The 2025 books I’m waiting for

Q. How do you know when you’ve become obsessed with books?
A. When your calendar lists the publication dates of books you already know you want to buy.

I plead guilty to being obsessed with books. Here are the twelve yet to be published books that are on my wishlist for spring and summer 2025.

March

Catherine Kirwan is an Irish writer, based out of Cork, who I’ve been hearing good things about. I was looking at starting her Finn Fitzpatrick series when I saw that she had a new standalone crime novel coming out, so i’m going to start there.

April

Sleeper Beach‘ is the sequel to ‘Titaniam Noir’ which was one of my best reads of 2023. I loved the way Nick Harkaway took great speculative fiction questions, wrapped them in a solid mystery and told the story in a self-consciously Noir style: think Raymond Chandler but replace the misogyny with dry, sometimes self-effacing humour.delivered it all through speculative fiction. I’m hoping for more of the same in this book

This is a debut novel AND it’s a dark comedy, so this is definitely a risk BUT the premise and the title have me hooked so I have to give it a try.

Stephen Graham Jones, an American Indian revenge story – with vampires – set in 1912. What more do you need to know? This is a must read.

May

A new series from Joe Abercrombue has to be good, right? My only worry is that this is a tome of a book. The audiobook runs for a little over twentyfive hours. Still, it’s a new series by Joe Abercrombie…

Another debut and another comedy so another risk BUT if it works, this will be a lot of fun.

June

A magic school. (VERY) Dark Academia. A large cast of not very nice people. A complex magic system and a twisty high-stakes plot. What’s not to like?

FINALLY, a new book by Julie Clark. I read ‘The Flight‘ and ‘The Lies I Tell’ in 2022 and was blown away by both of them. I’ve been waiting for her next book ever since.

THis seems quite different from most Fredrick Backman books but, with one exception that I set aside because it centred around a rape, I’ve enjoyed his books.

Holly Gibney is back so of course I’m going to buy this one. I loved ‘Holly‘ last year. I’m glad to have an opportunity to see what happens next.

July

This is the tenth Peter Grant book. Some of them have worked. Some of them haven’t. I’m hoping that moving this one to Scotland will inject fresh energy into the story and push Peter out of his slightly-too-smug-for-my-tastes comfort zone.

I’ve been waiting for this since I finished the delightful ‘The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches‘ in 2023. If this one is as much fun, I’ll be very happy.

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