Releasing in October we have the exciting publication of some recently discovered lost work of Harper Lee and a new novel from the fantastic Bora Chung. Enjoy 5 Sensational New Books for October 2025!
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5 Sensational New Books for October 2025
Venetian Vespers by John Banville
Everything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. . .
As the new century approaches, English hack-writer Evelyn Dolman marries Laura Rensselaer, the daughter of a wealthy American plutocrat. But in the midst of a mysterious rift between Laura and her father, Evelyn’s plans of a substantial inheritance are thrown into doubt.
As the unhappy newlyweds travel to Venice at Palazzo Dioscuri – the ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo – a series of seemingly otherworldly occurrences exacerbate Evelyn’s already frayed nerves: is it just the sea mist blanketing the floating city or is he losing his mind?
The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung
In a labyrinthine research facility where those who open the wrong door might find it’s disappeared behind them, or that the echoing footsteps they’re running from are their own, an unnamed protagonist begins their night shift under the watchful eye of the building’s enigmatic senior guard.
Each evening, as the fluorescent lights hum and the silence grows heavier, the guard shares another story – of cursed objects hidden behind security glass, of lives unspooled by vengeance, sorrow or revelation. These tales are not mere ghost stories. They’re warnings. Lessons. Or perhaps confessions.
As the nights stretch on and reality frays, the protagonist starts to suspect that the building itself is alive with malevolent intent – that the objects aren’t just cursed, but waiting. Watching.
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters―but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.
Centuries later, Owen Mallory―failed soldier, struggling scholar―falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives―and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.
But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend―if they want to tell a different story–they’ll have to rewrite history itself.
The Land of Sweet Forever by Harper Lee
The Land of Sweet Forever combines Lee’s early short fiction and later nonfiction in a volume as indispensable for her many fans as it is for students of American literature. From the Alabama schoolyards of Lee’s youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of midcentury Manhattan, from Lee’s reflections on the responsible teaching of children to a delightful account of Gregory Peck and the To Kill a Mockingbird film set,The Land of Sweet Forever broadens our understanding of Lee’s extraordinary talent.
For the first time, readers can see Lee’s inimitable voice define itself both before and after Go Set a Watchman and To Kill a Mockingbird, touching on still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life.
Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
Milwaukee 1932, the Great Depression going full blast, repeal of Prohibition just around the corner, Al Capone in the federal pen, the private investigation business shifting from labour-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a one-time strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he’s found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case, locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who’s taken a mind to go wandering.
Before he knows it, he’s been shanghaied onto a transoceanic liner, ending up eventually in Hungary where there’s no shoreline, a language from some other planet, and enough pastry to see any cop well into retirement-and of course no sign of the runaway heiress he’s supposed to be chasing. By the time Hicks catches up with her he will find himself also entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them, none of which Hicks is qualified, forget about being paid, to deal with.
Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can’t see his way around in or out of, the only bright side for Hicks is it’s the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he’s a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.
If you enjoyed 5 Sensational New Books for October 2025, check out our Book of the Month for Sep – Endling by Maria Reva