As we step into a new year, the literary world is brimming with excitement and anticipation. Here are some of the most eagerly awaited books of 2025 that I don’t want to miss. Part I covers books due for publication within the first 6 months of the year. Part II to follow later in the year – if I remember! The books are listed in no specific order.

Cover image from Goodreads
“Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales” by Heather Fawcett (February 2025)
Book blurb (from Author’s website)
Book 3 in the Emily Wilde series
The third installment in the heartwarming and enchanting Emily Wilde series, about a curmudgeonly scholar of folklore and the fae prince she loves
Emily Wilde has spent her life studying faeries. A renowned dryadologist, she has documented hundreds of species of Folk in her Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Now she is about to embark on her most dangerous academic project yet: studying the inner workings of a faerie realm—as its queen.
Along with her former academic rival—now fiancé—the dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, Emily is immediately thrust into the deadly intrigues of Faerie as the two of them seize the throne of Wendell’s long-lost kingdom, which Emily finds a beautiful nightmare filled with scholarly treasures.
Emily has been obsessed with faerie stories her entire life, but at first she feels as ill-suited to Faerie as she did to the mortal world: How can an unassuming scholar such as herself pass for a queen? Yet there is little time to settle in, for Wendell’s murderous stepmother has placed a deadly curse upon the land before vanishing without a trace. It will take all of Wendell’s magic—and Emily’s knowledge of stories—to unravel the mystery before they lose everything they hold dear.

Cover image from Goodreads
“Witchcraft for Wayward Girls” by Grady Hendrix (January 2025)
Book blurb from Goodreads
There’s power in a book…
They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.
Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.
Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.
In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).

Cover image from Goodreads
“Onyx Storm” by Rebecca Yarros (January 2025)
The Empyrean #3
Book blurb from Goodreads
THE STORM IS COMING . . .
Get ready to fly or die in the breathtaking follow-up to Fourth Wing and Iron Flame from #1 New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros.
After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons.
No more time for uncertainty.
Because the battle has truly begun; and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre.
The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves – her dragons, her family, her home, and him.
Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.
They need an army.
They need power.
They need magic.
And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.
But a storm is coming… and not everyone can survive its wrath
Rebecca Yarros | #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
“We All Live Here” by Jojo Moyes (February 2025)
Book blurb from Author’s website
The #1 Sunday Times bestselling author, whose books so many love, brings us a fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family
‘Nobody writes women the way Jojo Moyes does’ JODI PICOULT
Welcome to the Kennedy household:
There’s Lila who wrote a bestseller about keeping your marriage alive. Now divorced, she watches her ex play happy families with another woman.
There’s Bill – her stepdad – who moved in after Lila’s mum died. He’s kind, old-fashioned and loves lentils just a little too much.
Celie, Lila’s eldest, hates school. Hates it so much she’s stopped going. Her mother’s fine with that – because she doesn’t know yet.
Violet is nine and sings age-inappropriate rap songs, laughs at fart jokes and Lila dearly hopes she’ll never, ever change.
Lastly, there’s Truant the dog. He’s just taken a bite out of the American actor who’s suddenly landed on the Kennedy’s doorstep.
This is Gene – Lila’s estranged father, and no one’s idea of a role model. He walked out on Lila and her mum years ago – and wherever he goes domestic discord follows.
Because Gene’s presence changes things in unexpected ways. Soon the girls discover a kindred spirit in a man always chasing life’s joys. Bill even loosens up. And Lila finds herself, astonishingly, dating.
Something is happening to the Kennedy household – but what is it?
And will it break, or save, their family?

Cover image from Goodreads
“Sunrise on the Reaping” by Suzanne Collins (March 2025)
“The Hunger Games” prequel
Book Blurb from Goodreads
When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?
As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.
Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.
When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town.
As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

Cover image from Goodreads
“Great Big Beautiful Life” by Emily Henry (April 2025)
Book blurb from Goodreads
Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.
Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years–or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.
When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.
One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.
Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication
Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.
But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.
And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.

Cover image from Goodreads
My Friends by Fredrik Backman (May 2025)
Book blurb from Goodreads
#1 New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.
The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater (June 2025)
Book Blurb from Goodreads
#1 New York Times bestselling novelist Maggie Stiefvater dazzles in this mesmerizing portrait of an irresistible heroine, an unlikely romance, and a hotel—and a world—in peril.
JANUARY 1942. THE AVALLON HOTEL AND SPA offers elegance and sophistication in an increasingly ugly world. Run with precision by June Hudson, the hotel’s West Virginia born-and-bred general manager, the Avallon is where high society goes to see and be seen, and where the mountain sweetwater in the fountains and spas can wash away all your troubles.
June was trained by the Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, and she has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. Now, though, the Gilfoyle family heir has made a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats. June must convince her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the frontlines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.
She also must reckon with Tucker Minnick, the FBI agent whose coal tattoo hints at their shared past in the mountains, and whose search for the diplomats’ secrets disrupts the peace June is fighting so hard to maintain. Hers is a balancing act with dangerous consequences; the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal, and only June can manage the springs.
As dark alliances and an elusive spy crack the polished veneer of the Avallon, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.

Cover image from Goodreads
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (June 2025)
Book blurb from Goodreads
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.

Cover image from Goodreads
Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney (January 25)
Book blurb from Goodreads
The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.
Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.
A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible – a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.
Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.

Cover image from Goodreads
The Crash by Freida McFadden (January 2025)
Book blurb from Goodreads
The nightmare she’s running from is nothing compared to where she’s headed.
Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.
She never arrives at her destination.
Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.
But something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.
And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself—and her unborn child.
A gut-wrenching story of motherhood, survival, and twisted expectations, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone.

Cover image from Goodreads
Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell (June 25)
Book blurb from Goodreads
From #1 New York Times bestseller Lisa Jewell—three women are connected by one man in this kaleidoscopic thriller.
Restauranteur Paddy Swann was the life of the party until the day a man pushed him in the path of an oncoming train, leaving his twenty-something daughter Ash and wife Nina devastated. Shortly after Paddy’s funeral, the two women receive a surprise in the mail: a note and package from Nick Ratcliffe, an old friend of Paddy’s, and a nondescript lighter that once belonged to him decades ago. This unexpected gift draws Nick and Nina closer together—much to Ash’s dismay.
Martha is a small-town florist with dreams of expansion. She lives with her second husband Al, her baby, and two sons from her prior marriage. But they never seem to have any money, and with his constant traveling for work, she feels like a single parent—especially when an emergency makes her realize something needs to change.
But Nick and Al may not be who they say they are, leading these three women on a shocking collision course, wishing they had heeded a warning: Don’t let him in.
https://www.facebook.com/LisaJewellofficial/

Cover image by Goodreads
Never Flinch by Stephen King (May 2025)
Holly Gibney #4
Book blurb from Goodreads
From master storyteller Stephen King comes an extraordinary new novel with intertwining storylines—one about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker—featuring the beloved Holly Gibney and a dynamic new cast of characters.
When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in “an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man,” Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realizes that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.
Meanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard—a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and his belief in his own righteousness.
Featuring a riveting cast of characters both old and new, including world-famous gospel singer Sista Bessie and an unforgettable villain addicted to murder, these twinned narratives converge in a chilling and spectacular conclusion—a feat of storytelling only Stephen King could pull off.
Thrilling, wildly fun, and outrageously engrossing, Never Flinch is one of King’s richest and most propulsive novels.
Stephen King | The Official Website