Editor's top Kotlin books
2Kotlin in Action, 2nd Edition
Manning
Written by JetBrains engineers, this is the definitive book on Kotlin. The second edition covers coroutines, Flow, and Kotlin Multiplatform. It explains the "why" behind design decisions rather than just the syntax.
Effective Kotlin: Best Practices
Marcin Moskała · Kt. Academy · 439 pages · ~11 hrs to read
Written by the founder of Kt. Academy, JetBrains' official Kotlin training partner. Item-by-item best practices on safety, readability, and efficiency — the "Effective Java"-style book Kotlin was missing.
Kotlin Books for Beginners
4Atomic Kotlin
Bruce Eckel & Svetlana Isakova · 636 pages · ~16 hrs to read
Builds understanding incrementally with small, focused "atoms" of knowledge. The in-book exercises reinforce each concept immediately. Well suited to developers coming from other languages.
Head First Kotlin
O'Reilly
The visual, brain-science-based format makes Kotlin approachable for those who find traditional textbooks dry. Covers the full language core with puzzles and activities throughout.
Kotlin Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide
David Greenhalgh, Josh Skeen & Andrew Bailey · Big Nerd Ranch · 704 pages · ~18 hrs to read
Big Nerd Ranch's methodical, hands-on teaching style applied to Kotlin fundamentals — built from their in-person Kotlin Essentials training course, so the pacing is genuinely classroom-tested.
Android Programming with Kotlin for Beginners
John Horton · Packt · 699 pages · ~17 hrs to read
Zero-experience-required, project-based introduction that teaches Kotlin fundamentals and Android app-building together rather than as two separate subjects — a practical on-ramp for career-changers.
Intermediate & Advanced Kotlin Books
6Kotlin in Action, 2nd Edition
Manning
Written by JetBrains engineers, this is the definitive book on Kotlin. The second edition covers coroutines, Flow, and Kotlin Multiplatform. It explains the "why" behind design decisions rather than just the syntax.
Programming Kotlin: Create Elegant, Expressive, and Performant JVM and Android Applications
Venkat Subramaniam · Pragmatic Bookshelf · 610 pages · ~15 hrs to read
Subramaniam is a well-known Java/JVM educator, and it shows — this book targets developers coming from Java who want fluency in Kotlin idioms, not another beginner syntax tour.
Effective Kotlin: Best Practices
Marcin Moskała · Kt. Academy · 439 pages · ~11 hrs to read
Written by the founder of Kt. Academy, JetBrains' official Kotlin training partner. Item-by-item best practices on safety, readability, and efficiency — the "Effective Java"-style book Kotlin was missing.
Kotlin Coroutines: Deep Dive
Marcin Moskała · Kt. Academy · 342 pages · ~9 hrs to read
Coroutines are the single hardest topic in the learning path above, and this is the only book-length treatment dedicated entirely to them — structured concurrency, Flow, and testing coroutine code in depth.
Kotlin Cookbook: A Problem-Focused Approach
Ken Kousen · O'Reilly · 225 pages · ~6 hrs to read
Kousen is a JetBrains Certified Kotlin Training Partner, and this cookbook format skips the syntax tour to go straight at recipe-sized problems — interop with Java, testing, and build tooling included.
Functional Programming in Kotlin
Marco Vermeulen, Rúnar Bjarnason & Paul Chiusano · Manning · 502 pages · ~13 hrs to read
A ground-up reworking of the classic "Functional Programming in Scala" for Kotlin, by two of that book's original authors — builds functional concepts like Option, State, and parser combinators from first principles rather than just showing Kotlin's lambda syntax.
Kotlin resources
Learn next