BIPOC Books to Gift This Year

Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid Heat is a must-have for any chef. I’ve been eagerly waiting for her next cookbook, and it’s finally here! Good Things is centered around joyful and communal meals, with over 125 recipes to share with someone you love. —Andy Minshew

Pakistani food is as varied as the cultures that make up its people. With over 100 recipes, Pakistan features incredible curries, chutneys, sauces, and spiced vegetables. The book itself is gorgeous, with stunning photography and the perfect cover.

Jillani, who grew up in Islamabad, introduces each section with short essays about her personal connection to the recipes she presents. Her writing is full of stories of her family and how the food she makes reminds her of home. —Kendra Winchester

There is no book more urgent than El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, and the gravity, intensity, and horror of the atrocities being hurled against Palestinians deserve an entire book written by someone with his breadth of journalistic and personal experience. This is the first text to articulate what it means to witness the mass slaughtering of innocents in Gaza and to feel complicit and powerless as it happens in a way that resonated with me and so many people. “One day, everyone will have always been against this” is an ominous phrase I’ve encountered again and again since El Akkad tweeted it and then published a book deepening that thought. It’s a phrase that, I fear, will echo across time. —S. Zainab Williams

From the author of The Turner House comes this sweeping novel of female friendship. Five Black women—Desiree, Danielle, Monique, January, and Nakia—have a 20-year friendship that sees them through their 20’s and beyond. Desiree and Danielle are the sisters of the group, who still manage to become estranged at some point; Monique goes viral for calling out the injustice at her university; January gets pregnant by a man she only feels so-so about; and Nakia wants to pour into her restaurant, no matter how doubtful her upper middle-class family is about it. Through the decades, the women’s friendship rides the waves of moments of economic instability, a wounded environment, and fractured politics—question is, how does their friendship weather all these things? If it weathers them at all. —Erica Ezeifedi

This book seemed to be on everyone’s mind throughout the Book World. Here’s what our Chief of Staff had to say about it:

In the near future in Kolkata, India, a family prepares to immigrate to the United States as climate refugees. When a thief breaks into their home in search of food, his life becomes inextricably entwined with theirs as, over the course of one week, they all struggle to survive with their hope and humanity intact. It’s a powerful story made all the more urgent by Majumdar’s use of subtle, specific details and masterfully restrained writing. Nominated for the Kirkus Prize and National Book Award for Fiction, this is a story about a specific moment in history that will resonate for years to come. —Rebecca Joines Schinsky

The king of Southern noir is back—this time with a book inspired by The Godfather. Roman Carruthers travels home after his father gets in a car accident, only to find things in shambles. His younger brother Dante owes dangerous men money, and his sister Neveah is barely holding the family business—a crematorium—together. Then he finds out that his dad’s accident wasn’t really accidental; it was a result of Dante’s foolishness. Real mobsters are out and about, and Roman has to use his talent for numbers to pull his family out of a hole. Meanwhile, his sister sets out to try to find out what happened to their mother, who disappeared many years ago. —Erica Ezeifedi

This hell-set novel’s stenciled edges are deliciously dark and on-theme.

Here’s what Book Riot writer Liberty Hardy had to say about it:

Here it finally is, one of the most anticipated books of 2025! Following up on the dark academia fantasy Babel, this new standalone novel follows two students going through hell—literally. Alice and Peter are rivals at Cambridge, but they’ll have to work together to rescue their professor from Hell after he dies in an accident. Partly because they need his recommendation to advance their careers, and partly because his death might be Alice’s fault.

Talasyn and Alaric are on opposite sides of a war, and both represent the clashing forces that began it. Talasyn is brimming with light magic, while Alaric is heir to the Night Empire. When the two are thrust together in an arranged marriage, they have to figure out how to exist in the same room without killing each other. The Hurricane Wars are bigger than both of them, and they both have to find a way to end it. The sprayed and stenciled special edition of the first book shows the battle between light and dark. The second book in the series, Monsoon Rising, also has a special edition. —Julia Rittenberg

Jazmina Barrera apparently didn’t set out to write this book. She intended to write a short essay about Elena Garro, the influential Mexican novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter, and OG of the magical realism movement. But the more she researched Garro via traditional methods, the less she felt like she understood her subject. Barrera embarked on a journey to truly see the author in all of her complexity, and the result is this book. It’s billed as more than a biography, as an alternate history of Mexico City and an “homage to the unknowable.” —Vanessa Diaz

Legendary author Arundhati Roy writes about her experience growing up with a single mother in Kerala, India. Her mother, Mary, passed away in 2022, and Roy was startled by the depth of her grief. She began to write about her mother “to be able to continue to love her.”

Roy’s relationship with her mother was complicated, but this first memoir from the acclaimed writer is a stunning rumination of grieving and the messiness of truly loving someone. —Kendra Winchester