The 20 Most Anticipated Books Of Fall 2025, According To Goodreads

Available now

Lucy Smith’s father died five years ago, and she’s been on the run to avoid becoming a ward of the state ever since. When a sharp-eyed social worker, Mr. Jameson, tracks her down, he breaks some news her father was hiding from her: She has family. She is Ojibwe, and has more siblings and a grandmother willing to take her in. But Lucy’s past comes with its own secrets, and they may just ruin the future and family she longs for.

Available now

From the author of Eat, Pray, Love comes her first nonfiction book in a decade. Gilbert met Rayya in 2000, and they became inseparable friends. Then, they realized they were in love — both addicts, stuck in a cycle of self-destruction. This is a memoir about anyone who has ever felt trapped by a love or a substance, and what happens when that yearning for freedom leads to real change.

Available now

In Amity, we meet Coleman and June, a brother and sister emancipated from slavery. They were separated two years prior when their master, Mr. Harper, took June to Mexico, and Coleman was left behind in Louisiana. When an unexpected letter arrives from Mr. Harper telling Coleman to join them in Mexico, he thinks this is his chance to reunite with June. But the pair will soon learn that freedom is not always given, but taken.

Available now

From the author of The God of Small Things, this memoir retraces Roy’s relationship with her “fierce and formidable” mother — “my shelter and my storm,” as she puts it. She shares her story of how her mother shaped her to be the woman and writer she became, and the flood of different emotions that struck her when her mother passed in 2022. It’s a reckoning with an imperfect parent and a complicated story of love.

Available now

Fans of Silver’s will already know this is the final book in her spicy Rose Hill series. Gwen knows Sebastian, the grumpy but so sexy fire pilot, is very good with his hands. Unfortunately, she knows him because he’s her ex-boyfriend’s dad. When a strange turn of events finds them living under the same roof, the tension rises quickly. But Sebastian is trying to mend his iffy relationship with his son, and he knows a romance with Gwen would unravel everything.

Available now

Historical fiction with a spiritual element, Buckeye promises to be a read unlike any others in your TBR pile. Following the Allied victory in Europe, a heated moment of passion binds a wounded veteran, Cal, to a woman with her own troubled past, Margaret. Cal’s wife Beckey is a seer who can conjure the dead, while Margaret’s husband Felix is serving on a Navy ship. As the book’s description puts it, “against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.”

Publishing Sept. 16

“An era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their 20-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife,” you say? Sign me up. Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties, navigating all the complexities of careers, relationships, and big-city living together. As we watch them live out the next 20 years, they’ll figure out what they mean to each other and themselves throughout political upheavals, changing lives, and more.

Publishing Sept. 16

From the New York Times best-selling author of Stiff and Fuzz comes a new nonfiction book exploring all the incredible complexities of our bodies (living ones, this time). Roach walks readers through the history of medicine's attempts to find replacement parts for the complex machines of our bodies — like that time we used frogs for skin grafts or sculpted new noses out of brass, to modern-day science attempting to grow real human organs from stem cells. She’ll take you through all the most remarkable advances and research happening, and some of the wildest history you never knew.

Publishing Sept. 23

Author SenLinYu’s Manacled became arguably the most popular fan fiction of all time. Now, we’re getting Alchemised, a retelling of her story with original characters and world-building. Helena was a resistance member, but her allies have all been murdered and her magic abilities suppressed. She has no memory of the months preceding her capture, so she’s sent to the High Reeve, a ruthless necromancer who may be able to unlock her mind and uncover the rebellion’s larger plans for Paladia.

Legendary Entertainment has already acquired the rights to develop a feature film based on Alchemised, the highly anticipated thriller fantasy debut novel from SenLinYu. So, if you want to be able to say “I read the book,” now’s your chance.

Publishing Sept. 23

Dark academia lovers, this one’s for you. This is the follow-up to Awad’s novel Bunny. In it, we pick back up with Samantha Mackey, who has just published her first novel to glowing reviews from critics. But her old frenemies are not happy with their portrayal in it, so they kidnap her at one of her book tour stops, tie her up, and tell their side of the story — axe in hand.

Publishing Sept. 23

This book is “a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed.” The author was sentenced to 28 years in a New York prison, where he attended his first writing workshop that led to this reporting from behind bars. In it, he shares his own story and the lives of three fellow inmates — everything that led up to their crimes, and everything that happens after.

Publishing Sept. 23

In 2014, a renowned poet gathers his close friends and colleagues to read a poem he penned for his wife’s birthday, “A Corona for Vivien.” Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. More than 100 years later, in 2119, rising seas have submerged most of the western world following a cataclysmic nuclear event. Survivors yearn for the world that was lost, and a lonely scholar named Thomas spends his days trying to unearth a copy of a lost poem, “A Corona for Vivien.” But as he chases down more information about it, he may learn that the lives of people in 2014 were much more brutal than he imagined.

Publishing Sept. 23

The first book in a new trilogy from dark rom-com author Brynne Weaver, this places us in Cape Carnage, a town with colorful houses, quaint seaside vibes, and a strangely high number of homicides. When an amateur true crime investigator comes to town to track down a long-lost serial killer, the pair may just end up working together if they can keep each other’s secrets.

Publishing Sept. 30

Book #5 in Osman’s Thursday Murder Club Series is here! In this installment, Joyce is preoccupied with wedding planning — everything is all table numbers and first dance songs. Ron is up to his eyeballs in family drama, Elizabeth is grieving, and Ibrahim is still counseling his favorite criminal. But a villainous guest at the wedding will plunge the group back into chaos once more.

Publishing Sept. 30

Our narrator is a senior in college when she meets two students in her literature class, Sam and Yash. The roommates invite her to their off-campus house, where she gets pulled into their world of academics, card games, and witty back-and-forth. Before long, she finds herself in a love triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices must be made... but years later, a surprise visit will upend all three lives again.

Publishing Oct. 14

Orlean’s memoir is what she calls “a story of her stories” — a journey through her budding career as a reporter, the collapse of her first marriage, becoming a mother while mourning her own, and so much more. It’s a book any woman will find something in that resonates, especially if you fancy yourself a creative type, too.

Publishing Oct. 14

The Zorg was one of thousands of slave ships that set sail from the Netherlands heading toward Africa's Gold Coast to carry its kidnapped human cargo across the sea. But this ship's story differs: After reaching Africa, it was commandeered by a British privateer, who rerouted the ship full of people to Jamaica. When storms and lack of water weigh down on them, the crew begins throwing dozens of people overboard, starting with women and children.

What happened on the Zorg's journey would become one of England's most fascinating legal dramas, bringing the underground anti-slavery movement of the time into the mainstream. So began the abolitionist movement on both sides of the pond. In this book, author Siddharth Kara utilizes "primary-source research, gripping storytelling, and painstaking investigation" to reveal the backstories and identities of everyone on board.

Publishing Oct. 21

Grisham fans, you’re up: His latest book, The Widow, is sure to be more of what you love from the prolific author. Simon Latch is a lawyer in small-town Virginia, but he is barely making ends meet and his marriage is in shambles. So when an elderly widow walks into his office in need of a will and some help keeping her newfound wealth under wraps. And when she winds up dead, he’ll find himself on the stand being tried for her murder.

Publishing Nov. 4

Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the same day they bury her cousin, Monife. And there is no doubt that the baby is the dead woman’s spitting image — and Ebun’s family becomes convinced Eniiya is in fact Monife reincarnated, doomed to walk the same path toward the same tragic demise. And then there’s that pesky curse that has plagued the women in her family for three generations, which says any man who falls in love with them will never know peace. Will Eniiyi also have to live out the traumas of her foremothers?

Publishing Nov. 25

When Christine Kuehn receives a letter from a screenwriter about her family’s story, she’s caught off guard. Does this say Nazi spies? When she questions her grandfather, Eberhard, he stalls and deflects before breaking down in tears. Back then, the Kuehns had seen the rise of the Nazis as a way out of hard times. Eberhard’s sister Ruth met a Nazi leader, and the pair had an affair. But when he found out Ruth was half Jewish, the Goebbels sent the entire family to Hawaii to act as their spies in exchange for saving their lives. Their work ultimately led to the attack on Pearl Harbor.