2025 Christy Awards: Celebrating the Very Best Christian Fiction
Award-Winning Christian Fiction Novels to Binge-Read Now
The 2025 Christy Awards once again honor the very best in Christian fiction, highlighting stories that blend unforgettable characters with powerful, faith-centered themes.
This year’s Christy Award winners showcase the incredible range within Christian storytelling—from gripping suspense to heartfelt romance, richly researched historical novels, and imaginative contemporary fiction. Whether you’re searching for the best Christian fiction of 2025, discovering new Christian authors, or simply looking for your next inspiring read, these books offer hope, depth, and beautifully crafted storytelling.
2025 Christy Award Winner: Book of the Year
All We Thought We Knew by Michelle Shocklee
Publisher Description:
She was so sure she knew her family’s story . . . Now she wonders if she was wrong about all of it.
1969. When Mattie Taylor’s twin brother was killed in Vietnam, she lost her best friend and the only person who really understood her. Now, news that her mother is dying sends Mattie back home, despite blaming her father for Mark’s death. Mama’s last wish is that Mattie would read some old letters stored in a trunk, from people Mattie doesn’t even know. Mama insists they hold the answers Mattie is looking for.
1942. Ava Delaney is picking up the pieces of her life following her husband’s death at Pearl Harbor. Living with her mother-in-law on a secluded farm in Tennessee is far different than the life Ava imagined when she married only a few short months ago. Desperate to get out of the house, Ava seeks work at a nearby military base, where she soon discovers the American government is housing Germans who they have classified as enemy aliens. As Ava works to process legal documents for the military, she crosses paths with Gunther Schneider, a German who is helping care for wounded soldiers. Ava questions why a man as gentle and kind as Gunther should be forced to live in the internment camp, and as they become friends, her sense of the injustice grows . . . as do her feelings for him. Faced with the possibility of losing Gunther, Ava must choose whether loving someone deemed the enemy is a risk worth taking, even if it means being ostracized by all those around her.
In the midst of pain and loss two women must come face-to-face with their own assumptions about what they thought they knew about themselves and others. What they discover will lead to a far greater appreciation of their own legacies and the love of those dearest to them.
2025 Christy Award Winner: Contemporary Romance
The Roads We Follow by Nicole Deese
Publisher Description:
Aspiring writer Raegan Farrow learns about a tell-all on her famous mother's life that could tear their family apart but keeps it a secret as they embark on a cross-country road trip.
While trying to uncover who's behind it, she learns their handsome driver has his own connection to her mother's past, and all their lives will be changed by journey's end.
2025 Amplify Award (for Christian novels highlighting diverse cultural experiences)
Bitter and Sweet by Rhonda McKnight
Publisher Description:
From the beloved author of The Thing About Home comes a dual timeline tale of Lowcountry flavor, family, grief, secrets, and the sweet redemption that lies within the bonds of sisterhood.
The Present: When summoned to Georgetown, South Carolina, sisters Mariah Clark and Sabrina Holland both assume their ailing grandfather's health has gotten worse. Neither expects their grandmother's undeniable request--save the family restaurant.
Living out of her van and striving for a fresh start, Sabrina yearns for stability for herself and her daughter and a chance to turn her baking hustle into a bona-fide business. The family restaurant may be just the blessing she needs--but as old tensions and angry disagreements resurface, Sabrina wonders if her sister will let her have a say.
The Past: After falling victim to a love she thought would last a lifetime, Tabitha Cooper finds herself away from home and struggling to survive in Charleston in the early twentieth century. She is determined to turn corn into cornbread and to take care of her children the best way she knows how--by serving food that's good for the soul--and along the way forges a path that leaves a legacy of success for generations to come.
Through letters that reveal Tabitha's complicated past, the sisters discover truths that just might be the right recipe to mend their hearts--if they can find a way to savor the blessing of today and leave the bitter aftertaste of old memories behind them.
2025 Christy Award Winner: Debut Novel
Darkfell by Amanda Wright
Publisher Description:
His is a life of books and peace... Until a dying warrior's touch ignites an ancient magic within his blood. For years, Thom Darkfell has used his cartography skills to advise Lomair's king of the country's shifting borders.
A valued academic, Thom is excluded from the military drafts until whispers of dark abominations and mass casualties reach the king's ears. The resulting conscription thrusts Thom into Lomair's losing army.
A realist, Thom ignores the wild myths circling through the ranks-until a monster's jaws snap through the folds of reality and crush a man before Thom's eyes. With his dying breath, the Realm Walker passes an impossible task to Thom. Hours later, the visions begin.
The Creator, a deity Thom knows only from rituals spoken over meals and graves, appears to him while a girl with starlight in her blood calls from beyond the veil. Armed with a cryptic map, a biscuit-loving tutor, and the brawn of his best friend, Thom sets out to find the star daughter and lock the barrier to bind the dark realm of Zakar.
If he fails, it will be the end of all.
2025 Christy Award Winner: General Fiction
Between the Sound and Sea by Amanda Cox
Publisher Description:
Every family has its secrets.
Josephina "Joey" Harris wouldn't mind if her family still had a few of their own after a lawsuit tarnishes their name. When an opportunity opens to become a temporary keeper of a decommissioned lighthouse on a North Carolina island, she takes the opportunity to escape the scrutiny of her small town to oversee its restoration.
Soon Joey discovers strange notes tucked deep in the crevices of the lighthouse's old stone walls--pages torn from a keeper's log recounting harrowing rescues at sea. When things start to go amiss on the island, locals are convinced that it is the ghost of the lighthouse keeper and his daughter who were lost at sea during World War II.
As Joey sifts through decades of rumors and legends and puts together the pieces of the past, a love story emerges--one that's clearly not over yet.
2025 Christy Award Winner: Historical (Tie)
Born of Gilded Mountains by Amanda Dykes
Publisher Description:
A lost treasure. A riddled quest. The healing power of friendship.
Legends are tucked into every fold of the Colorado mountains surrounding the quaint town of Mercy Peak, where residents are the stuff of tall tales, the peaks are taller still, and a lost treasure has etched mystery into the very terrain. In 1948, when outsider Mercy Windsor arrives after a scandal shatters her gilded world as Hollywood's beloved leading lady, she is determined to forge a new life in obscurity in this time-forgotten Colorado haven.
She purchases Wildwood, an abandoned estate with a haunting history, and begins to restore it to its former glory. But as she does, her every move tugs at the threads of the mountain's lore, unearthing what became of her long-lost pen pal Rusty Bright, and the whereabouts of the infamous Galloping Goose Railcar No. 8, which vanished years ago--along with the mailbag it carried, whose contents could change the course of countless lives.
Not to mention the fabled treasure that--if found--could right so many wrongs.
Among the towering mountains that stand as silent witnesses, the ghosts of the past entangle with the courage of the present to find a place where healing, friendship, and hope can abide amid a world forever changed.
All We Thought We Knew by Michelle Shocklee
Publisher Description:
She was so sure she knew her family’s story . . . Now she wonders if she was wrong about all of it.
1969. When Mattie Taylor’s twin brother was killed in Vietnam, she lost her best friend and the only person who really understood her. Now, news that her mother is dying sends Mattie back home, despite blaming her father for Mark’s death. Mama’s last wish is that Mattie would read some old letters stored in a trunk, from people Mattie doesn’t even know. Mama insists they hold the answers Mattie is looking for.
1942. Ava Delaney is picking up the pieces of her life following her husband’s death at Pearl Harbor. Living with her mother-in-law on a secluded farm in Tennessee is far different than the life Ava imagined when she married only a few short months ago. Desperate to get out of the house, Ava seeks work at a nearby military base, where she soon discovers the American government is housing Germans who they have classified as enemy aliens. As Ava works to process legal documents for the military, she crosses paths with Gunther Schneider, a German who is helping care for wounded soldiers. Ava questions why a man as gentle and kind as Gunther should be forced to live in the internment camp, and as they become friends, her sense of the injustice grows . . . as do her feelings for him. Faced with the possibility of losing Gunther, Ava must choose whether loving someone deemed the enemy is a risk worth taking, even if it means being ostracized by all those around her.
In the midst of pain and loss two women must come face-to-face with their own assumptions about what they thought they knew about themselves and others. What they discover will lead to a far greater appreciation of their own legacies and the love of those dearest to them.
2025 Christy Award Winner: Historical Romance
As Sure as the Sea by Jamie Ogle
Publisher Description:
Once she denied everything she believed in. Now she’d give anything to choose differently. But in the shadow of the Roman Empire’s persecution and the shame of her past, she fears that what she wants most will be forever out of reach.
Eastern Roman Empire, AD 310. In the shadow of Emperor Diocletian’s anti-Christian edicts, Demitria makes a meager living harvesting coral and pearls for a merchant who turns a blind eye to her faith. By night, Demi goes upriver with her brother, Theseus, to obtain provisions for fellow believers in the port city of Myra. While willing to risk her own life to ensure others are safe and fed, Demi lives with a desperate fear for those she loves and carries secret shame over her greatest failure.
When Theseus is injured in a diving accident, all seems lost, until a stranger named Nikolas appears on the beach and offers help. Arriving in a sinking boat, Nikolas is burdened by guilt over his older brother’s tragic death. Though the wealth he inherited from a prosperous shipping business now rests at the bottom of the sea, as the new pastor in Myra, he is determined to recover it and use it for good.
As the violence against Christians increases, Demi helps Nikolas retrieve his lost fortune and distribute it to those in dire need. Despite wondering if she can ever be worthy, Demi is drawn to Nikolas and longs to trust in his belief that freedom can be found in forgiveness. Then one terrifying night, everything changes as the Roman Empire’s fury rains down.
Demi has no other choice but to decide if she has the courage to do what she once failed to . . . and if the faith she calls her own is sure enough to carry her.
2025 Christy Award Winner: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller
Night Falls on Predicament Avenue by Jamie Jo Wright
Publisher Description:
As the walls of the house at Predicament Avenue reveal their hidden truths, two women--generations apart--discover that fear and foreboding are no respecters of time.
In 1910, Effie James is committed to doing anything to save her younger sister, who witnessed a shocking murder, leaving her mute and in danger of the killer's retribution. Effie must prove what her sister saw, but when a British gentleman arrives, he disrupts Effie's quest with his attempts to locate his wife, Isabelle Addington, who was last seen at the supposed crime scene in the abandoned house at 322 Predicament Avenue. Just as Effie discovers what she seeks, she finds that the blood staining the walls will forever link her to a scandal she couldn't imagine, and to a woman whose secrets promise to curse any who would expose them.
A century later, Norah Richman grapples with social anxiety and grief as she runs her late great-aunt's bed-and-breakfast on Predicament Avenue. But Norah has little affection for the house and is committed only to carrying out her murdered sister's dreams until crime historian and podcaster Sebastian Blaine arrives to investigate the ghostly legacy of the house's claim to fame--the murder of Isabelle Addington.
When a guest is found dead, the incident is linked to Isabelle's murder, and Norah and Sebastian must work together to uncover the century-old curse that has wrapped 322 Predicament Avenue in its clutches and threatens far more than death.
2025 Christy Award Winner: Short Form, Speculative, and Young Adult
2025 Christy Award Winners Every Christian Reader Should Know
The 2025 Christy Award winners remind us why Christian fiction continues to resonate with readers seeking faith, beauty, and meaningful storytelling. These novels don’t just entertain—they point us toward God’s truth, His hope, and His heart for redemption.
Whether you’re a longtime fan of faith-based fiction or exploring Christian novels for the first time, this year’s award-winning books offer rich stories you’ll want to discuss, share, and revisit.
Dive deeper into the full list of winners, support the authors shaping today’s Christian fiction landscape, and discover fresh favorites to add to your reading list.
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A note about our recommendations: Our mission is to recommend Christian books that will inspire and uplift. However, we recognize that reading is a deeply personal and subjective experience. While we aim to feature books that align with Christian values, our inclusion of any book or author does not imply an endorsement of all their views, beliefs, or other works. We encourage you to be discerning and make your own informed decisions when selecting the books you read.
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