Seattle Staff Faves 2025: Fiction, Part 2
Every year we ask our staff across the system for their favorite books published in a given year. Like last year, we needed two parts to accommodate all of the adult fiction our staff read! Enjoy this variety of fiction staff favorites, with annotations by staff members or as noted. (Created November 2025)
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Unsex Me Here
"Mattia is one of the most lush and descriptive writers I've ever read. You have to go slowly to really take in all the gorgeous language—I learned so many new words! She is truly writing a new queer mythology."--Eliza S.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Wild Dark Shore
The reality of climate change serves as the pervasive context for this terrific thriller set on a remote island between Australia and Antarctica. (Kirkus Reviews)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Sympathy for Wild Girls
A debut collection of surreal, skin-piercing stories about the boundless longing of queer Black women. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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The Bewitching
A graduate student studying an obscure horror author is visited by a haunting of her own. (Kirkus Reviews)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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This Is Not A Game
On stormy Mackinac Island, widower Mimi and her heartbroken granddaughter Addie attend a socialite’s charity auction, only to uncover blackmail, murder and a dangerous game that tests their wits as they race to outsmart a killer trapped with them. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Automatic Noodle
In this semicozy tale set in a dystopian near future, robots open their own restaurant, build an unusual found family, and achieve personal growth. (Kirkus Reviews)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Nesting
Ciara Fay is confronted by new challenges when she tries to leave her marriage and start over. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Death of the Author
After being fired and facing yet another novel rejection, aspiring author Zelu writes a futuristic epic about AI and robots, unknowingly setting herself on a path to literary stardom that could change the future of humanity. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses
A poison-pen campaign turns deadly in Older’s third volume transplanting the classic British mystery to the atmosphere of Jupiter. (Kirkus Reviews)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Luminous
A sweeping debut set in a unified Korea tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood. (NoveList Plus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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