The Books I’m Looking Forward to in 2025

I’m a little late making this list this year, and perhaps not coincidentally it is also one of the biggest lists of its type I’ve ever posted. Am I going to read all of these books? No. Am I going to read a large chunk of them this year? More likely but based on past performance, also no. Will I buy a whole bunch of them and leave them sitting on my kindle to stare at me judgmentally? Very possibly. But as we’ve said in the past, list-making, book-purchasing, and actual reading are different activities that offer different pleasures. I like having a sense of where the literary fields (or at least, those parts that I pay attention to) are and how they are changing, and I like having a plan for my reading, even if it inevitably proves over-ambitious, or gets interrupted by a sudden whim or an impulse purchase.

Of course, looking forward to anything right now feels like a rather fraught choice. I’ve noticed myself reading more, and paying more attention to books and other media, over the last few years as the news has grown more dispiriting. Whether that’s a choice to distract myself, or to focus on the things I’m good at and which, I think, bring pleasure to others is, I suppose, something for other people to judge. Still, if you’re looking for something to distract yourself with, or a reason to feel just a little bit happy that 2025 is here, perhaps you’ll find it on this list.

As usual, before we get started with 2025 books, here are a few 2024 publications I wasn’t aware of when I made last year’s list, but which I think are worth your time:

• The Proposal by Bae Myung-hoon, translated by Stella Kim – Honford Star continues to supply anglophone readers with the best in translated Korean SFF. The latest novella by Bae (whose Tower I discussed here several years ago) is a narrative of an interstellar war that is part tough-as-nails military SF, part a Catch-22-style examination of the military’s absurdities, and part deeply compelling love story.
• The Sentence by Gautam Bhatia – I’ve mentioned Bhatia—who is a scholar of Indian constitutional law and the editor in chief of Strange Horizons, as well as a science fiction author—in these lists before. His latest, a fantasy-world legal thriller, draws on all those specialities to produce something truly unique. Though the book is currently available only in India, Bhatia has recently secured UK representation, so hopefully readers outside the subcontinent will soon be able to get their hands on it.
• Interstellar MegaChef by Lavanya Lakshminarayan – Hot on the heels of her Clarke Award-nominated debut The Ten Percent Thief, Lakshminarayan returns with something completely different from that class-based cyberpunk dystopia. Described as a cooking competition in outer space, Interstellar Megachef looks like a rollicking adventure along the lines of Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera.
• House of Open Wounds and Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky – The vagaries of US/UK publication schedules, not to mention Tchaikovsky’s absurd prolificity, mean that I am not sure whether these books are 2023, 2024, or even 2025 publications. Either way, they are the follow-ups to the excellent City of Last Chances. All three novels are standalones that take place in the same setting, a New Weird-inflected science-fantasy urban landscape.

January:

• The Many Lives of Anne Frank by Ruth Franklin – Author of the insightful and illuminating Shirley Jackson biography A Rather Haunted Life, Franklin has been writing about Anne Frank’s life—and her afterlife as a posthumously-published diarist and international symbol—on her excellent substack. Those essays were offshoots of Franklin’s work on this biography, part of Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series. The book promises to examine who the real girl was, and how she has been changed and repurposed in the wake of her murder.
• We Do Not Part by Han Kang, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris – Even before winning the Nobel Prize last year, Kang was enjoying tremendous popularity among anglophone readers. Her latest novel to be translated into English is described as both the story of a friendship between two women and an exploration of a forgotten chapter of Korean history—but to be honest, I don’t even check the plots of her books anymore. I know there will always be something special waiting in them for me.
• Blob by Maggie Su – Something I’ve noticed in recent years is how a new generation of writers seems to be perfectly comfortable in a literary, mainstream-facing mode, while using core science fiction and fantasy tropes. Joining authors like Marie-Helene Bertino, Emet North, and Jinwoo Chong is Su, whose debut novel is about a woman who discovers a sentient blob and decides to mold him into the perfect boyfriend.

February:

• Casual by Koji A. Dae – Tenebrous Press is an outfit I pay attention to, but their output tends more towards horror (and the novella length). This novel sounds like a cyberpunk dystopia, about a world where brain implants can open new avenues for people suffering from disease, while also placing them under government restrictions.
• Brother Brontë by Fernando A. Flores – Flores’s debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, was a gonzo romp about the consumption of endangered animals. His new novel similarly combines a Texas setting with a strong mix of social realism and fantastical invention, in a near-future setting where factory workers are indentured and reading is prohibited.
• Isola by Allegra Goodman – After several years writing fiction for younger readers, Goodman shifts to a historical setting with this story about a young woman abandoned on a deserted island with her lover. Though broadly inspired by real events, it sounds like the story takes a turn for the fantastical.
• Sun City by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal – For several years now, the good people at NYRB Classics have been diligently ensuring that every one of Moomin-creator Jansson’s novels for adults is available to a modern, English-reading audience. Sun City, which takes place in a Florida retirement home, promises to feature Jansson’s signature orneriness, and her matter of fact approach to the compromises of old age.
• The Watermark by Sam Mills – Published to acclaim last year in the UK, Mills’s latest is a metafictional adventure about a couple who are trapped in a book by a struggling author. To escape, they must make their way across different genres and stories.

March:

• The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison – The third installment in the continuing adventures of Thara Celehar, witness for the dead (a sort of cross between priest, detective, and necromancer) sees the melancholy yet stalwart hero dealing with the loss of his powers, a commission by ghostly dragons demanding restitution for their murder, and, as in the previous novels, the dilemma of trying to serve justice in an unjust world.
• The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses – Bazterrica took the world by storm with her novel Tender is the Flesh, a dystopian horror slash vegetarian screed. Her latest sounds like it dips into similar waters, focusing on a convent that offers shelter (for a price) in a blasted, post-climate change future.
• I Leave it Up to You by Jinwoo Chong – Chong’s debut, Flux, was a clever, moving novel about time travel, phony startups, and regret. His follow-up sounds less fantastical, but still intriguing: it’s about a man who wakes up after two years in a coma, and has to start his life from zero at his family’s Korean restaurant.
• The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar – Six years after publishing the beloved This is How You Lose the Time War (and two years after it became an amusingly-named tale of viral success), Mohtar returns with another novella. This one sounds like a romantic fantasy, about two sisters who live on the edge of fairyland.
• Late Star Trek by Adam Kotsko – The inaugural entry in University of Minnesota Press’s Mass Markets series, this survey by Kotsko looks at how the storied franchise has evolved and changed in the 21st century. Readers of Kotsko’s substack will already be aware of his thoughtful writing about Star Trek (encompassing tie-in fiction as well as the shows and movies), and will be looking forward to his more comprehensive thoughts.
• Luminous by Silvia Park – Most of the books on this list are ones that intrigue me, but which I haven’t yet read. Park’s debut is an exception, so I can tell you with absolute certainty that it is a banger. Set in a future, unified Korea, it follows several characters who range along the spectrum from human to robot as they try to navigate new definitions of personhood, and a world eager to exploit all of them. In my forthcoming Locus review, I called it “a more-than-worthy successor to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and A.I. Artificial Intelligence“.
• The Antidote by Karen Russell – It’s been more than a decade since Russell, one of America’s premier surrealists, has delivered a novel. Her latest takes place in Depression-era Nebraska, and follows five characters after their town is demolished by a dust storm.
• Woodworking by Emily St. James – After making the journey from TV criticism to TV writing, St. James has branched out into written fiction with her debut novel, about a closeted trans teacher in a small town whose life is upended by an encounter with an out trans student.

April:

• A Granite Silence by Nina Allan – Readers of Allan’s blog will know that she has grown increasingly more interested in crime writing in recent years, incorporating it into several of her science fiction novels. A Granite Silence is the natural outcome of that journey, focusing on the disappearance of a young girl from a working class Aberdeen neighborhood in the 1930s.
• Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor – Literary juggler Binet returns with a murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence, focusing on the city’s blossoming art world, as well as its patrons, the Medicis. Given Binet’s reputation for genre-play and metafictional games, I’m sure there’s an additional twist in the tale.
• Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman – With only two novels and a novella under his belt, Fellman has already established himself as one of the most exciting, distinctive voices in genre writing. His latest sounds, quite typically, very different from all his previous work, a far-future family saga about a trans man trying to unravel the life of his father, an executed murderer.
• When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory – Simulation theory—the idea that we are all living in a computer program—had its heyday among the techbro contingent before they all moved on to straight-up eugenics. It’s a sufficiently evocative idea, though, that it’s hardly surprising that science fiction authors are continuing to noodle around with it. Gregory’s latest follows two friends in a world that has recently discovered it is a simulation, as they set out on a road trip to explore its glitches.
• A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang – A rising star in SFF publishing whose stories and novellas have garnered a great deal of award recognition (we discussed the novelette I AM AI in a recent Political History of the Future post), Jiang returns with what seems like a departure for her, a fantasy novella in which humans are enemies whom the heroine must plot against.
• Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid – The good folks at Briardene Books, publishers of my review collection Track Changes, are already back with their next helping of intelligent, insightful SFF criticism. Kincaid—a multiply-Hugo-nominated critic whose biography of Iain M. Banks we discussed here several years ago—turns his eye to histories, surveys, biographies, and all other attempts to systematize and give shape to the genre of science fiction.
• City of All Seasons by Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley – Between them, Langmead (author of the novel in verse Calypso) and Whiteley (who recently delivered the uncategorizable Three Eight One) are among the most experimental writers working in SFF. Their forthcoming collaboration, in which two cousins are trapped in cities which are one and the same, promises to be no less weird and mind-twisting.
• Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou – A writer of poetry, interactive fiction, and short fiction, Theodoridou is now publishing his first novel, a retelling of the legend of Blackbeard that has been garnering ecstatic praise, and which comes from the always-promising Tin House.

May:

• A Letter From the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall – Cathrall’s debut A Letter to the Luminous Deep was one of the most delightful surprises of my 2024 reading, a cod-Victorian epistolary novel about a society of scientists and explorers who live on a water planet, and the friendship that develops between two lonely, damaged people as they try to unravel the mysteries of its depths. It ended with the letter-writers’ disappearance, and I’m very much looking forward to learning their fate in the concluding volume.
• Red Sword by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur – Chung’s two short story collections, Cursed Bunny and Your Utopia, have been absolute juggernauts in their English translations (the former was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and National Book Award). Now Honford Star are publishing a first novel by her, a far-future planetary romance about a soldier in an interstellar war, inspired by events from Korean history.
• Circular Motion by Alex Foster – Climate fiction is possibly the fastest-growing subset of literary fiction, and after only a few years I admit that a lot of these books have started to run together for me. Foster’s debut offers, at the very least, a new spin (no pun intended) on the subject. In the novel’s world, the planet’s rotation begins to accelerate, shaving at first seconds, then minutes, then hours off each day. The metaphor is clear, but I’m curious to see where Foster takes it.
• Meet Me at the Crossroads by Megan Giddings – I was delighted and surprised by Giddings’s second novel, The Women Could Fly, which told, in a deceptively light, humorous tone, a story about carving out a life in a world hostile to your very existence. I have high hopes for her follow-up, in which mysterious doors to another dimension suddenly appear all over the world.
• Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi – Goliath, Onyebuchi’s previous novel, was a truly monumental work, but also so bleak in its topic—the deepening of class and racial gaps once off-world life becomes possible—that I can almost (almost) understand why it so overlooked by the science fiction awards establishment. His new novel sounds like it has a more congenial topic—a noir fantasy set in French-occupied West Africa—but knowing Onyebuchi I’m sure there will still be a great deal to chew on.
• A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi – Only a year after her previous novel, Parasol Against the Axe, Oyeyemi returns with another tale of magical realism versus modern living. The heroine of this new novel is in fact seven different people, one for each day of the week, who discover that one of them may be trying to destroy all their lives.
• Strange and Perfect Account From the Permafrost by Donald Niedekker, translated by Jonathan Reeder – Narrated by the ghost of a 16th century Arctic explorer buried on what is today Novaya Zemyla, this novella is described as a meditation on the history of polar exploration, the advancement of technology and ravages of climate change, and the reasons that humans venture into inhospitable places.
• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh – After taking the SFF scene by storm with her novel Some Desperate Glory, which turned an over-familiar concept on its head and quite rightly won last year’s Hugo award, Tesh is back with a premise that is at once completely different, and just as ripe for reimagining. The Incandescent is a magical school story, but told from the point of view of the teacher, an overworked, verging-on-middle-age woman who is struggling with both the challenges of her profession, and supernatural forces.

June:

• Audition by Pip Adam – Getting its US publication a few years after New Zealand and the UK, Adam’s novel is a space-set story and a parable about the inhumanity of the justice system. Alone aboard a spaceship, three convicts must relentlessly tell each other their stories in order to stay alive.
• The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington – Best-known for her surrealist paintings, Carrington was also a prolific author, and NYRB Classics have been doing tremendous work republishing all her novels. The Stone Door is described as an adventure story and a puzzle box, and a tribute to Carrington’s marriage to the photographer Chiki Weisz.
• Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman – I don’t read a lot of YA anymore, but Hartman is still an instant buy. Returning to the setting of her novels Seraphina and Tess of the Road, she once again introduces a new main character, which allows her to explore a different facet of this complicated, fascinating fantasy world.

August:

• Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders – After spending the last few years writing the Unstoppable YA trilogy, Anders returns to standalone adult novels with this book, in which a young grad student and her out-of-sorts mother discover a book of magic and set about becoming powerful witches.
• The End of the World as We Know It: New Tales From Stephen King’s The Stand, edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene – This mammoth volume (800 pages!) invites authors like Premee Mohamed, S.A. Cosby, Paul Tremblay, and Catherynne Valente to set stories in the universe of Stephen King’s world-destroying magnum opus. It’s an utterly bonkers project and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
• The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar – The author of the still-beloved children’s classic Holes presents his first novel for adults—though the plot description, which involves a fantasy kingdom, a princess reluctant to marry, and a failing court magician, sounds like it has some crossover potential, recalling books like Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn.

September:

• We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad – After becoming the queen of millennial lifestyle horror, Awad returns to the setting of her breakout success, Bunny, to give the point of view of the villains in that story, the evil clique of MFA mean girls turned witches, who kidnap the earlier novel’s heroine looking for retribution.
• Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite – It’s been seven years since the global sensation My Sister, the Serial Killer, and it sounds as if Braithwaite is returning with another novel about repressive gender norms and the monstrous women who defy them. This time around, the heroine is trying to escape her family’s belief that she is the reincarnation of her headstrong aunt.
• The Dead Man’s Empire by W.P. Wiles – Wiles’s The Last Blade Priest was a meaty and satisfying secondary world fantasy, pitting priests, diplomats, and engineers against each other as they tried to stabilize their world in the wake of an empire’s collapse. I’m very much looking forward to the story’s conclusion in this volume.

October:

• King Sorrow by Joe Hill – It’s been a long time since Hill published a new novel, and with his upcoming one he seems to be joining in on the dark academia trend, with a story about students who summon a beast into our world in order to address a pressing problem, and find themselves with much bigger ones.

Unknown:

• The Unveiling by Quan Barry – After a YA sports fantasy (We Ride Upon Sticks) and a bildungsroman set among Buddhist monks on the Mongolian steppes (When I’m Gone, Look For Me in the East), the uncategorizable Barry is set to return in a novel described as literary horror, about a black location scout trapped on an island in the Antarctic with a bunch of white tourists.
• Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim – One of the most heralded SFF short fiction writers of the last few years, Kim’s debut novel already made a splash when it was picked up for a TV adaptation by Universal. The novel itself is set in a world in which people split in two when they cross international borders.
• Alecto the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir – Look, it’s possible? It’s going on three years since the previous volume in Muir’s Locked Tomb series, and currently there’s no news on the publication date for the (projected) final installment. But it’s early enough in the year that a fall or winter publication could still happen.