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Fantasy, mystery and psychological thriller series dominate the UK’s bestsellers list for 2025, topped by Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune. The fifth book in his Thursday Murder Club series secured the top position at 391,429 hardback sales.
Adult colouring also had a resurgence this year: colouring books aimed at all ages made it into the top 20 chart, according to analysis by NielsenIQ BookData.
Coming in behind Osman is Freida McFadden with the 2022 psychological thriller The Housemaid (the follow-up, The Housemaid’s Secret, also appears in the top 20), and in third place is Suzanne Collins’ prequel to The Hunger Games, Sunrise on the Reaping.
In literary fiction, the One Day author David Nicholls makes the top 20 with his romance You Are Here, along with Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky. In self-help, The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and her daughter has continued to dominate, shifting 218,919 copies in hardback this year.
Osman’s 2024 release, We Solve Murders, reached fourth on the chart. Close behind was Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm, the third book in her Empyrean fantasy romance series. Two earlier instalments, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, were also among the 20 bestselling books of the year. For the release of Onyx Storm, readers gathered in Waterstones across the country in January to attend late-night launch celebration parties. The romantasy author Sarah J Maas appeared in 10th place with A Court of Thorns and Roses, the first book in her acclaimed series.
Comedian Bob Mortimer’s The Hotel Avocado, the sequel to The Satsuma Complex, sold 210,116 paperbacks this year and was commended by Ella Risbridger in the Guardian as “totally affable and genuinely bonkers”. Lee Child and Andrew Child, Charlie Mackesy, Dan Brown, Kristin Hannah and Jamie Oliver also feature in the list.
Colouring books appear to be trending again as Coco Wyo’s Cozy Corner and Cozy Cuties, marketed to adults and children, made the top 15. The two books account for close to 500,000 sales this year.
“So many people have fallen for these beautiful colouring books because they provide people with a place to relax, unwind and get creative, away from screens,” said Fenella Bates, non-fiction publisher at Penguin Random House Children. “We’re encouraged to put down our phones and escape into the pages of these books, which have become a little pocket of calm in our hectic world.”
The rise of colouring as an adult hobby made headlines in 2015. That year, the Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford’s colouring books topped the Amazon bestsellers list in the US.
Bates has taken up colouring herself and said she has become “hooked on the books”, describing them as “a great way to destress and find a moment for yourself at the end of the day.”
Coming in at 20th overall was Nicholls’s You Are Here, a romance following the blossoming of a relationship between two divorcees on a hiking trip through the Lake District.
Federico Andornino, Nicholls’s editor and executive publisher at Spectre, attributes the book’s success to readers’ cravings for escapism and connection. “No one does that better than David: he’s got the very rare gift of making people think, laugh out loud and cry – often in the same chapter,” he said.
The top 20 bestsellers of 2025
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The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman (Viking, hardback) – 391,429 copies
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The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (Little, Brown, paperback) – 342,899 copies
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Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, hardback) – 333,340 copies
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We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Penguin, paperback) – 323,293 copies
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Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (Piatkus, hardback) – 304,728 copies
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Always Remember by Charlie Mackesy (Ebury Press, hardback) – 286,090 copies
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Cozy Corner by Coco Wyo (Penguin, paperback) – 255,682 copies
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The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown (Bantam, hardback) – 245,318 copies
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Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (Piatkus, paperback) – 241,532 copies
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A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas (Bloomsbury, paperback) – 224,535 copies
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The Women by Kristin Hannah (Pan, paperback) – 220,629 copies
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The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins (Hay House, hardback) – 218,919 copies
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Eat Yourself Healthy by Jamie Oliver (Michael Joseph, hardback) – 217,520 copies
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The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer (Gallery, paperback) – 210,116 copies
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Cozy Cuties by Coco Wyo (Penguin, paperback) – 205,619 copies
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In Too Deep by Lee Child and Andrew Child (Penguin, paperback) – 204,538 copies
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Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros (Piatkus, paperback) – 201,474 copies
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There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Penguin, paperback) – 193,640 copies
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The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden (Little, Brown, paperback) – 191,804 copies
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You Are Here by David Nicholls (Hodder & Stoughton, paperback) – 187,010 copies
