Some More Books to Look Forward to in 2025

One of my favorite perks of this job is that, with the help of platforms like NetGalley and Edelweiss, I get to review ARCs (advanced reader copies) of novels that won’t be released for months.

Unfortunately, we’re not able to feature every book that we read and love in the magazine. But since we’re more than halfway through 2025 (can you believe it?!), I wanted to share some of the books I’ve read so far this year that I’ve loved, some that will be coming out this year that you should preorder, and I’ll post some links so you know when you can get your hands on them too.

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Published: September 16, 2025

Back of book description: For fear of summoning evil spirits, Native superstition says you should never, ever whistle at night.

Henry Hotard was on the verge of fame, gaining a following and traction with his eerie ghost-hunting videos. Then his dreams came to a screeching halt. Now, he's learning to navigate a new life in a wheelchair, back on the reservation where he grew up, relying on his grandparents’ care while he recovers.

And he’s being haunted.

His girlfriend, Jade, insists he just needs time to adjust to his new reality as a quadriplegic, that it’s his traumatized mind playing tricks on him, but Henry knows better. As the specter haunting him creeps closer each night, Henry battles to find a way to endure, to rid himself of the horror stalking him. Worried that this dread might plague him forever, he realizes the only way to exile his phantom is by confronting his troubled past and going back to the events that led to his injury.

It all started when he whistled at night....

What I loved about it: This narrative is a wonderful example of how to entwine past and present and to show how backstory can guide not only character development but present action and plot as well.

Published: September 16, 2025

Back of book description: 2009: Rachel Galloway is bored in class. She spends the dreary fall days sketching in her notebook—adorable pigs munching on her boring teachers—and imagining a utopia where all the horrors of Burnskidde High School disappear. But when her classmates start to believe this utopia could be real, Galloway finds herself at the center of an elaborate, and quickly spreading, new religion. Before long, the town is split between believers and nonbelievers. As tensions rise and the rituals become more dangerous, Galloway can’t be sure what’s real and what’s not, or who she can trust.

BURNSKIDDE: CULTWATCH

2019: This is the cryptic message that Renfield County Guard Rachel Durwood receives from her colleague Mark, mere days after he’s disappeared. Mark’s note leads Durwood to the town of Burnskidde, famously sealed off from the rest of the county ten years ago. Now, she discovers a small, insulated community preparing for the rapture and, seemingly, their collective demise. In order to save Burnskidde from itself, she must piece together the fallout from 2009 and avoid being swept up into the monstrous cult herself.

As Rachel Galloway watches her life spiral out of control, Rachel Durwood navigates a world where history, horror, and faith collide. Despite being separated by a decade, Galloway and Durwood may be closer to each other than they realize. But even together, will they be able to stop Burnskidde’s impending doom?

What I loved about it: I wrote about Rebelein’s The Poorly Made and Other Things in a previous article. This novel revisits Renfield in a new and interesting way, and stays in that story for much longer than the previous collection. This is a wonderful book to read if you’re thinking about writing stories all set in the same universe, utilizing the same world-building, but that explores an entirely new story or aspect of the world.

Published: October 7, 2025

Back of book description: Ruth is trapped. She’s stuck in her small, religious hometown of Kill Devil, Kentucky, stuck in the closet, and stuck living paycheck to paycheck. After her manager finds out that she lives with her girlfriend, Ruth is fired from her job at New Creations—a craft store owned by the church that dominates life in Kill Devil.

In an act of revenge, Ruth attempts to shoplift some yarn but is caught red-handed. Instead of calling the police, the employees lock her in the store—and attack her. As Ruth fights for her life using only the crafting supplies at hand, she plunges deeper into the tangled web of the New Creationists, who are hiding a terrible secret that threatens not only her but the entire town.

Urgent, scathing, and utterly original, Crafting for Sinners cements Kiefer’s status as a dazzling new star in horror.

What I loved about it: This is a horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously—sometimes a little bit of humor helps to make the horrors that much more horrifying!

Published: November 11, 2025

Back of book Description: When Queen Elizabeth I is nearly assassinated, the rebellious heir to a criminal legacy seizes an opportunity for a better life.

London, 1579. In the treacherous alleyways of London, Jack has left behind the life of petty crime, hoping to atone for the past by rooting out murderers. As the eldest child of a notorious and infamous figure who controls the slums, Jack has no safe place to land and dreams of a future off the streets. When an attempt is made on the Queen’s life, it falls to Jack to catch the would-be assassin and fight for a different future.

With the help of a coroner, Damian, a sultry barmaid with a secret, and the criminal connections from Jack's past, the unlikely investigator dives into the case. But the former thief's informants keep turning up dead, and every lead seems to vanish just when it feels within reach. As Jack follows the trail deeper into danger, the question becomes: who can truly be trusted? 

With the promise of security and redemption hanging overhead, Jack must uncover who orchestrated the assassination attempt before time runs out in this historical mystery, perfect for fans of Tasha Alexander.

What I loved about it: The representation of queerness and mental health in a historical novel is always a really interesting concept, but add layers of mystery and intrigue and any reader will be hooked!

Published: September 23, 2025

Back of book Description: Intimate, hilarious, and inspiring essays by celebrated drag queens Lagoona Bloo, Julie J., Olivia Lux, Alexis Michelle, Kennedy Ann Scott, and Nina West.

Kennedy Ann Scott was awarded Teacher of the Year in Nashville, Tennessee. Olivia Lux starred in Rent and Kinky Boots. Julie J raised more than $100,000 for trans and LGBTQIA+ organizations. Lagoona Bloo is currently starring on the Off-Broadway hit Drag: The Musical, and Alex Michaels received a stellar review from the New York Times for their role in La Cage Aux Folles at Barrington Stage Company. Nina West received an honorary doctorate in May 2024 and is a well-known entertainer, having worked with everyone from Glenn Close to Kermit the Frog.

When these gorgeous queens dress up in their stunning gowns with picture-perfect makeup, haters label them as inappropriate and unlawful. They are entertainers, not predators. Drag is an art of self-expression that, at its core, affirms and uplifts LGBTQIA+ people.

No Tea, No Shade is a collective anthem written by six drag queens who believe in equality, peace, and a world that loves and respects all people. The defiant legacy of drag will endure fearmongering and hate because their hearts have endured the unthinkable, their courage has been relentlessly tested, and to be blunt, they have the balls to prevail.

No Tea, No Shade features thirty essays written by six talented queens. They discuss:

Despite the pervasive danger of being authentic and real, these drag artists have chosen to fight for LGBTQIA+ rights and not give up. They remind us—and others who will listen—that a person’s identity shouldn’t be marginalized to genitals. Identity categories are not as important as we have been led to believe. The shade cast on drag is just a scapegoat. It is a distraction that political figures and trolls use to lure people away from caring about serious issues like gun violence, poverty, and racism.

No Tea, No Shade shines a light on a community of people who are paving the way for a better world and holding the light for others to step up.

What I loved about it: While memoirs can be very powerful, the blending of multiple voices and the way the political, cultural, and personal are all blended in these essays makes it an incredibly powerful read for audiences of all walks of life.

Published: October 28, 2025

Back of book Description: A sympathetic and illuminating account of the stories of John Cheever, and the intersecting life and work of the legendary writer John Cheever, as told by his eldest daughter.

The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, brought together some of the finest short fiction ever written. The collection was honored with the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and it would go on to sell millions of copies and to define the American short story and shape generations of writers. Cheever’s chronicles of modern life both emerged from a distinctly American culture and also created it―inspiring everything from “Mad Men” to a Raymond Carver story, from rock songs to a “Seinfeld” episode.

Growing up, Susan Cheever, John Cheever’s eldest child and only daughter, read what he read, heard what he heard, bantered and gossiped with him and her brothers and mother at the dinner table, and later watched her father type on the cheap yellow paper he favored. A daughter much like Susan appears in many of Cheever’s stories, and a family much like theirs is at the center of his writing.

In When All the Men Wore Hats, Susan Cheever looks back on her father’s work and seeks to understand the connections between art and life. How did a bit of local gossip, a slice of Greek myth, and a new translation of Madame Bovary somehow become a brilliant gem like “The Country Husband” or “The Swimmer”? In her 1984 book Home Before Dark, published two years after her father’s death, Cheever wrote movingly about her father and the secrets he kept, but here, years later, she tells the story of the remarkable stories themselves, six of which appear in full in the book’s appendix.

What I loved about it: One of the hardest aspects of writing about real people is figuring out the balance of showing the truth while protecting the person’s privacy. This novel takes an interesting approach by analyzing the writer and the way that his life played a role in his artistry and vice versa.

Published: September 23, 2025

Back of book Description: In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn Street. Now he’s a journalist, working from behind bars, trying to make sense of it all.

The Tragedy of True Crime is a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of 28 years to life, but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cell block and the prison yard, Lennon challenges our obsession with true crime by telling the full life stories of men now serving time for the lives they took.

These men have completely different backgrounds―Robert Chambers, a preppy Manhattanite turned true crime celebrity; Milton E. Jones, a 17-year-old coaxed from burglary into something far darker; and Michael Shane Hale, a gay man caught in a crime of passion―and all are searching to find meaning and redemption behind bars. Lennon’s reporting is intertwined with his own story, from a young man seduced by the infamous gangster culture of New York City to a celebrated prison journalist. The same desire echoes throughout the lives of these four men: to become more than murderers.

A first-of-its-kind book of immersive prison journalism, The Tragedy of True Crime poses fundamental questions about the stories we tell and who gets to tell them. What essential truth do we lose when we don’t consider all that comes before an act of unthinkable violence? And what happens to the convicted after the cell gate locks?

What I loved about it: Generally, with this kind of true crime, we’re getting the story from someone completely removed from the case or family and friends of the victims. The way that this book handles the genre from a different perspective makes it even more powerful for the reader and asks them to confront preconceived notions they might have had.

Published: November 18, 2025

Back of book Description: Sometimes love shows up where you least expect it—right next door.

At twenty-six, Sam Pulaski expected to be thriving in her academic career, living on her own in some exciting city. Expectations meet reality: She has massive student loan debt from studying art history, a dead-end service industry job, a situationship that’s equal parts intoxicating and toxic. And she’s been crashing in her mom’s condo—at least it’s not a basement?—for the last five years. If she can finally get accepted into a PhD program and get out of Ohio, the adult life that’s been on hold for half her twenties will finally begin.

Her mom’s new neighbor, Nick, is the ultimate grown-up. His adult life began the moment his nine-year-old daughter, Kira, was born. Her happiness is Nick’s only priority, especially in the wake of divorce. There’s nothing he won’t do for Kira, including giving up his globe-trotting career for something more stable . . . like managing a chain restaurant.

Sam has zero interest in an ultra-dependable guy pushing forty; frankly, she’s a little afraid of kids. But with just one thin wall separating the two condos, Nick proves difficult to avoid. His quiet confidence forces Sam to grapple with the other men in her life: her emotionally derelict friend-with-benefits and her actually derelict father. As her unexpected connection with Nick heats up (and steams up his minivan windows), Sam finds herself falling fast for a man whose life is steady and settled—while hers is anything but.

What I loved about it: Sam’s voice is punchy and real from the very get-go—if you’re looking for a book where a character feels like a real person, definitely pick up this book and study it!

Published: September 16, 2025

Back of book Description: Fiona Addai is ready to set her plan in motion. To honor the anniversary of her brother’s death, she’s going to steal back his brilliant invention from the ruthless corporation that stole and claimed it as their own. As a famed Reddit detective known as @Princess_PI, Fiona has used her online connections and sleuthing skills to time every step down to the minute. But with one disastrous misstep, instead of getting justice, Fiona finds herself accused of murder.

Maurice Bennett is no stranger to insomnia. These days, he’s not losing sleep over the cases he’s solving—but running from the one he couldn’t. Instead, he’s been settling for small-time scandals that don’t stir up the guilt he’s buried. But when he spots Fiona Addai at the center of a murder investigation, something clicks. And for the first time in a long while, Maurice feels that old spark of intrigue.

However, Fiona is not the helpless damsel she appears to be. Sure, she needs Maurice’s help to clear her name, but she’s got conditions of her own: She wants a crash course in real-world detective work. Maurice isn’t exactly thrilled. With every late-night stakeout and tension-filled interrogation, their partnership, rife with tension and unexpected chemistry, unravels a dangerous web of corporate crime and familial secrets. To bring the real killer to light, they'll need to trust each other, and that might be the most dangerous gamble of all.

What I loved about it: Romance is a genre where the forced proximity can sometimes be a stretch, but the entire romance depends on the characters spending time together. This book takes those old tropes and ideas and gives them a fresh, fun life—add in a murder mystery, and you got yourself a hook that will snag the reader and not let them go.