Top 5 books for tea lovers

I am winding down for the year in the company of books and tea. Here is a list of tea-themed books I enjoyed in 2025. Pour yourself a cup and I hope you find something to pick from this pile.

101 TEAS TO STEEP BEFORE YOU DIE

Put together by four of the tea world’s most respected folks —James Norwood Pratt, Maria Uspenski, Nigel Melican, and Shabnam Weber—the book profiles 101 teas organised in nine chapters. It’s a guide to tea drinkers, accessible, non-intimidating and so useful. (Page Street Publishing)

RIVER TRAVELLER

The Assam tea terroir is closely linked to the Brahmaputra. It has rendered the state as a fertile river valley with rich alluvial soil, primed for the Assamica tea plant. To get to know Assam tea, we must first know the Brahmaputra. The author Sanjoy Hazarika, who has spent decades reporting from the North-East, narrates its story from a place of great familiarity and insight. I am still reading it and recommend it to those who enjoy narrative non-fiction. (Speaking Tiger Books)

TROUBLE IN THE TEA GARDENS

If you, like me, are wondering why our tea gardens, so ripe a landscape for a full-fledged mystery, haven’t inspired more, this year saw the first of Mitali Perkins’ A Darjeeling Tea Mystery series for middle graders. Perkins has talked about visiting Darjeeling as a child growing up in Kolkata, and of her research to understand the tea community. In Trouble in the Tea Gardens, the protagonist, 12-year-old Sona, daughter of a Nepali tea plucker, and her Bengali friend, Tara, form two sides of the tea world here. (Duckbill)

COSY CRIMES

Amanda Hampson’s The Deadly Dispute, third in The Tea Ladies series (Penguin Books Australia) was released in 2025 as were High Tea and Misdemeanors by Laura Childs (Book 29 in A Tea Shop Mystery series; Berkley Books), Tea with Jam and Dread by Vicki Delany (Book 6 in Tea by the Sea mysteries; Kensington Books), and Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man; Harper Collins) by Jesse Q. Sutanto, the second in the series which doesn’t have a name yet but holds the promise of a third book to follow.

CHAI TIME

This is a planter’s memoir and planters can tell a story. Chai Time, written by Rajah Banerjee, who created a Darjeeling icon with Makaibari tea estate (now owned by Luxmi Estates), tells us so much more about Indian tea, Darjeeling, and what needs to be done. (Bose Creative Publishers).

Tea Nanny is a fortnightly series on the world of tea. Aravinda Anantharaman (@AravindaAnanth1) is a tea drinker, writer and editor.