10 Of The Best New Non-Fiction Books Coming Out This Fall 2025

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“Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.”

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Fall 2025 is shaping up to be an exciting season for readers, especially those who love non-fiction. From gripping biographies to eye-opening history, science, and self-help books, the upcoming non-fiction releases this fall offer something for every curious mind. Whether you’re searching for the best new non-fiction books 2025 or want to explore the must-read non-fiction titles coming out this autumn, we here at What We Reading have you covered. These carefully curated books highlight the most anticipated stories and insights from the season, showcasing authors who are making waves across a variety of topics. If you’re looking to stay ahead of the literary curve and discover new non-fiction releases for fall 2025, this guide will help you pick out your next favourite read. From inspiring journeys to thought-provoking explorations, these works are perfect for anyone looking to learn, reflect, and be inspired this fall. 

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Mother Mary Comes To Me – Arundhati Roy

First up on our list of new fall 2025 non-fiction books is Arundhati Roy’s searing debut memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me. “Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response to it, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at eighteen. And thus begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from Roy’s childhood in Kerala, India, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through to today.

With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace, making for a memoir that truly reads like no other. 

Release date: 2 September 2025

Family Of Spies – Christine Kuehn

The Kuehns, a prominent Berlin family, saw the rise of the Nazis as a way out of the hard times. When the daughter of the family, Ruth, met Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels at a party, the pair hit it off. They started having an affair – only for Goebbels to learn that Ruth was half Jewish. Goebbels sent the entire Kuehn family to Hawaii to work as spies. There, Ruth and her parents established an intricate spy operation from their home, just a few miles from Pearl Harbour. 

They passed secrets to the Japanese, leading to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbour. After his father was arrested and tried for his involvement in planning the assault, Eberhard learned the harsh truth about his family and faced a decision that would change the path of the Kuehn family forever. Jumping back and forth in time, Family of Spies is a new gripping historical non-fiction novel that promises to rewrite the narrative of December 7th, 1941. 

Release date: 25 November 2025

Enshittification – Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification takes a witty yet incisive look at the tech landscape, where platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, and Google start off great – before they inevitably turn terrible. 

In this present moment of digital decline, Doctorow explores how the tech giants lure users in with convenience and then degrade their services over time, squeezing profit at the expense of user experience. With a blend of sharp humour and deep insight, he unveils the slow creep of “enshittification,” turning the online world into a worse place, one algorithm at a time. 

Release date: 7 October 2025

All The Way To The River – Elizabeth Gilbert

In 2000, a friend sent Liz to see a new hairdresser named Rayya Elias. An intense and unlikely curiosity sparked between these two apparent opposites. Over the years, they became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. Unacknowledged: they were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe. 

What if the person you loved became a danger to your sanity and well-being? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening? From the global bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and Big Magic, All the Way to the River is a new fall 2025 non-fiction book for anyone who has ever been captive to love – and who years, at long last, for peace and freedom. 

Release date: 9 September 2025

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We The People – Jill Lepore

The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world – and one of the most difficult to amend. In this landmark new fall 2025 non-fiction book, Harvard professor of history and law Jill Lepore argues that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. Challenging both originalism and the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation, Lepore convincingly argues that the framers intended for the Constitution to be something to be tinkered with, improving the machinery of government. 

In a radical, enthralling account, Lepore offers a sweeping, lyrical, and democratic constitutional history, telling the stories of generations of Americans who have attempted everything from abolishing the Electoral College to guaranteeing environmental rights, hoping to mend America by amending its constitution. 

Release date: 16 September 2025

Paper Girl – Beth Macy

The town of Urbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the 1970s and ‘80s. But Urbana had a healthy enough economy, and there were middle-class kids at school whose families became her role models. People in Urbana were proud of their schools, the library, and the history of their town. Yet, as her mother began her final descent in 2020, on more frequent visits home to Ohio, Macy couldn’t shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened in ways she couldn’t process. 

Paper Girl was not an assignment she wanted to take, but she felt she had no choice. Two years ago, she began to return regularly, to deploy all she had learned, to figure her hometown out. The result is an astonishing new non-fiction book this fall that takes us into the heart of one specific place and, through it, brings into focus a new way to address our most urgent set of national issues. 

Release date: 7 October 2025

Replaceable You – Mary Roach

The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from your manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available. Today, we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. In Replaceable You, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. 

Roach dives in with her characteristic verve and infectious wit. Her travels take her to the OR at a legendary burn unit in Boston, a “superclean” xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell “hair nursery” in the San Diego tech hub. She speaks to researchers, amputees, surgeons, ostomates, printers of kidneys, and designers of wearable organs. Irrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you. 

Release date: 16 September 2025

The Tragedy Of True Crime – John J. Lennon

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 prison system in New York, facing a sentence of twenty-eight years to life. However, after stepping 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. 

Lennon’s reporting is intertwined with his own story, from a young seduced by the 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. An immersive and original piece of prison journalism, The Tragedy of True Crime poses fundamental questions about the stories we tell, and who gets to tell them. 

Release date: 23 September 2025

The Zorg – Siddharth Kara

In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. After reaching Africa, the Zorg was captured by a British privateer. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves and set off for Jamaica. But, a combination of bad weather and mistakes led to a proposition: save the crew and most valuable slaves by throwing dozens of people, starting with women and children, overboard. 

What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history – sparking the abolitionist movements in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Siddharth Kara utilises primary sources, gripping storytelling, and painstaking investigation to uncover the Zorg’s journey, the lives of the slaves on board, and the mysterious identity of the abolitionist who finally revealed the truth of what happened on the ship. 

Release date: 14 October 2025

Joyride – Susan Orlean

While Susan Orlean has always written her way into other people’s lives to understand the human experience, Joyride stands as her most personal book ever – a searching journey through finding her feet as a journalist, recovering from the collapse of her marriage, falling head-over-heels in love again, becoming a mother whilst mourning the decline of her own, and confronting mortality. 

One of the most poignant and reflective new non-fiction books coming this fall 2025, Joyride is infused with Orlean’s signature warmth and wit, standing as a must-read for anyone who hungers to start, build, and sustain a creative life. Orlean inspires us to seek out daily inspiration and rediscover the marvels that surround us. 

Release date: 14 October 2025

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