Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women, a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her off hours, you can find her writing on her Substack, Winchester Ave, and posting photos of her Corgis on Instagram and Twitter @kdwinchester.
Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women, a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her off hours, you can find her writing on her Substack, Winchester Ave, and posting photos of her Corgis on Instagram and Twitter @kdwinchester.
Book Riot’s Best Books of 2025 list is finally here! The entire Book Riot team has selected books across genres to highlight, including a lot of nonfiction. There is a standout memoir from one of India’s greatest writers working today. There’s the story of a couple stranded at sea that has taken the nonfiction community by storm. And we can’t forget the memoir that is a love letter to reading. Get your TBRs ready!
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
By the time she won the Booker Prize for her debut novel, The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy had already lived several lives. Here, she recounts experiences as a poet, activist, architecture student, and award-winning novelist, but the real magic is in Roy’s reflections on the complex and ever-changing dynamics of family, relationships, and ambition. You needn’t know a thing about her career to find inspiration and intellectual delight in these pages. —Rebecca Joines Schinsky
A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst
When you promise to love your partner “in good times and in bad,” you’re probably not imagining that the bad times will include 117 days lost at sea in a tiny lifeboat with a dwindling food supply and no way to call for help. In 1973, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey accidentally put their vows to the test when a whale rammed a hole into the yacht they were sailing from England to New Zealand. This is the gripping and unforgettable tale of how they endured illness, dehydration, near-starvation, and every emotion on the spectrum and managed to stay married for decades after. It’s an unbelievable story masterfully told. —Rebecca Joines Schinsky
All access members continue below for more of the best nonfiction books of 2025.
One Day Day Everyone WIll Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
This is more than a book; this is a time capsule recording the visceral horror many of us in the U.S. and Western world at large felt as we bore witness to and were complicit in genocide. Omar El Akkad applied his first-hand experience, historical precedent, and journalistic reporting skills to the war in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinians, stepping away from fiction to write his first nonfiction book from a response that rang out across the digital world: “One day, everyone will have always been against this.” This powerful reckoning has become a bestseller and is a finalist for a National Book Award. —S. Zainab Williams
Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya
Bibliophobia is the must-read memoir of 2025. From its first pages, we understand how much Chihaya loves books. They’ve been with her throughout her life, especially in the times she’s deeply struggled with her mental health. Each chapter centers around a book or a handful of books that have changed her life. As she writes in her chapter on Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, books have ruined her life in the best possible way. And Chihaya knows who her audience is; she even includes a list of texts in the beginning of the book so her readers can easily reference her favorite titles.
Sucker Punch by Scaachi Koul
Essayist and cultural critic Scaachi Koul knocks it out of the park with her new essay collection. Much of Sucker Punch follows Koul through her divorce, including all the ups and downs of the relationship before and after she and her partner broke up. Koul presents readers with a complex portrait of her marriage, both the highs and the lows. Her prose is sharp, funny, and endearing all at once. She makes sincerity a supreme virtue, one we should aspire to with its blunt truths about the realities of messy relationships. Sucker Punch is a beautifully crafted collection that shines as one of the standout nonfiction titles of the year.
You can find me over on my substack Winchester Ave, over on Instagram @kdwinchester, or on my podcast Read Appalachia. As always, feel free to drop me a line at kendra.d.winchester@gmail.com. For even MORE bookish content, you can find my articles over on Book Riot.
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