Unabridged: A Mid-Year Check-In with Sara Hildreth and Cree Myles

We’re halfway through 2025 so this month on The Stacks Unabridged, we've got a literary check-in with friends of the pod, Sara Hildreth and Cree Myles! Together, we discuss the books that blew us away during the first half of the year, the titles we're most looking forward to for the second half of 2025. Plus we share the best backlist we've read and a few award season predictions. 

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. You can also find what we talked about on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

• Fiction Matters Substack

• Fiction Matters Instagram

• Fiction Matters Patreon

• All Ways Black

• Underwhelmed Substack

• Novel Pairings Podcast

• James by Percival Everett

• Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

• Dracula by Bram Stoker

• Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan

• Audition by Katie Kitamura

• Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

• Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing

• The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley

• Flashlight by Susan Choi

• Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

• The International Booker Prize 2025

• Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

• A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney

• These Heathens by Mia McKenzie

• Tilt by Emma Pattee

• Sunrise on the Reaping (a Hunger Games Novel) by Suzanne Collins

• The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

• Murderland by Caroline Fraser

• “The Best Books of the Year (So Far)” (The New York Times)

• The Nonfiction Files 1: Nonfiction Taxonomy

• Culpability by Bruce Holsinger

• The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

• The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger

• “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (Nicholas Carr, The Atlantic)

• Dominion by Addie E. Citchens

• Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow

• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

• Kiese Laymon

• King of Kings by Scott Anderson

• Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson

• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

• Moderation by Elaine Castillo

• Solitaria by Eliana Alvez Cruz translated by Benjamin Brooks

• Positive Obsession by Susana M. Morris

• A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky by Lynell George

• Jonathan Eig

• The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

• The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

• The Supremes at Earls All-You-Can-Eat (Tina Mabry, 2024)

• Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan

• Ripeness by Sarah Moss

• Sarah J. Maas

• Nobody Can Give You Freedom by Kehinde Andrews

• Penile E. Joseph

• Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa

• Little, Brown and Company

• How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

• Shot Ready by Stephen Curry

• Truly by Lionel Richie

• We the People by Jill Lepore

• These Truths by Jill Lepore

• Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor

• Coach by Jason Reynolds

• The Unveiling by Quan Barry

• The Devil Is a South Paw by Brandon Hobson

• The Removed by Brandon Hobson

• Vladimir Nabokov

• The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor

• Real Life by Brandon Taylor

• Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

• Palaver by Bryan Washington

• Lot by Bryan Washington

• Memorial by Bryan Washington

• Family Meal by Bryan Washington

• Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

• Riverhead Books

• The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes

• All Fours by Miranda July

• Right by My Side by David Haynes

• The Original by Nell Stevens

• Shade by Sam Bloch

• Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar

• Whites by Mark Doten

• Graywolf Press

• It Was the Way She Said It by Terry McMillan

• Trigger Warning by Jacinda Townsend

• The Street by Ann Petry

• What a Time to Be Alive by Jade Chang

• The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang

• We Love You Bunny by Mona Awad

• Bunny by Mona Awad

• Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• The Devil Reached Toward the Sky by Garrett M. Graff

• The Grand Paloma Resort by Cleyvis Natera

• Cleyvis Natera Book Launch in LA

• Front Street by Brian Barth

• Empire of Orgasm by Ellen Huet

• Intemperance by Sonora Jha

• Black in Blues by Imani Perry

• The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey

• Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor

• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

• Paradise Lost by John Milton

• Our Pure and Radiant Hearts by Lydia Millet

• Kaliane Bradley

• Challenger by Adam Higginbotham

• Lonesome Dove by Larry Dove

• Animal Farm by George Orwell

• 1984 by George Orwell

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne

• Glory by Noviolet Bulawayo

• Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

Connect with Cree: Instagram | Twitter | All Ways Black | Substack
Connect with Sara: Instagram | Fiction Matters | Novel Pairings | Substack
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