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NEW YORK — The year in publishing saw such notable releases as the latest “Hunger Games” novel and the first book in years from Thomas Pynchon. Readers also sought life advice from Mel Robbins, campaign books by former Vice President Kamala Harris, among others, and the posthumous memoir from one of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre.
‘Sunrise on the Reaping’
Suzanne Collins once swore she was done with “The Hunger Games,” but the author has not given up on her blockbuster series and neither have her readers. “Sunrise on the Reaping,” a prequel set 24 years before the first book, sold more than 4 million copies worldwide, according to Scholastic, even as the press-shy Collins declined to promote it or give any interviews except for one with her editor, David Levithan.
Collins began the series in 2008 and many fans have grown up with it. At an opening night event in February, numerous attendees were in their 20s and 30s and spoke of how their teenage appreciation had deepened for Collins’ dystopian world, in which contestants hunt and kill each other — all while being broadcast live. “As a kid you focus so much on the plot and the action,” explained 26-year-old Savannah Miller. “As an adult I connected to the characters a lot more and had more of an emotional response.”
‘The Let Them Theory’
The year’s most talked about self-help book, Mel Robbins’ “The Let Them Theory,” offered familiar and assuring messages for a troubled time: Focus on the inner self, don’t try to change what you can’t change. Robbins acknowledged debts to everyone from the ancient Stoics to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the title of her opening chapter reads like a variation of the Serenity Prayer: “Stop Wasting Your Life on Things You Can’t Control.”
Released late last year, Robbins’ blockbuster was high on bestseller lists throughout 2025 and the author appeared everywhere from “Meet the Press” to “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Time magazine named Robbins among its top 100 creators: “She’s empowered millions to stop overthinking, start exercising and ignore their inner critic.”
‘Nobody’s Girl’
The very existence of “Nobody’s Girl” made news, and kept on making news. Six months after the death of Virginia Giuffre, publisher Alfred A. Knopf released her posthumous “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice.”
Her painful accounts of her years as a “sex slave” helped build GOP support for releasing Justice Department files on Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, and to President Donald Trump’s reversing his earlier objections. Her explicit memories of one Epstein client, the former Prince Andrew, helped lead King Charles III to strip his brother of his royal title and banish him to a private residence.
