10 Small Press Standouts of 2025

From the first contact between European and indigenous people to the present fight, the latest “stunning” work from the Andrew Carnegie Medal-winning author of The Berry Pickers captures resilience in the face of oppression, from a young man that loses his language after residential school to a mother who finds healing as a water protector. “Written in a woven style, integrating past and present, the stories often end at deft, surprising, and important moments,” observed Booklist. “Peters' award-winning debut created an audience ready for anything she writes, and they won't be disappointed by her memorable stories."

The acclaimed Famished Road author’s latest follows a group of lovelorn British couples at a masked ball in the south of France, where a fortune teller forces them to confront their pasts and reconsider their futures in this highly-anticipated novel that’s filled with “delightfully theatrical twists and a satisfying resolution,” according to Publishers Weekly.

These dark, meditative short stories set on opposite sides of the country explore themes of love, marriage, motherhood, friendship, artistic ambition, restiveness, and shame with a blend of humor, insight and wisdom that prompted Publishers Weekly to declare: “Vallianatos shines in this wide-ranging collection.”

This radiant New Directions edition, with a brilliant introduction by author Rachel Kushner, gathers the Brazilian literary icon’s most beloved stories, including “The Smallest Woman in the World,” “Love,” and “The Egg and the Chicken.” Lispector’s luminous ability to capture life’s small, revelatory moments is unparalleled, and this fizzing, portable volume distills her genius into a collection that’s as transformative as it is timeless.

After a dejected obituary writer drunkenly publishes his own obituary, his life takes an unexpected and uplifting turn. Mistakenly listed as "dead" in the company system and unable to be fired, he begins attending strangers' funerals to discover what makes a life worth living. A touching comedy about finding purpose when you've been given a second chance.

The prize-winning Irish author of Where They Were Missed whisks readers to war-ravaged Belfast in 1941, where two sisters try to carry on amid the bombing and the rubble. SJP hailed this “intimate celebration of sisterhood and a moving tribute to childhoods cut short by war. Rich in voice and beautifully rooted in place, Lucy Caldwell's characters leap from the page in all their joy and devastation. The result is a novel of stunning ambition."

Featured in Vogue’s best books of 2025, this “moving depiction of the impressionistic emotional lessons of childhood” from the Lost actor and host of the Bookish podcast follows a daughter in Los Angeles reflecting on a tumultuous childhood and her larger-than-life father, a polo-playing Argentine bon vivant whose highs and lows left an indelible mark on her life.

In this gripping, fast-paced novel written by a Yellowstone River fly-fishing guide, two brothers on the edge of ruin make a desperate gamble to survive in Montana’s unforgiving wilderness. “One of the best and fiercest heist stories since A Simple Plan,” raves Junot Díaz. “Beartooth is unstoppable, the literary treasure you’ve been looking for.”

In these five short stories from the We Don't Know What We're Doing author, a boy's first football match is complicated by family and magic; a young man's vacation comes under threat from a dark visitor, and a family of seahorses struggles to understand their place in the world. "Across the collection, the clarity and feeling with which Morris writes about south Wales, and his broader commitment to using short fiction to examine a place and its people, put me in mind of James Joyce's landmark 1914 collection Dubliners," hailed the Financial Times.

The latest thought-provoking work from this esteemed public intellectual and CNN political analyst challenges the widespread belief that party loyalty is the root of our democratic dysfunction. Instead, the Myth America and Burning Down the House author revisits healthier political eras from America’s past while envisioning a future where two accountable parties can uphold the nation’s divisions while still governing effectively.