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

When six human bodies are discovered in the process, building work on a derelict site in Cork grinds to a halt. And then a seventh is discovered.
Although the first six are men who died centuries ago, the seventh body is different – female, for a start, and much more recent.
What began as a historic find is now a crime scene.
Detective Garda Alice McCann is determined to track down the killer, even though she knows her superiors don’t want her anywhere near such a high-profile case. Not after what happened before.
But at every turn, her investigation reveals more questions than answers, more lies than facts. And someone powerful is watching her every move. Can Alice uncover the truth before she’s taken off the case – and before the killer strikes again?
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

On the shore of a rundown holiday town, a young woman washes up dead. Martha Erskine, the matriarch of a local dynasty, suspects a member of her own family might be involved in the murder, and calls in Cal to investigate.
Cal Sounder is a detective first and a Titan second, but it’s not easy to make that work. It’s hard to be an ordinary guy when you’re fundamentally not ordinary anymore. Cal has recently taken a dose of T7, a rare drug that is usually the preserve of the rich, making its users – called the Titans – younger and bigger each time they take it, so that as they age the bodies of the ultra-wealthy become as immense as their bank accounts.
As Cal digs into the crime, he finds this forgotten town is simmering with wage disputes, strikes, and political conflict, and no one is quite who they say they are – not even the victim. As Cal second-guesses everyone he meets, he is forced to confront his own identity and ask himself who he wants to be from the far side of the mirror of power, age and greed.
‘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

Maybe having a few enemies on the school run means you’re doing something right…
Florence knows all about failure. After a dismal end to her 2000s girlband career, she’s moping around West London, single, broke and unfulfilled. The only things she’s proud of are her increasingly elaborate nail art choices – and her ten-year-old son, Dylan.
But when Alfie Risby, Dylan’s bitter class rival and the child heir to a frozen foods empire, mysteriously vanishes on a school trip, Dylan becomes a prime suspect. Florence has to get her act together, find the missing boy and clear her son’s name or risk losing him forever. The only problem? She doesn’t have any detective skills, she’s not exactly popular at the school gates and she’s just found Alfie’s backpack hidden under Dylan’s bed…
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.

A chilling historical horror story set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.
A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits.
This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
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

Europe stares into the abyss.
Plague and famine stalk the land, monsters lurk in every shadow and greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions. Only one thing is certain: the elves will come again, and they will eat everyone.
Sometimes, only the darkest paths lead towards the light. Paths on which the righteous will not dare to tread . . .
And so, buried beneath the sacred splendour of the Celestial Palace, is the secret Chapel of the Holy Expediency. For its congregation of convicted monsters there are no sins that have not been committed, no lines that will not be crossed, and no mission that cannot be turned into a disastrous bloodbath.
Now the hapless Brother Diaz must somehow bind the worst of the worst to a higher cause: to put a thief on the throne of Troy, and unite the sundered church against the coming apocalypse.
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…

Their husbands are driving them mad, and murder is on their minds . . . but the men have a plan of their own.
Pam, Nancy and Shalisa once imagined retirement would mean setting aside their worries, picking up their margaritas, and lying back in a hot tub. Right up until their husbands lost all their savings in a reckless investment.
Now, collecting their husbands’ life insurance is starting to sound more appealing than growing old with them. But enlisting the help of the local barber/hitman isn’t merely the most daring thing the friends have ever done – it’s also where the trouble really begins.
Because they don’t realise their husbands have some tricks up their sleeves. And there’s no turning back now .
Another debut and another comedy so another risk BUT if it works, this will be a lot of fun.
June

There is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…
First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school’s honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.
If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.
And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.
Fabian isn’t worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.
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?

Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of legendary horror author Vincent Taylor, famous not only for his novels, but for being the prime suspect in the brutal slaying of his siblings.
On the brink of financial ruin, Olivia reluctantly agrees to ghostwrite her father’s last book, not realising that she will be forced to reckon with the ghosts that live at the centre of her family. Because after fifty years of silence, Vincent Taylor is finally ready to talk. But is he ready to tell the truth?
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.

In the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world three tiny figures sit at the end of a pier. Most people don’t even notice them. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise.
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers seek refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days together. They tell jokes, they share secrets, and they commit small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into 18-year-old Louisa’s care. Determined to learn how it came to be and to decide what to do with it, Louisa embarks on a cross-country journey. But the closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes.
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.

When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to ‘kill thirteen innocents and one guilty’ in ‘an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man’, Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realises that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.
Meanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard – a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and unhinged righteousness.
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

Detective Sergeant Peter Grant takes a much-needed holiday up in Scotland. And he’ll need one when this is over…
If more’s the merrier, then it’s ecstatic as his partner Beverley, their young twins, his mum, dad, his dad’s band and their dodgy manager all tag along. Even his boss, DCI Thomas Nightingale, takes in the coastal airs as he trains Peter’s cousin Abigail in the arcane arts.
And they’ll need them too, because Scotland’s Granite City has more than its fair share of history and mystery, myth … and murder.
When a body is found in a bus stop, fresh from the sea, the case smells fishy from the off.
Something may be stirring beyond the bay – but there’s something far stranger in the sky…
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.

Once, Sera Swan was one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her powers, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. Now she helps Jasmine run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with their quirky guests’ shenanigans and longs for a future that seems lost. Until she finds about an old spell that could restore her power . . .
Enter Luke Larsen, handsome magical historian, who might have the key to unlocking the spell’s secrets. Luke has no interest in the inn’s madcap goings-on, and is even less interested in letting a certain bewitching innkeeper past his walls. So no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help.
Running an inn, reclaiming lost power, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera is about to discover she doesn’t have to do alone – and that love might be the best magic of all.
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.
