The best debuts of 2025, and all time

Eva is sixteen and living in Brooklyn when she meets super-rich Upper East-Sider Jamie in the hospital her grandmother is dying in. So begins this coming-of-age debut novel from short story writer Clare Sestanovich. As Eva goes to university, and falls in and out of love, Jamie spirals away from her into a world of radical politics and religion. But they're both looking for the same thing: a way to define themselves and their beliefs in a divided and unjust world. 

Garrett Carr's debut takes us to Ireland's west coat in the 1970s, where a baby is found alone on the beach. Adopted by fisherman Ambrose Bonnar, the boy captivates Bonnar's family and the close-knit town immediately, through love, worry and envy. Set over twenty years, this is a tale of ordinary lives made extraordinary, and a quiet community attempting to adapt in a fast-changing world.

Two competing stories – and genres – combine to peel back the nature of grief in this startlingly original novel. When Benjamin dies at his own birthday party, Abigail's world is quite literally split in two. On one side, she attempts to grasp the reality of her brother's death, while on the other everything is not quite what it seems: an eminent detective has arrived to track down the murderer, and there's suddenly a butler, a gardener and a locked-room mystery where everyone is a suspect.

If you like your literature bittersweet, funny and painfully relatable, this is the book for you. Maggie, Harley and Róise are friends on the brink: of triumph, catastrophe, or maybe just finally growing up. Their crumbling Belfast house share has been witness to their roaring twenties, but now fault-lines are beginning to show. The three girls are still grieving the tragic death of their friend, Lydia, whose room remains untouched. Their last big fight hangs heavy over their heads, unspoken since the accident. And now they are all beginning to unravel.

A shocking act of violence brings long-held resentments and rivalries to the surface in Hal Ebbott's elegant debut. Amos and Emerson have had an unbreakable friendship for over thirty years. Their wives are close. Their daughters grew up together. They're enjoying a wealthy middle age. But now their worlds have been shattered and each must choose whom and what they love most.

Cormac McCarthy was one of America’s finest and most celebrated authors, with over ten books to his name across a career spanning nearly sixty years. If you’re a fan, you’ll know McCarthy wrestles with the dark aspects of America’s past and present - but have you travelled all the way back to his earliest classic? McCarthy’s first book, The Orchard Keeper, is a standalone novel, set in a small, remote community in rural Tennessee in the 1920’s. Winner of the Faulkner Foundation Award for the best first novel, this book has earned a place among literary giants. 

Can you honestly say you love literary fiction if you haven’t read a book by Emma Donoghue? You’ve probably read Room, a beloved novel-turned blockbusting film, but her first novel, Stir Fry, is equally poignant, and will stay with you long after the final page. This insightful coming-of-age story explores love between women and probes feminist ideas of sisterhood. There’s nothing like reading an author's entire body of work, especially one that is so sparklingly diverse and has been adapted for the screen not once, but twice, with The Wonder out on Netflix on 16 November.

You’ve probably read or at least heard about the award-winning A Little Life, by Hanya Yanahigara. But you can’t be a true admirer if you haven’t read her first, debut novel, The People in the Trees, which marked her as a remarkable new voice in American fiction. It is 1950, when Norton Perina, a young doctor, embarks on an expedition to a remote Micronesian island where he encounters a strange tribe of forest dwellers who appear to have attained a form of immortality. We know that Hanya Yanaghiara has a way with words that can puncture you emotionally, and this all began with the haunting, but bewitching, The People in the Trees.

Charles Dickens’ era-defining novels undoubtedly belong in a list of the best books of all time. But we’re here to talk about The Pickwick Papers, his debut novel and a comic masterpiece which first brought this iconic writer to fame. Originally published in a series of magazine instalments, in novel form it is a hefty 1,080 pages, but you’ll be acquainted with some of fiction’s most endearing and memorable characters. It’s a classic, so you’ve got to give this work of literary invention your utmost attention if you haven’t already.

What would you change if you could go back in time? You’d read this novel when it was a bestseller in Japan in 2015 of course. . . Before the Coffee Gets Cold is the first book in this eponymous series about a coffee shop which offers its customers the chance to travel back in time. You’ll become captivated by four heartwarming characters as you follow their wistful attempts to change their respective pasts, whether that be seeing a loved one for one last time or confronting someone who did them wrong. An incredibly moving series that you have until September 2023 to become emotionally invested in, before the fourth adventure blesses our bookshelves.

Set in the golden city of Amsterdam, The Miniaturist is a historical novel with a strange secret at its heart. It’s 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Joannes Brant, who gifts her a cabinet-sized replica of their home. As she engages the services of a miniaturist, an elusive and enigmatic artist, his tiny creations start to mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways.

Jamaica Kincaid’s books are beloved for their honest exploration of colonial legacy, full of unapologetic passion and defiance. Her first work, At the Bottom of the River, is a selection of inter-connected prose poems told from the perspective of a young Afro-Caribbean girl. You’ll not forget the way Kincaid explores the nature of mother-daughter relationships, and the short prose style will leave you wanting more. We think you should get to know this unique and necessary literary voice, starting with At the Bottom of the River.

Years before American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis shocked, stunned and disturbed with his debut, a fierce coming-of-age novel about the casual nihilism that comes with youth and money. Less Than Zero is narrated by Clay, an eighteen-year-old student, whose story is filled with relentless drinking, wild, drug-fuelled parties and dispassionate sexual encounters. This unflinching depiction of hedonistic youth and the consequences of such moral depravity, is neither condoned or chastised by the author. Published when he was just twenty-one, this extraordinary and instantly infamous work has become a cult classic and a timeless embodiment of the zeitgeist.

No one can write quite like Jane Austen. Her six novels are famous for their witty social commentary of British society in the early 19th century. Sense and Sensibility, her first novel, features two sisters of opposing temperament and their respective approaches to love. This comedy of manners is the humorous history lesson everyone needs.

If you’ve not heard of Emily St. John Mandel before, the New York Times bestselling author of Station Eleven, you have an incredible list of books to look forward to, starting with her extraordinary debut, Last Night in Montreal. Lilia has been leaving people behind her entire life, moving from city to city, abandoning lovers and friends along the way. Gorgeously written, charged with tension and foreboding, Last Night in Montreal is a novel about identity, love and amnesia, the depths and limits of family bonds and — ultimately — about the nature of obsession. 

Inspired by actual events, Burial Rites is an astonishing and moving first novel that will transport you to Northern Iceland in 1829, where Agnes Magnúsdóttir is a woman condemned to death for her part in the murder of her lover. But all is not as it seems, and time is running out to uncover the truth – winter is coming, and with it is Agnes’ execution date. Hannah Kent announced her arrival into the literary space with this speculative biography and it's rare to find a debut novel as sophisticated and gripping as this one.