Let us know which new 2025 fall books!
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
Fall 2025 is shaping up to be an incredible season for book lovers, with new releases spanning every shelf from gripping thrillers to sweeping romances. If you’re looking for the most anticipated fall books of 2025, you’ve come to the right place. This list pulls together the titles already generating a buzz, making it the perfect guide to what readers everywhere are excited about. Whether you’re craving a twist-filled mystery, an emotional contemporary novel, or a magical new romantasy, these fall 2025 book releases promise to deliver stories worth clearing your schedule for. Here at What We Reading, we’ve broken down the season’s highlights by genre, so you can jump straight to the kinds of books you love most. Here are the most anticipated fall books of 2025 you need on your TBR pile as the weather cools and cosy reading season begins.
Kicking off our list of the most anticipated fall 2025 books is Nathan Harris’ Amity. New Orleans, 1866. The Civil War may be over, but formerly enslaved Coleman and June have yet to find the freedom they’ve been promised. When Coleman receives a letter from Mr Harper, the siblings’ old master, summoning him to Mexico, where he is with June, he believes his prayers might be answered. However, disaster soon strikes his journey across the frontier, sending him on the run with Mr Harper’s daughter, Florence.
Together, they venture into the Mexican desert to find June, all whilst evading two crooked brothers who’ll stop at nothing to capture Coleman and Florence and collect the money they’re owed. As Coleman and Jnune separately navigate a perilous, parched landscape, the siblings learn quickly that freedom isn’t always given – sometimes, it needs to be taken by force.
Release date: 2 September 2025
Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of a distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles upon a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroys his assumptions about what he thought he knew intimately well.
Ian McEwan’s upcoming fall 2025 book, What We Can Know, is a fictional tour de force that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost, blending speculative sci-fi dystopia with poignant contemporary fiction.
Release date: 18 September 2025
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are all finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of modern-day adulthood – overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedoms and consequences – swoops in and stays.
As these friends move from the late 2000s into the late 2020s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another – amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life in Angela Flournoy’s much hyped latest novel, The Wilderness.
Release date: 16 September 2025
Aleys is sixteen years old and serious, stubborn, and prone to religious visions. She and her only friend, a young scholar, have been learning Latin together in secret – but just as she starts to think their connection may be something more, he abandons her for the monastery. When she herself is promised to the unctuous head of the weavers’ guild, she runs away from home, finding shelter in a community of religious women who do not answer to the church.
Among the hard-working and strong-willed Beguines, Aleys glimpses the joys of a life of song, friendship, and time spent in the markets and along the canals of Bruges. But forces both mystical and political are afoot. Illegal translations of scripture, the women’s independence, and a sudden rash of miracles all draw the attention of an ambitious bishop, bringing Aleys and those around her into ever-increasing danger, a danger that will push her into a new understanding of love and sacrifice.
Release date: 2 December 2025
In the small Ohio town of Bonhomie, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man not wounded by the battlefield but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, is a seer, capable of helping families connect with those of whom they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving in the Navy, and she will soon learn that he may have perished in an attack on the Philippine Sea.
As the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie. But nothing stays hidden forever in a small town. Twenty-five years on, as another war convulses America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter set in motion a series of events that will upend the next generation of both families as they hurtle toward the next century. Sweeping yet intimate, Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye is an upcoming 2025 fall book that captures the universal longing for love and for goodness.
Release date: 2 September 2025
Check Out The Best 2025 Book Club Books
Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else’s story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her both parents – both gods – she dreams of leaving her family’s island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home.
In Athens’ colourful market streets and clandestine chambers of the temple, Meddy flourishes in her role as Athena’s favoured acolyte, getting her first tastes of purpose and power. But when she is noticed by another Olympian, Poseidon, the course of Meddy’s promising future is irrevocably altered. Her locs transformed into snakes as punishment for a crime she did not commit, Medusa must embrace a new identity – not as a victim, but as a vigilante – and with it, the chance to write her own story as mortal, martyr, and myth. In her new 2025 fall book, Ayana Gray reinagines one of the most iconic monsters in Greek mythology as a provocative and powerful young heroine.
Release date: 18 November 2025
Luca Matius has one purpose – to carry on his family name, maintaining its presence in the Forum once his powerful and cruel uncle dies. But his noviceship with the city’s Philosopher places him in the middle of a catastrophe that will alter the destiny of his people. Maris Casoeria was brought up among the strategic manoeuvrings of the Citadel, and knows what her future holds – a lifetime of service to a corrupt city. Yet, when she meets Luca, a fated chain of events is set into motion that will divinely entangle their lives.
As a secret comes to light and throws the city into chaos, Luca and Maris devise a plan to create a calculated alliance that could tip the scales of power. But when an execution forces Luca to become the new symbol of rebellion, he and Maris are thrown onto opposite sides of a holy war. As their fates diverge, they discover that they are at the heart of a story the gods are writing. And, even if they can find their way back to one another, there might be nothing left.
Release date: 4 November 2025
Check Out The Best New Non-Fiction Books From Fall 2025
Folklore 517: Local Legends and Urban Myths, taught by a woman called the Professor. Most people believe the Professor’s stories are just fiction, but Holland St. James has always been convinced that magic is real. When she tracks down a local legend named the Watch Man, who supposedly tells you when you’ll die, the world finally starts to make sense. Except that the Watch Man tells her that she will die at midnight tomorrow unless she finds an ancient object called the Alchemical Heart.
With the clock now ticking, Holland is pulled deeper into this magical world at the heart of LA – and into the path of a magnetic stranger. Everything about him feels like a bad idea, but he promises Holland that her sister sent him to protect her. As they chase clues and stories that take them closer to the Alchemical Heart, Holland realises that everyone in this intoxicating new world is lying to her, even this enigmatic stranger. And if she can’t work out who to trust, not even the Alchemical Heart will save her.
Release date: 7 October 2025
Once a promised alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner of war and her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed. In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile, undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive.
According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she as truly insignificant as she appears? To uncover the memories nestled inside her mind, Helena is sent to High Reeve, one of the most powerful necromancers in the world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, her prison and captor have secrets of their own. Secrets that Helena must unearth, no matter the cost. Nee
Release date: 23 September 2025
Check Out The Best New Fall 2025 Fantasy Novels
In Earth’s not-too-distant future, seas consume coastal cities, highways disintegrate underwater, and mutant fish lurk in pirate-controlled depths. Skipper, a skilled sailor and the youngest of three sisters, earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean to care for her ailing grandmother. But then her elder sister, Nora, disappears. When Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, they must put aside their differences and set out across the sea to find – and save – her.
However, the further they venture, the more uncertain their mission becomes. Yume Kitasei’s Saltcrop is a new sci-fi book for fall 2025, charting an epic journey spanning oceans and continents that stands as a wistful rumination on sisterhood, friendship, and ecological disaster.
Release date: 30 September 2025
New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he’s struck by the city’s contradictions – shiny corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class. When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby’s frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren’t all they seem, and Nick knows no secret can stay buried forever.
As Nick becomes entangled in the dark affairs of the elite and the devastating fallout of their actions on the city’s most vulnerable, he must reckon with the limits of compassion and accountability across class and status. K.M. Fajardo’s new fall 2025 novel Local Heavens is a brilliant reimagining of The Great Gatsby, examining the guardrails of morality and the price of desire.
Release date: 14 October 2025
Check Out The Most Talked About Books From 2025
Virginia, 1954. A young woman wakes, agitated and confused, on a bus heading for Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital. She remembers nothing of her life before that moment, none of the dark things she has seen and done that have forged her into such a skilled and cunning fighter. Once she has been subdued, doctors tell her that she’s Dorothy Frasier, a paranoid schizophrenic, committed to Hanover for treatments they hope will quell her increasingly violent delusions.
Soon, disturbing visions begin to invade her reality: of a dystopian future where frantic scientists urge her to complete “the mission” and save humankind. Now, she’s sure of nothing, caught between two realities. Believe in the future, and she might save the world. Believe in her doctors, and she may save herself. She’s desperate for answers, but she’ll have to harness the darkness inside her to get them, risking her freedom, her mind, and ultimately her life in a heart-stopping quest for the truth.
Release date: 19 August 2025
When an online influencer and several hundred of his most loyal fans land on Prosperity Island, the plan is simple: five days of elaborate games, drinking, and suntanned fun. A week in paradise should have been a welcome respite. The only survivor of an infamous cult, Ruth wants nothing more than to keep her head down and not draw attention. She’s spent decades outrunning her blood-soaked childhood, and her identity is a closely-guarded secret.
But then the true history of the island is revealed… along with its sinister connection to Ruth’s past. As guests go missing and games turn deadly, Ruth and the rest of the attendees are forced to question whether they’ve really been invited to paradise, or whether something far darker and far bloodier is waiting for them just beyond the bonfire’s light.
Release date: 26 August 2025
In this new haunting psychological horror coming this fall 2025, Willow’s life has become a fever dream. Her only connection to the world beyond her walls is a young girl named Sarah, whose unexpected visits to Willow’s garden spark a small glimmer of hope. But, as cracks form in her carefully controlled existence, horrifying truths start to seep through, twisting the familiar into something sinister. The floral wallpaper peels back to reveal haunting messages carved into the walls, and the house itself pulses with malevolent life.
When Sarah suddenly vanishes, Willow is forced to confront the dark shadows of her past and the horrors lurking within her fractured psyche. The question remains: is Willow really a prisoner of her own home, or of her own mind?
Release date: 16 September 2025
Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life. But beneath her glossy veneer, she hides a dark secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio’s parents’ messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. At least, that’s what Alex claimed. The courts disagreed when they stripped Alex of custody after she fell off the deep end.
After Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed estate passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover gets underway, Clio learns there may be some truth to Alex’s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother’s book documenting her experiences, the presence in the house becomes more real and more sinister, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s polished life to its very foundation.
Release date: 9 September 2025
Check Out The Best New Horror Novels From Fall 2025
Casey’s cabin in the wilderness is not built for a hurricane. Her roof shakes, the lights flicker, and the tree outside her front door sways ominously in the wind. But she’s a lot more worried about the girl she discovers lurking outside her kitchen window. She’s young. She’s alone. And she is covered in blood.
The girl won’t explain where she came from or loosen the grip she has on the knife in her right hand. And when Casey makes a disturbing discovery in the middle of the night, things take a sharp turn for the worse. The girl has a dark secret. One she’s prepared to kill to keep. And if Casey gets too close to the truth, she may not live to see the morning. In this new fall 2025 novel, Freida McFadden explores how far one girl will go to save herself.
Release date: 7 October 2025
Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then, into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it.
Once he hooks the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth hidden beneath the radar. But soon her story starts to crack. When she is suddenly hospitalised after a car accident, Simon realises that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit. Simon knows he is innocent. But he also knows the circumstantial evidence is against him, and he could spend the remainder of his days behind bars. To save himself, he must find the real killer…
Release date: 21 October 2025
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
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