Closing out another rewarding year of publishing at White Rabbit Books – our 5th as an imprint with a list of over 60 titles in print – it gives me great pleasure to wish you all a peaceful (but merry) Christmas and a Happy (and perhaps not too merry) New Year. We have three big new title announcements coming in January, one of which relates explicitly to this playlist we made a few months ago. This is a big one. Thanks to everyone who buys our books and evangelises about White Rabbit. We are nothing without our readers and we value you enormously.
Lee Brackstone
Publisher, White Rabbit
But before we get ahead to 2026, the end of the year is a time to look back on that music and literature that inspired, moved and entertained us this year...
We asked a panel of trusted friends, authors, collaborators and colleagues to share some of their favourites of 2025, which we've compiled here. 33 of each - plus one overall #1 pick...
White Rabbit's Records of 2025
A Love from Outer Space Compiled by Sean Johnston
Annahstasia Tether
Anna von Hausswolff Iconoclasts
Avalon Emerson Perpetual Emotion Machine
Billy Woods GOLLIWOG
Blood Orange Essex Honey
C.A.R. Dance at Oscar’s
Cate le Bon Michaelangelo Dying
Decius Vol ii
Domenique Dumont Deux Paradis
Earl Sweatshirt Live Laugh Love
Escape-ism Charge of the Love Brigade
FKA twigs Eusexua
Geese Getting Killed
Getdown Services Crumbs 2
Helen Ganya Share Your Care
Insecure Men A Man for All Seasons
Jane Remover Revengeseekerz
John Glacier Like a Ribbon
Jonathan Richman Only Frozen Sky Anyway
Kevin Fowley À Feu Doux
KiF Productions Still Out
Lily Allen West End Girl
Mark Williams Lewis Mark William Lewis
Perfume Genius Glory
Ringlets The Lord Is My German Shepherd
Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band New Threats from the Soul
Soulwax All Systems Are Lying
SUMAC & Moor Mother The Film
The Tubs Cotton Crown
These New Puritans Crooked Wing
Tropical Fuck Storm Fairyland Codex
Witch Fever Fevereaten
And our No.1 record of the year:
Liminal by Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe
Have we started to take Eno for granted? Perhaps this, the last in a magnificent trilogy of releases with Wolfe in 2025, has been slightly overlooked because it was the third to arrive, late in the year. Melancholy and elegiac chamber pop of the most haunting kind, Liminal has echoes of Spacemen 3 in their tender bluesy iteration. Perhaps Eno’s collaboration with the visionary artist Wolfe is his most exciting for almost fifty years, since his work with Cluster. Proof that some of the best avant garde music is affirmative, melodic and completely transcendent.
White Rabbit's Books of 2025
Alan Jones Discomania
Arthur Baker Looking for the Perfect Beat
Ben Ratliff Run the Song
Benjamin Markovits The Rest of Our Lives
C. Mallon Dogs
Damian Barr The Two Roberts
Dan Nadel Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life
David Szalay FLESH
Emily Adrian Seduction Theory
Geoff Dyer Homework
Han Kang We Do Not
Helen Garner The Mushroom Tapes and How to End a Story: Collected Diaries
Holly Dicker Dance Or Die: A History of Hardcore
Ian Penman Erik Satie Three Piece Suite
Jamie Taylor Studio Electrophonique
John Harris Maybe I’m Amazed
Jon Fosse Vaim
Justin Currie The Tremolo Diaries
Leo Robson The Boys
Liz Pelly Mood Machine
Lucy Rose The Lamb
Mark Z. Danielewski Tom’s Crossing
Olga Ravn The Wax Child
Ozzy Osbourne Last Rites
Richard Foster The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club
Robert Macfarlane Is a River Alive?
Ron Chernow Mark Twain
Sarah Hall Helm
Sophy Rickett et al Pissing Women
Thea Lenarduzzi The Tower
Thomas Pynchon Shadow Ticket
Vincenzo Latronico Perfection
Wendy Erskine The Benefactors
And our No.1 book of the year:
Jesus Christ Kinski by Benjamin Myers
Deranged and mesmerising. For those who have lost faith that the novel can do new things; for those who want to read a novel that is as close to experiencing watching a Herzog film as it is possible to get on the page, Jesus Christ Kinski is a masterpiece of suffocation and an unrelenting trip into the monomania of an unhinged and dangerous and damaged outsider artist. It restored our faith that fiction can still go to places where other art forms fear to tread.
We regularly share listening and reading recommendations on our socials, so do follow us on Instagram or Bluesky if you aren't already.