Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune tops 2025 UK bestsellers list | Books
Fantasy, mystery and psychological thriller series are at the top of the UK’s 2025 bestseller list, with Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune also at the top. The fifth book in the Thursday Murder Club series took the top spot with 391,429 hardcover sales.
Adult coloring has also seen a resurgence this year: Coloring books for all ages entered the top 20 lists, according to analysis by NielsenIQ BookData.
Osman is followed by Freida McFadden with her 2022 psychological thriller The Housemaid (its sequel, The Housemaid’s Secret, is also in the top 20), and in third place is Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins’ prequel to The Hunger Games.
In literary fiction, One Day author David Nicholls enters the top 20 with his romantic novel You Are Here and Elif Şafak’s novel There Are Rivers in the Sky. In the self-help space, Mel Robbins and her daughter’s The Let Them Theory continued its dominance, selling 218,919 copies in hardcover this year.
Osman’s 2024 album Cinayetleri Çöziyorumz rose to fourth place on the list. Close behind was Onyx Storm, the third book in Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean fantasy romance series. The previous two books, The Fourth Wing and The Iron Flame, were also among the 20 best-selling books of the year. For the launch of Onyx Storm, readers gathered at Waterstones across the country in January to attend late-night launch celebration parties. Romance author Sarah J Maas ranked 10th with The Palace of Thorns and Roses, the first book in her acclaimed series.
The Hotel Avocado, comedian Bob Mortimer’s follow-up to The Satsuma Complex, sold 210,116 paperbacks this year and was praised by Ella Risbridger in the Guardian as “entirely gentle and genuinely zany”. The list also includes Lee Child and Andrew Child, Charlie Mackesy, Dan Brown, Kristin Hannah and Jamie Oliver.
Coloring books appear to be trending again, with Coco Wyo’s Cozy Corner and Cozy Cuties, marketed to adults and children, making the top 15. The two books sold nearly 500,000 copies this year.
“So many people have fallen in love with these beautiful coloring books because they give people a place to rest, relax and be creative away from screens,” said Fenella Bates, nonfiction publisher at Penguin Random House Children. “We are encouraged to put our phones aside and escape into the pages of these books, which become a small source of calm in our hectic world.”
The rise of coloring as an adult hobby made headlines in 2015. That year, Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford’s coloring books topped Amazon’s bestseller list in the United States.
Bates took up coloring and said she “became addicted to books”, describing them as “a great way to de-stress and find a moment for herself at the end of the day”.
Ranking 20th overall, Nicholls’s You’re Here was a romantic film about the development of a relationship between two divorcees on a walking trip in the Lake District.
Federico Andornino, Nicholls’ editor and managing publisher at Spectre, attributes the book’s success to readers’ desire for escape and connection. “Nobody does this better than David: He has the rare ability to make people think, laugh and cry, often in the same episode,” he said.
The 20 best-selling books of 2025
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Impossible Chance by Richard Osman (Viking, hardcover) – 391,429 copies
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The Maid by Freida McFadden (Little, Brown, paperback) – 342,899 copies
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Harvest Sunrise by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, hardcover) – 333,340 copies
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Solving Murders – Richard Osman (Penguin, paperback) – 323,293 copies
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Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (Piatkus, hardcover) – 304,728 copies
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Always Remember by Charlie Mackesy (Ebury Press, hardcover) – 286,090 copies
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Cozy Corner from Coco Wyo (Penguin, paperback) – 255,682 copies
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The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown (Compact, hardcover) – 245,318 copies
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The 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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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, hardcover) – 218,919 copies
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Eat Yourself Healthy by Jamie Oliver (Michael Joseph, hardcover) – 217,520 copies
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The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer (Gallery, paperback) – 210,116 copies
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Cozy Cuties from 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 Şafak (Penguin, paperback) – 193,640 copies
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The Maid’s Secret by Freida McFadden (Little, Brown, paperback) – 191,804 copies
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You Are Here, David Nicholls (Hodder & Stoughton, paperback) – 187,010 copies
