Best Books to Read in May 2025, According to OverDrive’s Digital Librarians
May is a spectacular month for new titles and we’ve rounded them all up for you. Many blockbuster fiction titles from old guard authors like Nora Roberts, Michael Connelly, Carl Hiaasen, Isabel Allende, Fredrik Backman and Stephen King are joined by a great crop of nonfiction titles like Barry Diller’s autobiography and Ron Chernow’s biography of Mark Twain. May includes bestselling children’s titles as well, including Jimmy Fallon’s million copy Papa Doesn’t Do Anything. See below for all the lists you need in order to adequately cover one of the biggest publishing months of the year.
Shop the Top Titles of May list here.
Featured Titles
Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From your OverDrive DCL:
Billed as The Witcher meets Cinderella, this romantasy has a 500K print run. A reluctant princess is chosen to fulfill the terms of an ancient treaty and finds herself traveling with an infamous monster slayer.
One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From your OverDrive DCL:
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by TODAY, E! News, Us Weekly and others, this is a prototypical beach read by the NY Times bestselling author Carley Fortune. She introduces us to a photographer accustomed to living behind the lens or on the sidelines, and what happens when she joins her grandmother at the lake where she spent her seventeenth summer. 750k print run.
Shop the Blockbusters of May list here.
Featured Title(s)
Hidden Nature by Nora Roberts
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
Perpetual blockbuster author Nora Roberts has another million-copy title coming out May 27. Sloan, a natural resources police officer is shot during a robbery at a convenience store. With a long recovery ahead, she moves back to her parents’ peaceful house in Heron’s Rest. But when a woman vanishes, leaving her car behind in a supermarket parking lot, Sloan searches online for similar cases and finds them—spread across three states. It will take every ounce of her endurance to solve this bizarre case.
Speak to Me of Home by Jeanine Cummins
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From your OverDrive DCL:
The bestselling author of American Dirt is back with a deeply felt multigenerational family story that takes us from Puerto Rico in 1968 to the American Midwest in 2023… and back again. This is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters that asks: How can three women who share geography and genetics have such wildly different ideas of where they come from? And, more important, can they discover a common language to find their way back home?
From the publisher.
For those who remember the controversy about the author’s heritage and whether she could authentically write about Mexico, Puerto Rico is where her actual roots lie.
Shop the Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month list here.
Featured Titles
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
A bighearted novel about an unlikely pair—the young man who is convinced not to kill himself by an elderly widow succumbing to dementia. He becomes her caretaker and they develop a life-altering bond with the power to transform his relationship to himself, his family, and his community.
Umma: A Korean Mon’s Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes by Nam Soon Ahn, America’s Test Kitchen
Buy the ebook here
From the publisher:
Learn Korean cooking alongside social media star Sarah Ahn as her umma passes down 100+ family recipes and decades’ worth of kitchen wisdom. The viral food videos of her and her mom have captivated millions of viewers with their behind-the-scenes look at Korean cooking and multigenerational home life.
Never Flinch by Stephen King
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From your OverDrive DCL:
In his new novel, master storyteller Stephen King brings back his beloved private detective Holly Gibney who was also featured in Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, End of Watch, The Outsider, If It Bleeds, and Holly.
Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature.
Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
Another instant classic from Carl Hiaasen—laugh-out-loud funny, tackling the current chaotic and polarized American culture with two hilarious Hiaasen heroes who take us into into the depths of Florida at its most Floridian: a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed, and corruption.
A Gentleman of Questionable Judgment by Grace Burrowes
Buy the ebook here
From your OverDrive DCL:
Burrowes is a highly successful bestselling self-published author of library favorite historical romance novels. She returns in May with a new Lord Julian Mystery set in the Regency period. The wrong horses start winning and losing during a race meeting, but Lord Julian can’t seem to figure out who is rigging the races or how.
The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of two Oprah Book Club Picks—She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True—Wally Lamb—comes the propulsive story of a young father who, after an unbearable tragedy, reckons with the possibility of atonement for the unforgivable. His first novel since 2016.
An Unexpected Grace by Tracie Peterson and Kimberley Woodhouse
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
Two well-known Christian Fiction authors join forces for this one. Actor Parker Bennett returns home after ten years and reunites with his first love, widowed Johanna St. John, who is juggling life as a mother and businesswoman. Just as Parker and Johanna believe they have a second chance at love, strange things start happening that threaten their chance at a new beginning together.
Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
Mary Alice Monroe is a bestselling author who seems to write the best book club titles.
1988: Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She’s fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield, the grand estate in the Lowcountry of South Carolina held for generations by her family. She is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family—or watch them both be split apart.
My Name Is Emilia Del Valle by Isabel Allende
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
In this spellbinding historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father—and herself. In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman bent on meeting her real father despite the war in Chile.
Papa Doesn’t Do Anything! by Jimmy Fallon
Buy the ebook here
From the publisher:
The host of NBC’s The Tonight Show and #1 New York Times bestselling author, is back with a book for grandfathers. It may seem like PAPA doesn’t do ANYTHING but sit in his chair. But he does so much more! From flying a plane to playing in a band, there’s so much this PAPA has done. But through all the things he’s accomplished in his life, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you.
Shop the Top Mystery/Thrillers of May list here.
Featured Title
Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From the publisher:
The stars of the bestselling The Magpie Murders and Th Moonflower Murders are back. Editor Susan Ryeland had left Greece for a new life back in England where her freelance assignment from a London publisher has her working on a a novel with Eliot Crace, the grandson of a legendary children’s author who died twenty years ago. Eliot is convinced his grandmother was poisoned. When Eliot deliberately conceals clues about his grandmother’s death in the novel, Susan tries to prevent him from putting himself in harm’s way. But another murder follows and Susan finds herself to be the number one suspect.
Shop Top Romance of May here
The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren
Buy the ebook here
Buy the audiobook here
From your OverDrive DCL:
Liam, a Stanford professor, won’t see a penny from his grandfather’s will until he’s happily married for five years. Fortunately, he married Anna, who is now a starving artist, while they were in college—as a ruse to get her into subsidized housing. They haven’t seen each other in three years, and she thinks they were divorced. But now, Liam has to take his paint-spattered, feisty, foul-mouthed so-called wife to a huge family wedding. Can she play the part? And is it worth risking the true love that began with a lie?
More Recommended May Lists You Don’t Want to Miss
- Top Fantasy of May
- Top Self-Published Titles of May
- Top Historical Fiction of May
- May Starred Reviews
- New Titles from Canadian Publishers
- Our OverDrive Librarians Love Essays
If you ever need help shopping, you can always email your Digital Content Librarian! Find your DCL in the SUPPORT tab of Marketplace.
