PEOPLE’s Best Books of February 2025: Geraldine Brooks’ Moving Memoir and More

Our favorite new winter reads — including fiction, thrillers and celebrity memoirs

Penguin Random House; Penguin Random House; The Dial Press A selection of PEOPLE's picks for the best books of Feb. 2025

An uplifting memoir, a delightfully New York marriage and plucky historical fiction — see PEOPLE's picks for the best books of February 2025, so far.

'Memorial Days' by Geraldine Brooks

After her beloved husband, Tony Horwitz — like Brooks, a foreign correspondent turned bestselling author — died suddenly in 2019, she found herself too preoccupied with practicalities to grieve. In 2023, she returned to her native Australia to deal with her loss by writing the story of his life and death as well as the healing solitude she found on Flinders Island. Warm and life-affirming, this brilliant book has its own restorative beauty. — Marion Winik

'This Is a Love Story' by Jessica Soffer

When writer Abe met painter Jane in Central Park, they fell hard. Now, as Jane is dying, the couple savor their decades-long devotion — to art and each other — even as they reckon with what it has cost them. A touching romance that’s also an ode to the urban oasis where it began. — Kim Hubbard

'Isola' by Allegra Goodman

Sixteenth-century French noblewoman Marguerite got stuck with a lousy guardian. He steals her fortune, brings her to the New World, then abandons her on an island. Marguerite’s grit and (slightly improbable) feminist instincts will keep you cheering for her. — Kim Hubbard

'Listen to Your Sister' by Neena Viel

What happens when oldest-daughter syndrome takes a dark turn? This twisted love letter to family uses humor to look at race, trauma and parentification. Think Get Out in book form. — McKenzie Jean-Philippe

'The Snowbirds' by Christina Clancy

Kim and Grant swap winter in Wisconsin for Palm Springs to heal their stale marriage — but things go very wrong when Grant doesn't return from a hike. A riveting exploration of midlife yearning. — Robin Micheli

'The Lamb' by Lucy Rose

Not for readers with weak stomachs, this gleefully gruesome tale follows a mother-daughter pair who prey on lost tourists until one of them decides she’s sick of their lifestyle. Femgore at its finest.

'This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light' by Allison Holker

Holker, whose husband Stephen "tWitch" Boss died by suicide in December 2022, reflects on the devastating loss, as well as her own childhood, professional dance career and path forward, in this vulnerable memoir.

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