcast here)

This Happened to Me by Kate Price (podcast here)

The River’s Daughter by Bridget Crocker (podcast here)

A Clean Mess by Tiffany Jenkins (podcast here)

The End is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother by Jill Bialosky (podcast here)

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Books We Published (So All Our Favorites!)

Shop the list here! Did you know that this year, Zibby Publishing has had:

• 9 USA Today Bestsellers

• 2 Book of the Month Club picks

• 4 Indie Next Picks

• 4 Library Reads picks including one top monthly pick

• 1 of NPR best books of the year

• 4 starred reviews

• 80+ bookstore events for our authors

Happy to Help: Adventures of a People Pleaser by Amy Wilson (podcast here)

It’s Getting Hot in Here by Jane Costello (podcast here)

A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl by Nanda Reddy (podcast here)

The Phoebe Variations by Jane Hamilton (podcast here)

The Summer We Ran by Audrey Ingram (podcast here)

The Gallagher Place by Julie Doar (podcast here)

Someone’s Gotta Give by Alisha Fernandez Miranda (podcast here)

What the Deep Water Knows: Poems by Miranda Cowley Heller (podcast here)

I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney (podcast here)

I Wanted to Ne Wonderful by Lihi Lapid (podcast here)

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Other book lists to shop include:

All podcasts from 2025 - click here

Great gift-able books - click here

Books written/edited by me! - click here

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Special Video

Here’s a special interview I did at the super swanky press junket at the Essex House in New York with producer/director Paul Feig about the upcoming film “The Housemaid” based on the smash hit novel by Freida McFadden. I saw it early and asked him all about the film, his career, and even what makes a book into a good film. Watch here!

Thanks for reading!

Warmly (well, actually freezing right now),

Zibby