Lifestyle
Here are 8 novels NPR staff and critics loved in 2025
With more than 200 fiction titles in our annual Books We Love guide, it’s tough to narrow our 2025 favorites down into one single-digit list. But there are always a few standouts, and in the picks below you’ll find a little bit of everything that we enjoyed this year: romance, fantasy and sci-fi, oh my!
Curious about the rest of our fiction recommendations? Head to the full Books We Love site to browse hundreds of selections from 2025, and thousands from years past.
Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Fans of Taylor Jenkins Reid will agree that Atmosphere is one of her best books yet. This thrilling fictional portrayal of NASA’s space shuttle program in the 1980s doesn’t miss. It opens with Joan in Mission Control managing a catastrophe on the shuttle. Then readers flash back almost five years to learn how each of the astronauts earned their place on the mission. The novel is immediately complex, compelling and high stakes. I recommend listening on audiobook so readers don’t destroy a paper copy with tears. Themes include sexism in the workplace, LGBTQ relationships and found family. — Jenna Molster, manager, Rights and Permissions
The Dream Hotel, by Laila Lalami
Archivist and mother Sara T. Hussein gets detained at an airport. Her crime? A dream deemed too high risk by an AI algorithm. Writing incisively, Laila Lalami brilliantly builds a world where a pre-crime system collides with surveillance capitalism. With the novel’s compelling cast of characters and endless parallels to today, I found The Dream Hotel instructive for navigating a society beset by mass surveillance – where the only escape can be found in shouldering risk together. — Emily Kwong, host, Short Wave and Inheriting
The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow
First things first, The Everlasting is not a book you’re going to get over easily. It’s razor sharp and designed to cut you deeply. You’ll be moved, you’ll probably cry, and by the end you’ll say thank you for delivering my suffering so beautifully. This story follows a scholar and a mythical (lady) knight who have lived the same story countless times – caught in a historical time loop. It’s a book about storytelling, and how nationalism cannot exist without the support of a well-told myth. It’s a thrashing examination of how we choose our heroes. And, most importantly, it’s a love story – about two people who learn over and over again that they’re doomed in every possible way but still choose each other anyway. What exquisite agony, wonderfully delivered. — Kalyani Saxena, associate producer, Here & Now
Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry
Journalist Alice Scott has stumbled upon what just might be her big break – a shot at writing the biography of a tragic heiress and onetime tabloid princess turned recluse no one has seen in years. But to win the book contract, Alice must compete with Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Hayden Anderson. As Alice and Hayden continue to bump into each other on the fictional Little Crescent Island off the Georgia coast, they begin to see beneath the personas both portray to the outside world, and sparks fly. This is a story about romance, but also about family, secrets and betrayal. — Rachel Baye, editor, NPR Politics Podcast
King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby
Family secrets are something and in this Southern crime drama, they burn! When Roman Carruthers’ elderly father is incapacitated by the local drug gang, this prodigal son returns to set things right and protect his hapless younger brother and his hardworking sister. She needs help keeping the family crematorium business going. Know what’s good for getting rid of a body you don’t want around? A crematorium! Roman gets pulled in deeper and deeper as he tries to take down the gang from the inside, just as his sister thinks she’s uncovered the mystery of what really happened to their long-missing mother. This story spins and spins violently to a dark and satisfying conclusion. — Melissa Gray, senior producer, Weekend Edition
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
The South, by Tash Aw
At times, Tash Aw’s The South evokes the quiet intensity of Chekhov. It explores the contradictions within a Malaysian family: generational divides, subtle tensions around sexuality, and class differences – set against the backdrop of late-1990s Malaysia during the Asian financial crisis. At its heart is Jay Lim, a teenager navigating desire and identity amid the disarray of a failing family farm. This coming-of-age novel, longlisted for the Booker Prize, is the first in a planned quartet. It’s a strong opening, and a compelling reason to anticipate the Lim family’s journey in the volumes to come. — Vincent Ni, Asia editor, International Desk
Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins
Rebel plots, bootleg liquor, underdog alliances and Edgar Allan Poe-try all await you in the latest addition to the Hunger Games universe. Sunrise on the Reaping is the long-awaited account of Haymitch Abernathy’s path to victory during the 50th annual Hunger Games. With double the number of children sent into the arena and appearances from a cast of familiar characters, this book provides an entirely new perspective on the history of Panem. While Haymitch’s victory at the the end of this book is not a surprise, the stakes still feel higher than ever in the small wins and losses that Haymitch and his loved ones face both in, and outside, the arena. — Dhanika Pineda, assistant producer, NPR Music
Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy
A father and his three (teen and tween) kids live, not exactly harmoniously, on a sinking research island off Antarctica. It’s home to the world’s biggest seed vault and no other humans – until a mysterious woman washes ashore in a storm. Suspicions arise and trust is tested as the family helps the woman regain her strength. Wild Dark Shore is a thrilling page-turner, but all the action and suspense disguise something deeper: a beautiful meditation on love, loss and resilience in the face of climate change. — Rachel Treisman, reporter, General Assignment
This is just a fraction of the 380+ titles we included in Books We Love this year. Click here to check out this year’s titles, or browse nearly 4,000 books from the last 13 years.
Lifestyle
Jewelry Among the Exhibits at a Daniel Brush Retrospective
Nearly four years after his death, a retrospective of the multidisciplinary work by the self-taught American artist Daniel Brush — encompassing sculpture, paintings and jewelry in materials as diverse as steel, Bakelite and gold — is scheduled to open June 8 at the Paris location of L’Ecole, School of Jewelry Arts.
“Daniel Brush: The Art of Line and Light” will be the fifth time that L’Ecole has exhibited the artist’s work. But its president, Lise Macdonald, said she believed Mr. Brush’s legacy warranted repeated consideration: “He is a very niche artist, but he is excellent — really one of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st century.”
The diversity of his creations has been part of his appeal, she said. “We don’t really consider him as purely a jeweler but more a protean artist where jewelry was part of his approach.”
L’Ecole Paris, which operates in an 18th-century mansion in the Ninth Arrondissement and is supported by Van Cleef & Arpels, has prepared programming to complement the show, from conversations with experts on Mr. Brush’s work (to be held on site and streamed online) to jewelry-making workshops for children. Details of the free exhibition and the events are on the school’s website; the show is scheduled to end Oct. 4.
The exhibition is to include more than 75 pieces, which span much of Mr. Brush’s five-decade career. They have been selected by Olivia Brush, his wife and collaborator, and by Vivienne Becker, a jewelry historian and author who said she first met the couple more than 30 years ago. Some exhibits, they said, have never been seen by the public before.
Ms. Becker, who wrote the 2019 monograph “Daniel Brush: Jewels Sculpture,” said the artist had possessed vast knowledge of the history of jewelry and shared her belief that jewels “answer a very important, very basic human impulse to adorn — that it’s essential to customs, beliefs, and ceremonies around the world.” She also has written a book documenting the L’Ecole exhibition — and with the same title — that examines the artist’s preoccupation with the themes of light and line.
“He loved the idea of making a real, intransigent, opaque metal into something that was almost translucent, or transparent,” said Ms. Becker, citing as an example a trio of bangles made in 2009 to 2010 that are called the “Rings of Infinity.” The lines that he engraved on the aluminum pieces functioned, she explained, to “elevate the jewel from a trinket to a great, great work of art.”
A series of engraved steel panels titled “Thinking About Monet” used the interplay of line and light to achieve a different effect, she said. Mr. Brush made individual strokes in tight formation on the panels, producing gently rippling surfaces whose color changes with shifting light conditions.
The effect “is really hard to understand. I couldn’t,” Ms. Becker said. “So many people ask, ‘Are they tinted? Are they colored?’ It’s absolutely nothing. It’s just the breaking of the light.”
Though Mr. Brush was a widely acknowledged master of skills such as granulation, the application of tiny gold balls to a metal surface, both Ms. Brush and Ms. Becker said the exhibition’s goal was not to highlight his virtuosity — nor, Ms. Becker said, was that ever a concern of Mr. Brush’s. “He didn’t want to talk about the technique at all,” she said. “Technique has to just be a means to an end. He just wanted people to be amazed, to have a sense of wonder again.”
The works selected for the L’Ecole exhibition reflect his range, which veered from diamond-set Bakelite brooches inspired by animal crackers to a steel and gold orb meant to be an object of contemplation. “He didn’t want to have boundaries,” Ms. Brush said. “He wanted to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.”
The couple met as students at what is now called Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and her 1967 wedding ring was the first jewel that Mr. Brush made.
All of Mr. Brush’s works were one-of-a-kind creations, completed from start to finish by him in the New York City loft that served as a workshop as well as a family home. Photographs of the space, which contained a library with titles on the eclectic subjects that preoccupied him — Chinese history, Byzantine art, Impressionist painting — and the antique machinery that inspired him and that he used to make his tools, are featured in the exhibition and reproduced in Ms. Becker’s book.
Ms. Brush is a fiber artist in her own right, but Mr. Brush also frequently credited her as an equal participant on pieces bearing his name. “I did not physically make the work,” she explained, “but the work would not have evolved or happened the way it did if it were not for the way we lived our lives,” she said.
Lifestyle
Thanks to ‘Mormon Wives,’ Dirty Soda Is a National Obsession
The first time Pop’s Social, a catering company in South Orange, N.J., that specializes in dirty soda, served an alcoholic drink at an event, something strange happened.
At the event in December, its nonalcoholic offering, a spiced pear-cider seltzer with vanilla and peach syrups, cream, lemon and cold foam, was a hit. The Prosecco-spiked version? Not so much.
“People were more interested in the mocktail than the cocktail,” Ali Greenberg, an owner of the business, said in an interview.
Dirty soda — a customizable blend of soda, flavored syrup, creamer and sometimes fruit, served over pebble ice — has been crossing into the mainstream for years, especially after the cast of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the hit reality show that premiered in 2024, frequented Swig, the Utah chain that started it all.
But its reach has gone far beyond the Mormon corridor, and its rise in popularity has dovetailed with an overall decline in U.S. alcohol consumption. “There’s not a lot of Mormon people in our neighborhood,” said Greenberg. “But there are a lot of people who are sober-curious or not drinking.”
The reality show, which follows a group of Mormon influencers in Utah, helped popularize dirty soda beyond the Mountain States and inspired a wave of TikTok videos on the subject. Swig rapidly expanded — growing from 33 locations in Utah and Arizona in 2021 to now more than 150 locations in 16 states — along with other Utah chains, and spawned copycats nationwide.
Dirty soda has joined other Mormon cultural exports, like tradwife influencers, a “Real Housewives” franchise in Salt Lake City and Taylor Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette who wasn’t, that have captivated America.
With the recent rollouts of dirty soda at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ — behold the Dunkin’ Dirty Soda: Pepsi, coffee milk and cold foam — and the appearance on grocery shelves of Dirty Mountain Dew and a coconut-lime Coffee Mate creamer for homemade dirty sodas, we may have reached peak dirty.
The idea for dirty soda came out of a desire for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has millions of followers in Utah and surrounding states, to have more options for social drinking, as the church prohibits the consumption of alcohol, hot coffee and hot caffeinated tea.
When Swig introduced dirty soda in 2010, it filled a need, providing a pick-me-up for car-pooling moms and an after-school treat for their kids. It was quickly adopted by many in the community.
“In other cultures, parents go, they pick up their coffee in the morning, and for me and for a lot of my other friends’ parents, it was, ‘Let’s go pick up our dirty soda,’” Whitney Leavitt, a breakout star of “Mormon Wives,” said in an interview.
Leavitt was surprised when her dirty soda order became a recurring question from reporters in recent years. “They were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks to make whatever your go-to dirty soda is,” Leavitt said. (Hers is sparkling water with sugar-free pineapple, sugar-free peach and sugar-free vanilla syrups, raspberry purée, a squeeze of lime, and fresh mint if she’s “feeling really fancy.”)
In April, Leavitt became the chief creative and brand officer at Cool Sips, a beverage chain based in New York that sells dirty sodas.
“Mormon Wives” inspired Kaitlyn Sturm, a 26-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., to post recipes for dirty sodas on her TikTok. The one she makes the most contains Coke or Dr Pepper, homemade cherry syrup, a glug of coconut creamer and a packet of True Lime crystallized lime powder, which she combines in a pasta-sauce jar filled with pebble ice. “It kind of has become like a ritual, where I make one for my husband as well, and we have it most evenings,” Sturm said in an interview.
The trend has also hit fast-food menus. The new “crafted soda” menu at McDonald’s is riddled with dirty soda DNA. The Dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla flavoring and a cold-foam topper, is the chain’s version of what has shaped up to be the universal dirty soda flavor. Since 2024, Sonic, beloved for its porous, soda-absorbing pebble ice, has offered “dirty” drinks — your choice of soda plus coconut syrup, sweet cream and lime.
These drinks might feel new, but there are antecedents in the Italian sodas of the ’90s (fizzy water and a pump of Torani syrup); the Shirley Temple (ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and maraschino cherries); and the egg cream, a tonic of seltzer, chocolate syrup and milk. And what is a dirty Dr Pepper with cold foam if not a descendant of the root beer float? “It’s just a soda fountain from 125 years ago,” Kara Nielsen, a food and beverage trend forecaster, said in an interview.
Though Leavitt moved to New York City with her family in December, her dirty soda ritual has remained consistent, with one key difference. “In Utah, we don’t get to walk to dirty soda shops,” Leavitt said. “We have to drive there.”
Lifestyle
Chaos Gardening: A Laid-Back Way to Garden
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
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