The Most Anticipated Books Of Fall 2025

It’s true, summer’s essentially over. But if you’re sad about all the beach days you didn’t take, let the thought of sweater weather boost your spirits: cozy afternoons spent wrapped in blankets, chilly mornings warmed by cups of tea — the kind of leisure best paired with a good book. Happily, if you’re having trouble picking your next read, there’s plenty of exciting new releases hitting bookstores in the coming months.

On the nonfiction side, get ready for memoirs from living legends like Susan Orlean, Arundhati Roy, and Margaret Atwood — not to mention Marisa Meltzer’s (Glossy) rich biography of Jane Birkin; Beth Macy’s (Dopesick) rumination on the decline of her hometown; and Sarah Weinman’s (The Real Lolita) searing study of a landmark rape trial.

Those looking to fill their TBRs with fresh fiction have just as much to look forward to. Clear some space on your shelf for a sequel-cum-prequel to Mona Awad’s cult-favorite dark academia novel, Bunny, and a companion novel to Ali Hazelwood’s bestselling paranormal romance, Mate; new, must-read novels from writers such as Erin Somers, Brandon Taylor, and Stephanie LaCava; and the long-awaited returns of Angela Flournoy and Kiran Desai, who are each releasing new novels after extended breaks. Plenty of promising debuts are on the horizon, too, including Lauren Rothery’s Television and Lauren Morrow’s Little Movements.

In short: Better start brewing that tea now, because you’re going to need a lot of it.

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

Out Sept. 2. In her memoir, Roy explores with candor and stunning prose her complicated relationship with her mother, Mary Roy — whose passing in 2022 left the younger Roy unmoored, much to her own surprise. In writing Mother Mary Comes to Me, the author attempts to reconcile two seemingly opposed truths: that she adored her trail-blazing mother, and her capacity for “soul-crushing meanness” left its mark. Reading Roy ponders this duality with such care, readers will come away inspired to make room for confusing realities in their own lives, too. — Grace Wehniainen, staff writer

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

Out Sept. 2. I press Ravn’s The Employees into the hands of just about everyone I meet, so naturally I couldn’t wait forThe Wax Child, the writer’s third title to be published in English (and translated, as with The Employees, by Martin Aitken). In her latest novel, Ravn conjures the world of 17th-century Denmark, pulling from a real-life witch trail. And did I mention a wax doll, created by the accused witch, narrates the novel? — Chloe Joe, features editor

Sweet Heat by Bolu Babalola

Out Sept. 2. Sweet Heat, Babalola’s follow-up to her Reese’s Book Club pick Honey and Spice, follows a young woman whose first love comes back into her life, just when she thinks she’s over him. Kiki Banjo’s life is already a mess when she learns her ex Malakai is the best man in her best friend’s wedding — and as the big day nears, they realize the flame between them never fully died out. — Jake Viswanath, staff writer

Little Movements by Lauren Morrow

Out Sept. 9. I had the pleasure of meeting Morrow, a books publicist by day, over the spring while working together on a story about one of her clients. Now, she’s making her own publishing debut with this juicy novel about a 30-something Black woman who temporarily leaves behind her life, job, husband, and friends in Brooklyn to realize a dancing career, teaching fellow Black dancers in small-town Vermont. In the process, she must reckon with the growing distance in her marriage — among other life-changing surprises. — Christina Amoroso, editorial director, Bustle & Elite Daily

Does This Make Me Funny? by Zosia Mamet

Out Sept. 9. If you’re a longtime Girls fan with a particular soft spot for Shoshanna (hi, same!), you’ll love Mamet’s new essay collection, in which she shares her seemingly disastrous audition for the character — and how she carries Shosh with her to this day. But learning Girls lore is just part of the treat that is reading Does This Make Me Funny?, in which Mamet focuses her incisive wit on relationships, mental health, and “nepo baby” discourse. — G.W.

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

Out Sept. 16. Ten years after her debut novel, The Turner House — a finalist for the National Book Award — Flournoy returns to tell the interconnected, decades-spanning stories of five young women in The Wilderness. The novel jumps between timelines and perspectives, which isn’t just a handy way to chart the course of a friendship — big things aren’t usually happening to all of you at the same time, in the same way, or in the same city — but also echoes how the characters’ relationships so often change on a dime. — G.W.

Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood

Out Sept. 23. Since becoming chronically ill a few years back, I’ve read a lot of books about illness, medicine, and care. But none have encapsulated the surreality of the experience — the Alice in Wonderland-like vertigo of feeling and watching your body become symptomatic — like Lockwood’s new autobiographical novel. In my estimation, it’s a must-read. — C.J.

A Different Kind of Tension by Jonathan Lethem

Out Sept. 23. In Jonathan Lethem’s genre fiction, the conventions of the detective story or the crime thriller are always secondary to his characters’ emotions and idiosyncrasies. In his short stories, the absurd personalities have free reign. This career-spanning survey begins with work published in the 1980s and ends with a story Lethem wrote last year, “The Red Sun School of Thoughts.” The book is worth it for this alone. Lethem’s words: “I think it is one of the best things I’ve ever done.” — Greta Rainbow, research editor

Beings by Ilana Masad

Out Sept. 23. Masad’s second novel unfolds across three interwoven narratives: the present-day story of the Archivist, pores over records and ephemera; the Archivist’s retelling of the first alien abduction story (based on that of Betty and Barney Hill); and a series of letters sent in the 1960s by a lesbian sci-fi writer to her onetime lover. Altogether, these threads add up to a compelling tale of longing and alienation, the intimate and the unknown. — C.J.

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

Out Sept. 23. Atonement author McEwan offers his most sprawling, ambitious book yet. Both a post-apocalyptic tale and an academic novel, What We Can Know toggles between a dinner party where a poem is read aloud in 2014, and the quest to uncover it over a century later. The result is part-literary mystery, part-elegy. — Samantha Leach, associate director, special projects

We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad

Out Sept. 23. Awad’s Bunny (2019) is beloved — and regularly included in “best of dark academia” roundups — for good reason: It’s as sharp as axes wielded by the Bunnies (think Mean Girls’ Plastics, but if they got MFAs). With We Love You, Bunny, a companion novel that functions as both a prequel and a sequel, she recreates that singular magic. — C.J.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Out Sept. 23. Almost two decades after her Booker Prize-winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss, Desai treats readers to a new literary feast. The book follows Sunny and Sonia, two young U.S. transplants who feel alienated in their adoptive communities — to the dismay of their extended families back in India, who try to set them up together. Their first meeting quickly goes awry, but allows them to reflect on their upbringings, families, and the cultural ties that brought them together. — J.W.

Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung

Out Sept. 30. With spooky season just around the corner, Chung’s new novel-in-stories, translated by Anton Hur, is the perfect, creepy read. Midnight Timetable is set at a dreamlike research center, where employees frequently run into cursed objects, each an allegory for a real-life horror of today’s society. — Gabrielle Bondi, entertainment editor

Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave by Mariana Enriquez

Out Sept. 30. There are some people who visit new cities and seek out museums or shopping districts. Then there are those who head straight to the cemeteries. Argentine writer Enriquez, described as a “sorceress of horror” by The New York Times, is the latter. Enriquez compiled her impressions of burial spots around the world, searching for sorcery in New Orleans, beauty in Barcelona, rebellion in Frankfurt. This addicting travelogue of extremely readable prose, translated by Megan McDowell, tangles past and present like ivy climbing a stone headstone, offering fascinating cultural and historical tidbits (did you know Evita Perón’s corpse was stolen and missing for 16 years?) alongside life philosophies from a woman healthily obsessed with death. — G.R.

Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei

Out Sept. 30. Between The Stardust Grail, The Deep Sky, and now Saltcrop, Kitasei is carving out a niche for herself in speculative fiction. The author’s latest imagines a future Earth, ravished by climate change and detritus, where a pair of siblings set out on an epic voyage in search of their sister — a scientist who may hold the key to regrowing humanity’s agricultural capacity. — C.J.

Grand Rapids by Natasha Stagg

Out Sept. 30. Stagg’s atmospheric, almost gothic second novel is about the summer a 15-year-old loses her virginity. It does not happen in one moment — it’s the time her friend burns a hole into her arm with the butt of a cigarette, the first time an unidentified pill is pressed into her palm, and every time she enters an online chatroom. Stagg is known for scene reports from New York’s art and fashion worlds, but Grand Rapids proves she can chronicle Midwestern basements and backseats just as artfully. — G.R.

I Am You by Victoria Redel

Out Sept. 30. Gerta Pieters is everything to still life painter Maria van Oosterwijck: assistant, confidante, muse, lover. But as the two begin to infiltrate 17th‑century Amsterdam’s elite, male-dominated art world — and Gerta ascends as an artist in her own right — their forbidden love threatens to undo them both. — S.L.

Mate by Ali Hazelwood

Out Oct. 7. A companion novel to Hazelwood’s bestselling Bride, Mate centers on Serena, a one-of-a-kind human-werewolf hybrid who needs protection from a supernatural society that believes her to be a threat. To that end, she reluctantly allies herself with pack leader Koen — which, of course, sparks some spicy romantic tension. — G.B.

Paper Girl by Beth Macy

Out Oct. 7. The bestselling author of Dopesick returns with a book about how life has changed in her small Ohio hometown since her days as the local paper girl. It’s a compelling and humanizing look at how political and economic forces have reshaped American middle-class communities. — G.B.

It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin by Marisa Meltzer

Out Oct. 7. In this deeply researched portrait of Jane Birkin’s life, Glossy author Meltzer takes readers far beyond her much-mythologized fashion and aesthetic. (Yes, the Hermès bag is named for her.) What emerges is a portrayal of a woman who reinvented what it meant to be an it girl — through her music, films, love affairs, and indelible influence on culture. — S.L.

Taylor’s Version by Stephanie Burt

Out Oct. 7. Last year, Burt made headlines for her Harvard English class about Taylor Swift — but this back-to-school season, the professor and self-proclaimed Swiftie is sharing her insights with the masses. Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift is an era-by-era deep dive into the hitmaker’s music, lyrics, and place in culture — sure to spur deeper appreciation for songs you’ve heard thousands of times, as well as for deeper cuts that may well become fresh favorites. And it couldn’t come at a better time: The book is set to publish just days after Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. — G.W.

Joyride by Susan Orlean

Out Oct. 14. With her new memoir, Orlean not only crafts her most personal work yet, but also offers insights to aspiring writers on how to thrive (and survive) as a creative. While the author’s life experiences — from her relationship with her parents to her experience of divorce — are fascinating to read, it’s really Orlean’s keen observances and reflections from her nonfiction career that make Joyride feel invaluable in a sea of books about writing. — G.B.

Nymph by Stephanie LaCava

Out Oct. 14. An audacious, off-kilter thriller starring Bathory — a 20-something model, sex worker, linguist, and Latin scholar born into a family of assassins — whose life takes her deep into Manhattan’s glittering underworld. Think Killing Eve meets Bright Lights, Big City. — S.L.

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor

Out Oct. 14. From the author of the Booker Prize finalist Real Life comes Minor Black Figures: a sharp, resonant novel about a young Black gay painter adrift in New York who spends one life-changing summer grappling with questions of faith, desire, and creative purpose. — S.L.

Most Wonderful by Georgia Clark

Out Oct. 15. Christmas books don’t usually interest me, but I adored this festive, sexy rom-com, which features three queer love stories, one famous (and absurd) matriarch, big feelings, depth, and real humor. Most Wonderful feels cozy, like the literary equivalent of a great new sweater — except it’s hot, not just warm. — Hannah Orenstein, deputy editor of lifestyle & wellness

The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers

Out Oct. 21. I’ve always felt that a crush provides a crossroads: You start to imagine how your life might change if you reoriented it around this thrillingly unpredictable entity. But taking the path means eventually winding your way back to the center — “wherever you go, there you are,” etc. Somers explores the fantasy and reality of an affair simultaneously in a masterful sophomore novel that is as scathingly critical of millennial malaise as it is empathetic. At its heart, this book believes in love. To get a primer, you can read Somers’ original short story that the novel expands upon. You’ll be grateful to have a few hundred pages more. — G.R.

Son of the Morning by Akwaeke Emezi

Out Nov. 4. Bestselling author Emezi returns with an alluring paranormal romance. The novel follows Galilee, who was raised by a sequestered clan of Black women in the South, as she meets the mysterious Lucifer. Immediately, she senses that he’s not human — and, soon after, realizes that she isn’t, either. Enter Levithan, a formidable being who sees Galilee as a threat, and you have a tantalizing love triangle unlike any you’ve read before. — G.B.

Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood

Out Nov. 4. At the start of the memoir she never thought she’d write, Atwood gets playfully meta about the medium, explaining that being a writer is like having body doubles: one who does the writing, and one who does the living. Book of Lives is Atwood’s attempt to catalog the many versions of herself she’s been in both spheres — treading everything from her childhood, to her relationship with the late Graeme Gibson, to the unexpected influences that shaped works like The Handmaid’s Tale. — G.W.

Palaver by Bryan Washington

Out Nov. 4. Washington (Lot, Memorial) returns with Palaver, a novel about a quiet family reunion in the bustling city of Tokyo. A young man, referred to only as “the son,” faces his estranged mother after 10 years when she pays him a surprise visit — and their only mediator is his cat, Taro. Washington switches between the two characters’ perspectives, following their attempts to save their relationship, and perhaps redefine what home and family means to them. — J.V.

Without Consent by Sarah Weinman

Out Nov. 11. Weinman’s latest tells the story of Greta Rideout’s landmark spousal rape trial. While she initially lost the case in 1978, it created ripple effect across the country, inspiring activists to fight for marital rape laws in each state. It’s a searing, thoroughly researched examination of misogyny in past and present American culture — a particularly important history to understand now, as women’s rights are under attack. — G.B.

The Silver Book by Olivia Laing

Out Nov. 11. Laing is a great interpreter of art as it relates to how we live today — from The Lonely City, a “moving to New York City” mediation; to Crudo, a novel that imagines Kathy Acker alive; to Funny Weather, an essay collection about the point of artistic production in politically fraught times. Their latest novel tips into new genre terrain: a noir-ish thriller that doubles as a queer, historical love story, set in the sexy, slippery world of 1970s Italian cinema. Between farmers markets in Fellini’s Rome and villas in Pasolini’s Alps (note the name drop of Lake Garda, where Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name was filmed), a young Englishman navigates the dark desires lurking behind some of the world’s greatest films. Laing has done their homework on this easily romanticized era, but more importantly, they understand the twinned power and vulnerability of being age 22. — G.R.

Ravishing by Eshani Surya

Out Nov. 11. Think The Substance (Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley) — but make it literary fiction. In Ravishing, two Indian American siblings’ lives are upended by a dangerous beauty product that changes users’ features. When Kashmira tries to erase her resemblance to her absent father, she develops life-changing side effects. Meanwhile, her estranged brother Nikhil gets tangled in the company’s dark secrets. — H.O.

Simply More by Cynthia Erivo

Out Nov. 18. If merely listening to Erivo sing “Defying Gravity” stirs something in you, imagine what a whole book by the performer could do. In Simply More, Erivo goes deep on her own journey in the hopes of inspiring readers to chase their dreams — all just in time for her return as Elphaba in Wicked: For Good this November. — G.W.

House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk

Out Dec. 2. At this point, I’ll follow Tokarczuk — the Nobel-winning author of Flights, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and more — just about anywhere. But a small Polish town populated by oddballs and eccentrics? Let’s just say I’m ready to check into the House (as translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones). — C.J.

Casanova 20 by Davey Davis

Out Dec. 2. Can someone be cursed by extreme beauty? For Davis, the answer is a resounding yes. His newest novel, Casanova 20: Or, Hot World, follows Adrian, a late-20s sugar baby who loses the good looks that have made his life easy, and his best friend, Mark, who discovers that he’s dying from a mysterious disease. The two wrestle with their bodies deteriorating in different ways, while keeping their fates a secret from each other. — J.V.

Television by Lauren Rothery

Out Dec. 2. “All I know about being good I learned from TV,” says fictional washed-up actor BoJack Horseman, in the acclaimed animated series of the same name. “And in TV, flawed characters are constantly showing people they care with these surprising grand gestures. And I think that part of me still believes that’s what love is.” If this quote were a book, it would be Lauren Rothery’s debut novel, Television, a Los Angeles-set not-exactly-love story that asks more questions about fame and faith than it gives answers. — G.R.