New
January Essentials
Farewell 2025, it’s been real. The beginning of a fresh year is a time to look back and reflect on the year’s best books while looking towards the future with resolutions, goal setting, and new reading challenges. Let’s kick off 2026 on a high note and take a look at some great new book releases for January. Check out our lists that you can shop in OverDrive Marketplace to make sure you have everything you need for your patrons to step into the new year.
Best Books of 2025
2025 was packed with so many great books, you and your patrons probably haven’t had a chance to tackle them all yet. It might even be a New Year’s resolution to catch up on some of the books you missed from last year. Even though there’s so much we’re excited about with the new year, this mega-list of everyone’s favorite “Best of 2025” lists has plenty of great picks for every reader!
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
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From your OverDrive DCL: Some books truly defy genre, making them a fit for nearly any reader as everyone will find something to draw them in. Wild Dark Shore accomplishes this feat, spanning from mystery and family drama to romance and cli-fi.
Dominic Salt and his three children live on Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. The island is home to the world’s largest seed bank, and with sea levels rising, the Salts remain the last inhabitants of the island to serve as its caretakers. That is, until a terrible storm results in a mystery woman washing ashore.
The Salts are ripped from their isolation as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to health. As she regains her strength and finds a comfortable place for herself on the island, and with each member of the family, she must grapple with the fact that she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. Rowan isn’t the only one with secrets though – as she discovers sabotaged radios and a fresh grave, she understands that Dominic is also keeping things from her.
With increasing storms, the islanders will have to decide if they can put their trust issues and past tragedies aside to fulfill their mission to protect the seeds before it’s too late. This is a novel of twists, beauty, and heartfelt humanity that explores timeless themes with a deft analysis of modern-day problems and anxieties.
New Year, New You
For all those readers who are gearing up to start their New Year’s resolutions, this list has something for everyone looking to learn and improve in 2026. From health and wellness to financial advice to hobbies and meditations, there’s something here for any reader looking for ways to grow.
What to Eat Now by Marion Nestle
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From the publisher: A thoroughly revised classic, What to Eat Now is a field guide to food shopping in America, and a treatise on how to eat well and deliciously.
What to Eat Now is a clear-eyed, no-nonsense guide to the most important food questions on our plate today. How do we make informed dietary choices for ourselves, our families, and our communities?
In the twenty years since Marion Nestle’s groundbreaking What to Eat first came out, food has undergone a radical change. The emergence of techno foods, the growth of corporate organics, and a surge of interest in food-delivery services reignited by the pandemic are just a few of the things that have altered how we think about how we eat.
The typical American supermarket carries more than thirty thousand products. How do you choose? Misinformation, disinformation, and corporate misdirection play a crucial and hard-to-see role in how the average shopper thinks about and chooses food.
In an aisle-by-aisle guide, Nestle, America’s preeminent nutritionist and a founding figure in American food studies, takes us through the American supermarket. With persistence, wit, and common sense, she establishes the basics of good nutrition, food safety, and ethical and sustainable eating, and gives readers a close-up look at the web of interests—from supermarket slotting policies to multinational food corporations to lobbying groups—that food has to navigate before it gets to your shopping basket.
Above all else, What to Eat Now is a defense of real food and of the value of eating deliciously, mindfully, and responsibly.
Top Titles of January
Vigil by George Saunders
From the publisher: An electric novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, taking place at the bedside of an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world into the next.
Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.
She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?
Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s postdeath future.
With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we’ve come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.
Top Mystery/Thriller of January
The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery
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From the publisher: Knives Out meets Downton Abbey! Secrets, murder, and mayhem collide as this unlikely sleuthing duo—an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogenarian—hunt a killer in a manor sealed against the end of the world, in this locked-room mystery by #1 New York Times bestselling author Ross Montgomery.
Cornwall, 1910. On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is absorbed in feverish preparations for the apocalypse that he believes will accompany the passing of Halley’s Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom—every window, chimney, and keyhole closed off before night falls. But what the pompous, dishonest Viscount has failed to take into account is the danger that lies within… By morning, he will be dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow.
All eyes turn to Stephen Pike, Tithe Hall’s newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn’t commit, he is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally? Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp as a tack, eighty-year-old family matriarch. Fearless and unconventional, she relishes chaos and puzzles alike, and a murder is just the thrill she’s been waiting for.
Together, this mismatched duo must navigate secret passages, buried grudges, and rising terror to unmask the killer before it’s too late…
Top Fantasy of January
The Elsewhere Express by Samatha Sotto Yambao
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From the publisher: You can’t buy a ticket for the Elsewhere Express. Appearing only to those whose lives are adrift, it’s a magical train seeming to carry very rare and special cargo: a sense of purpose, peace, and belonging.
Raya is one of those lost souls. She had dreamed of being a songwriter, but when her brother died, she gave up on her dream and started living his instead.
One day on the subway, as her thoughts wander, she’s swept off to the Elsewhere Express. There she meets Q, an intriguing artist who, like her, has lost his place in the world.
Together they find a train full of wonders, from a boarding car that’s also a meadow to a dining car where passengers can picnic on lily pads to a bar where jellyfish and whales swim through pink clouds.
Over the course of their long, strange night on the train, they also discover that it harbors secrets—and danger: A mysterious stranger has stowed away and brought with him a dark, malignant magic that threatens to destroy the train.
But in investigating the stowaway’s identity, Raya also finds herself drawing closer to the ultimate question: What is her life’s true purpose—and is it a destination the Elsewhere Express can take her to?
Top Historical Fiction of January
Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo
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From your OverDrive DCL: A book being described as “a feminist reimagining of Herman Melville’s classic Moby-Dick through the eyes of one inimitable woman and a diverse, swashbuckling crew”? Yes! A thousand times, yes!
Ishmaelle, a young woman born in coastal English, journeys west to Nantucket after the death of her parents and young sister. There she disguises herself as a man to join the crew of a whaling ship, the Nimrod. The ship is led by Captain Seneca, a Black free man with a tragic past who becomes obsessed with a white whale. This fresh new look at Melville’s classic, which earned a starred review from Kirkus, explores human nature, gender, our relationship to the natural world, and what home really means.
More Recommended Lists You Don’t Want to Miss
Top Self-Published Titles of January
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About the author: Claire has worked in publicity for the arts, public libraries, and archives. At OverDrive she helps public libraries manage their collections and creates lists of the hottest titles to help her partners shop and promote their collections to their patrons. When she isn’t reading she loves to run, try new recipes (while listening to an audiobook), plan her next road trip, or hang out with her two dogs and cat. Claire is always excited to talk about a good mystery or spooky books!