Forthcoming & New Release Books You Won’t Want to Miss (2025)

Forthcoming & New Release Books You Won’t Want to Miss (2025)

by Eric Mayrhofer

The final quarter of 2025 is upon us.

Autumn—the season when we start pulling out cozy sweatshirts, putting pumpkin in everything, and getting started on our Christmas lists (if we’re ambitious). If you’d rather binge Gilmore Girls for the ninetieth time, you have my blessing, but I also highly recommend checking out this season’s new book releases instead.

The books coming out between October and December 2025 are gearing up to freak you out and give you hope. They’re getting ready to show you the magic in the world and remind you that it’s a wild place to live. In a season of so many extraordinary reads, these are some of the best indie books to add to your TBR.

Here are 12 new release books you won’t want to miss.

1. Magic at the Grand Dragonfly Theatre

To me, autumn is the season of writing. From the motivation of the former beast known as NaNoWriMo to the coziness of drafting by hand while watching the leaves change beyond the window, nothing feels quite as right as writing. But when you add forbidden magic? Now that makes a story worth savoring. 

Those elements are the starting point in Brandie June’s new release Magic at the Grand Dragonfly Theatre. Playwright Violet Ashmore lives in the shadow of her sister Iris, who has promised to protect Violet and her dangerous magic from from the Crown. But when bounty hunter Alec Morgan infiltrates the theater and begins falling for Iris, their life—and the theater—could all come undone.

With a literary protagonist longing for more, the danger of books like Caraval and the lyrical magic of The Night Circus, Magic at the Grand Dragonfly Theatre has the potential to be the most enchanting read of the end of 2025.

2. But the Wicked Shall Perish

More than a few years ago now, The Golem and the Jinni used Jewish folklore to incredible effect, creating a lush and heartwarming fantasy about the immigrant experience in America. This year, Catori Sarmiento incorporates the culture’s mythology to paint a blood-red portrait of a woman seeking her murderer—and revenge.

But the Wicked Shall Perish slips readers into Tziporah Curiel’s resurrected shoes. When she comes back to life in 1920s Venice, Italy, she begins a quest for justice that will leave a trail of souls in her wake and lead to a deal with a demon, forcing her to come to terms with what happened and what she has become. Supernatural, heart-wrenching, and pulse-pounding, this might be exactly the early Halloween treat you’ve been looking for.

3. The Scald Crow

“This isn’t a dream… This is really happening!” Could that iconic quote from Rosemary’s Baby be the inspiration for a new spooky season favorite? It may seem like it when you read The Scald Crow by Grace Daly. Offering laughs and scares in equal measure, the novel asks, “Can a sick woman ever be trusted?”

The sick woman in question is Brigid, a self-doubting protagonist living with chronic pain so severe it cost her her job. To add misfortune to injury, her mother goes missing, a turn of events that forces her back into her childhood home. Soon, a crow starts following her, a painting returns no matter how often she rids herself of it, and nightmares of her mother keep startling her awake. Is it all in her head? After all, her pain has no identifiable cause, and that must be her own fault too…right?

A book that confronts readers with the one thing that is all too often our own worst enemies—the negative voices in our heads—The Scald Crow is a spine-tingling, ultimately empowering entry in the horror genre.

4. The Ten Thousand Things

2025 isn’t all about the scares though. Any time is a good time for beautifully written memoirs. This memoir on silence and belonging is the author’s lifelong attempt to understand her “elusive, unnerving” mother.

Lauren Hayataka of IBR says it’s the lyricism of the prose that elevates the memoir. She says, “Flittner writes with the precision of someone who has carried these memories for decades, shaping them into vivid, almost cinematic scenes: hiding beneath plastic during a sudden storm, watching rain blur the world into a secret cave; lying in the plastic-covered back seat of the family’s Buick as the desert slid past; screaming for help in a kitchen where no one came.”

For all those looking for moving true stories about complex family in lyrical prose, find out why Hayataka calls it “radiant” and “unforgettable.”

5. Bloodletting a Butterfly

Okay, back to the dead. But with a twist.

Alec B. Hood’s poetry is “visceral, devastating, and brilliantly gory,” says Mandy Bach of IBR. The speaker of the collection is completely preoccupied with death and dying and discusses it with raw, physical imagery.

“Hood expertly uses surreal descriptions of the body to help readers understand the disturbing nature of this preoccupation with suffering and death. He writes, ‘there are insect eggs / embedded in my esophagus // parasites peering / through my pupils // my lungs / flooded with webs // my blood / blinking with lightning bugs.‘” 

Feast your eyes on roadkill, ghosts, and more in this “beautifully ugly” collection.

6. The Mongoose

Pow Pow Press is doing some amazing work! After the unique power of The Jellyfish and Botanica Drama, I couldn’t help but get excited about The Mongoose.

This black and white graphic novel about grief and ghosts and, oddly, a phantom mongoose combines what I’ve come to expect from Pow Pow Press: thoughtful and moving visual stories with a dash of strange.

7. A Blood Witch

Joseph Stone is no stranger to captivating dark fantasy. From the alluring darkness of The Lykanos Chronicles, which we included in our list of best book series of the past few years, to the first book in the Haunted Women series, which Alexandria Ducksworth raved about, Stone writes evocative fantasy with “jaw-dropping” and “downright scary” results.

And now, book two! Victoria Lilly of IBR called it “a chilling, layered, and intelligent gothic piece that tackles the genre from a distinctly feminist angle… Not a comforting read, but a valuable one.”

8. The Sofa

Mr. Montessori goes downstairs one morning to find his sofa is different. The doors are all locked. Windows too. Nobody’s broken in. So how did this get here, and where did their old, perfect couch go?

Suddenly, the image of a man in a bowler hat starts popping up all around him. His son’s drawing used to only have the new sofa in it. The mirror used to be only him staring back.

The Sofa by Sam Munson is a surreal piece of everyday horror that nails down obsession in an eerily painful way. Man, what if Montessori just stepped away from this fascination? What if he accepted this weirdly outdated sofa as his own and moved on with his perfectly fine life? It surely wouldn’t turn out like this.

9. A Gathering Place

Sometimes faith is all but a voice.

81-year-old Blue Hamieh follows her faith to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, believing that the Virgin Mary wants her to open a gathering place, a cafe, for downtrodden people in the devastated city. Is this a true calling, or is her family right and she should return to Mississippi?

Vicki Salloum imbues this community-driven novel of faith and resilience with artful, meaningful prose and a big heart. I dare you not to fall for Blue by the novel’s end.

10. Hotel Melikov (Citizen Orlov Book 2)

What better way to prepare for the oncoming winter chill than to immerse yourself in the chilling espionage of a mountainous, central-European country?

In Hotel Melikov, the second book of Jonathan Payne’s Citizen Orlov series, readers find Orlov as the Minister for Security of a nation on the verge of collapsing. When tension between the government and revolutionaries erupt, all he wants is to return to his former life as a fishmonger. But when he discovers a sinister plot that threatens everyone, what will he choose?

Featuring tense thrills, political intrigue, nuns who are more than they seem, and a comedic twist, Jonathan Payne returns us to the world of Citizen Orlov in style.

11. Hope

Previously published in Best American Short Stories, Sommer Schafer returns with Hope, a story collection to keep you warm as winter approaches.

Set in the small island community of Hope, Alaska, Hope offers an experience that will delight fans of small-town, big-emotion collections like Olive Kitteridge. Linked stories show the hopes and dreams the townsfolk have for the future, all while questioning how well (or how much) they can bury the past.

With precise descriptions, sharp insights, and subtle humor, Schafer’s collection holds all the promise of an uplifting read on these lengthening nights.

12. Dark Matter

Bunny Graves has to make this list. Kathe Koja’s Dark Factory series has already been praised for its wild and mind-bending prose, the esoteric experience it gives readers, and its thrilling combinations of art, technology, and a willingness to explore both reality and virtual reality.

Readers might just have their minds blown in Dark Matter. Here, Bunny and Koja’s array of characters wind through a cyberpunk-ish landscape to break the rules, chase ancient myths into virtual reality and back again, and make it through in a world where corporate wars can be life and death. It’s set up to be a rewarding finish for longtime fans of the acclaimed Koja and a bold new world for readers in search of a Snow Crash-meets-Cyberpunk 2077 fix.

What new release books are you looking forward to? Let us know in the comments!

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