Books are eternal, and so is my TBR pile. There are so many to read and not enough time to get to them all, but that won’t stop us from anticipating works by our favourite authors, rising talents, and worlds we’re feverish to revisit. This list could have been dozens of books long but I wanted to keep it concise. Be sure to share your own most anticipated reads of 2025!
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Blessed be to Suzanne Collins, a writer of an iconic series beloved by young people who didn’t spiral into a radicalized hellhole of hatred and mould. She writes a book, gives it to the world, then goes away! When she announced a new book in her Hunger Games series, there was some trepidation that it wouldn’t live up to her original trilogy, but The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which detailed the rise of President Snow, was an astute and gripping tale of radicalisation. Now, her newest prequel will follow Haymitch Abernathy, the District 12 mentor of Katniss and Peeta whose trauma led him to alcoholism and ruin.
We know that Sunrise on the Reaping is going to be a tragic tale, even by Collins’ standards. After all, this is the author who birthed the modern YA dystopia trend and was never surpassed by her copycats. She never took her eye off the fact that these were stories of politics, trauma, and a societal bloodthirst coupled with the manipulations of the media. Don’t expect a happy ending here but one that might feel more relevant than ever.
Sunrise on the Reaping is set to be released on March 18.
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
R.F. Kuang became a very big deal with two books: Babel, a fantasy about academic colonialism, and Yellowface, a satire on modern publishing and who gets to tell whose story. These two titles were huge sellers, with the latter passing a million copies. That means that whatever she writes next is sure to intrigue, and Katabasis sees her returning to the realms of university and magic.
Alice Law and Peter Murdoch are rivals who both strive to be the best students in the field of Magick at Cambridge University. They just need good recommendations so that they can fulfil their dreams. Sadly, their professor was killed in a magical accident and is now in Hell. It’s up to Alice and Peter to save him from eternal damnation and ensure their own academic futures. What’s the fiery pits of the underworld compared to deadlines?
Katabasis is set to be released on August 25.
Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
It’s time for the token vampire book of the list! Vampires are back in style and I’m happier than ever. I deserve this. As we wait impatiently for season three of Interview With the Vampire (rockstar Lestat!), why not fill in that time with a retelling of the book that started the entire literary craze: Carmilla. In Hungerstone, we’re promised a ‘compulsive feminist reworking’ of that novella. Sounds up my alley. Lenore, the bored wife of a steel magnate, finds herself increasingly enraptured by a mysterious and pale woman named Carmilla. We know what happens next so sign me up.
Hungerstone will be published on February 13.
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
I know what we’re all craving in 2025: dystopian fiction! Such a fun, fantastical break from our current reality. Ah, life isn’t terrifying in the slightest. Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Laila Lalami joins the fold with a book that sounds both fascinating and horrifying.
Upon arrival at LAX, having been abroad for work, Sara is pulled aside by agents from the Risk Assessment Administration and told that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, she has been deemed a risk and must be kept under observation for 21 days. Under lock and key, Sara is forced to find a way to prove her innocence, but with every slight deviation from the impossible rules forced upon her, her stay is extended beyond the initial three weeks. How can one’s most private space, their brain, be dictated by outside forces? And how much of our personal freedoms must one give up in the name of so-called safety? See, not relevant at all to our current world.
The Dream Hotel will be released on March 4.
The Antidote by Karen Russell
I’ve long loved Karen Russell’s short stories, which blend the fantastical with the mundane and find the heart amid unexpected idiosyncrasies. She’s releasing her second novel this year, her long-awaited follow-up to the Pulitzer-shortlisted Swamplandia!
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska, a place that never fully recovered after the Great Depression. As the storm rages on, five locals find themselves connected: there’s the Prairie Witch whose body stores other people’s memories; a Polish wheat farmer with a hoarding issue; his orphan niece who is both a basketball star and witch’s apprentice; a scarecrow; and a photographer with a time travelling camera.
The Antidote will be published on March 11.
Flashlight by Susan Choi
One night, ten-year-old Louisa and her father Serk take a walk on the beach. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone, presumed drowned. Flashlight dissects what happened that night and delves into the life of Serk, an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan who lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Louisa’s mother Anne is an American woman estranged from her own family, with an illegitimate son named Tobias who shockingly reappears in their lives with devastating consequences. Choi is a sharp and gripping writer who has this innate ability to casually drop the biggest shock in the middle of her work and I’m fascinated to see how this narrative unfolds.
Flashlight will be released on June 3.
The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work is a Day One purchase for me. Her explorations of well-worn genre tropes through a fresh scope and her own Mexican heritage has given us some of my favourite reads of the past few years (see Untamed Shore and Mexican Gothic.) Her newest book is another horror title but this one is a multi-generational story about witches. Sold.
“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva. Those tales were enough to inspire Minerva to become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature. Her main focus is Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales and a novel named The Vanishing. Her research has revealed to Minerva that this book was inspired by true events, and the more she delves into Tremblay’s book, the more she wonders if her Nana’s tales were more than just bedtime stories.
The Bewitching will be released on July 15.
The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica
As I’ve noted before on this side, Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh is one of the most disturbing novels I’ve ever read. Her clear-eyed and unflinching view of a world where cannibalism has become an accepted industry left me practically shaking. Her use of euphemistic corporate language to show how dehumanization leads to abject inhumanity was painfully real. So, of course I’m ready to have Bazterrica ruin my life once more with her latest book, The Unworthy.
In a world ravaged by climate change, the nunnery of the Sacred Sisterhood provides a strange kind of safety, but not for all. A lower member of the Sisterhood writes the story of her life in whatever she can find: ink, dirt, even her own blood. She dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the centre of the convent, but what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?
The Unworthy will be released (in English) on March 4.
We Do Not Part by Han Kang
Han Kang is the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature thanks to what the committee called her ‘intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.’ The Vegetarian became the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker Prize for fiction in 2016 and she’s widely credited as being one of the major voices of Korean fiction, not only in her home country but abroad. Her latest book was published in 2021 but is getting its first English translation this year.
We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women: Kyungha and Inseon. One morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. This friendly task leads to her confronting he Jeju uprising of 1948, where around 10% of the entire population of the island was killed.
We Do Not Part will be published on January 21.
The Talent by Daniel D’Addario
As a pop culture writer who knows and cares way too much about awards season, I am professionally and personally mandated to be obsessed with a novel about this weird and wild world. Variety writer Daniel D’Addario tells the story of five actresses who are fighting to take home the top prize in their field. There’s Adria, the grand dame of the film world who wants to secure her legacy; Bitty, who’s trying to keep a cool head amid her crumbling mental health and increasing alcoholism; Contessa, a former child star making the leap into serious adult acting; Davina, a serious stage actress from London who has no patience for Hollywood fluff; and Jenny, who wants to make a comeback and maybe get one over her rival, Adria. How juicy!
The Talent will be released on February 25.