New Book Releases in 2025: Our top fiction picks by month
If you are a book lover seeking out the upcoming new book releases in 2025, this is the book recommendations list for you! With an incredible array of 2025 fiction book releases on offer across all genres, the year promises something memorable for every reader.
So, what books are coming out in 2025?
There is never a shortage of shiny new novels to consider, but we cannot read every new book released in 2025. Our leisure reading time is scarce so you want to quickly zero in on only the very best new books.
From highly anticipated books from bestselling authors to must-read debut novelists, I will be compiling a bi-monthly selection of the top new fiction releases. Whether you are into fantasy book releases in 2025, heartfelt romance, eclectic sci-fi or enigmatic mystery thrillers, you’ll find plenty of inspiration for your 2025 reading pile here.
Read on to explore the best of 2025 in fiction and discover your next great read!
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Top 2025 Book Releases by Month
We are steaming toward peak publishing season again, so there are many upcoming book releases that could easily have made this ‘best of March and April’ list. After much deliberation, here are my top 8 fiction releases plus 4 notable mentions for March and April 2025.
March – April 2025 New Book Releases
Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations (2020) and Once There Were Wolves (2021) were outstanding – literary, thrilling and impactful. So her long-awaited new novel Wild Dark Shore, another near-future climate dystopia, was always going to be a must-read. In it, a father and his children are caretakers, and now last remaining inhabitants, of a tiny island not far from Antarctica that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a mysterious woman washes ashore. Book Details & My Full Review >>
Books 1 and 2 in Mark Lawrence’s The Library trilogy, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn and The Book That Broke the World, held me hostage to the page – the adventure, the fantasy world-building, the character ensemble are something special. So to say I’m looking forward the April release of its finale, The Book That Held Her Heart, is an understatement. Two characters once connected by a vast and mysterious library are now separated and must overcome time and distance to reunite and bring peace to their worlds. Read more >>
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Kirsten Perrin’s How To Solve Your Own Murder was a cut above your average entertaining murder mystery, so How to Seal Your Own Fate (The Castle Knoll Files #2) is sure to be a cracker also. In another dual-timeline mystery, Annie becomes a suspect when a local fortune teller is murdered after delivering her a cryptic warning, while in 1967, teenager Frances investigates a suspicious car crash tied to the powerful Gravesdown family. As past and present collide, Annie must decipher the fortune teller’s message before history repeats itself and she loses everything. Book Details & My Full Review >>
The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love, the first title in India Holton’s whimsical historical rom-com fantasy series Love’s Academic, topped my Best Books of 2024 list. In Book 2, The Geographer’s Map to Romance, married for convenience but secretly in love, magic disaster experts Elodie and Gabriel Tarrant have been estranged since their wedding. But, when a magical catastrophe threatens a Welsh village, they must work together, navigating explosions, goats, and only one bed, and confront the chaos of their own hearts before it’s too late. Read more >>
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The Story She Left Behind, new historical mystery fiction from Patti Callahan Henry (The Secret Book of Flora Lea) was inspired by real events. When Clara’s mother, renowned author Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham disappears off the coast of South Carolina in 1927, she leaves behind an unfinished literary enigma and a grieving daughter. After contact from a stranger 25 years later, Clara and her daughter travel to London to investigate a clue about her mother’s lost language. When disaster strikes there, and they take refuge at the stranger’s Lakes District estate, will Clara uncover long-buried secrets that finally reveal the truth? Read more >>
The Amalfi Curse, the ‘bewitching’ late April release from bestselling author Sarah Penner (The London Séance Society, The Lost Apothecary) stars nautical archaeologist Haven Ambrose. She travels to Positano, Italy, to investigate the Amalfi Coast shipwrecks and secretly search for the sunken treasure her father once discovered. As strange disasters plague the town, she unearths a centuries-old tale of sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this curse be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Read more >>
Gifted and Talented, the April release from Olivie Blake (The Atlas Six) is being described as ‘equal parts black comedy, sharp indictment of privilege and power, and soaring, vicious drama’. It is the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential. Read more >>
Beth Revis’ Full Speed to a Crash Landing (Chaotic Orbits Novella Trilogy #1), a high-octane sexy space heist, was a delightfully fun and tautly executed thriller, and in #2, How To Steal a Galaxy another delicious morsel of high-wire banter and romantic suspense, Revis left readers taunted by what lay ahead for Ada and Rian in this April 2025 finale, Last Chance to Save the World. Book Details & My Review >>
More new March & April book releases by authors I have previously enjoyed:
January & February 2025 New Fiction
The Stolen Queen, the first 2025 book release from bestseller Fiona Davis involves two evocative historical settings. Egypt 1936, anthropology student Charlotte joins an archaeological dig, but tragedy strikes. Now, 42 years later, she is a Met curator, researching a lesser-known female pharaoh. Annie, 19, is the assistant to the organiser of the iconic Met Gala. During that event, a priceless Egyptian artifact vanishes, seemingly tied to that pharaoh’s curse. Charlotte and Annie team up, travel to Egypt to recover it and confront Charlotte’s haunting past. Find out more >>
Genre mashup meta fiction alert! Nnedi Okorafor‘s highly anticipated new release, Death of the Author, is a book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written. After losing her job, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative. Described as ‘surprisingly funny and deeply poignant’ this is a story of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it. Find out more >>
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In Samantha Sotto Yambao’s new cozy fantasy novel Water Moon, a woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical quest when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop and offers to help her find her missing father. It is highly recommended by many critics, including Library Journal who describe this as mix of magical realism, fantasy mystery, and star-crossed romance. Book Details & My Review >>
The first title in John McMahon’s new crime series. Head Cases stars FBI Agent Gardner Camden, an analytical genius with an affinity for puzzles, but a blind spot on the human side of investigations and his own family. Gardner and his squad of brilliant yet quirky agents make up the FBI’s Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit, brought in for cases that no one else can solve… Like when DNA links a murder victim to a serial killer long presumed dead. Book Details & My Review >>
In January 2025, bestselling author Carter Wilson (The Dead Girl in 2A, The New Neighbor) releases a new thriller that forces the question: are murderers always the bad guys? In Tell Me What You Did, Poe Webb, host of a popular true crime podcast, gets people to confess their crimes for a living. But when a strange and oddly familiar man claims to be her mother’s murderer from years ago, she realises he knows she’s hiding a terrible secret. It’s time for the truth to come out… Book Details & My Review >>
Allegra Goodman’s new historical fiction novel Isola was inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine. Orphaned heiress Marguerite loses her fortune to a volatile guardian who takes her to New France. Isolated and afraid, she bonds with his servant, but his discovery of their forbidden love leads to a brutal punishment. They are abandoned on a remote island with no hope for rescue. Once a child of privilege, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. Find out more >>
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Pam Jenoff‘s February 2025 fiction release Last Twilight in Paris was inspired by the true story of Lévitan–a department store that served as a Nazi prison. In London 1953, Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she finds a necklace in a box (marked with the name of a Parisian department store) at a secondhand shop. She has seen the necklace before, while working with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe, and is certain it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war. A gripping new historical mystery about sacrifice, resistance and the power of love. Find out more >>
B K Borison‘s Sleepless-in-Seattle style new romcom book release First-Time Caller, is just in time for Valentine’s Day. Aiden, the jaded host of a radio romance hotline, is thrust into the limelight when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, and the interview goes viral. Everyone wants her mom Lucie to find her happy ending… even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final decision between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her. Find out more >>
