Thirty books we’ll be talking about for the rest of 2025

The second half of the year is often when the publishing calendar really hits its stride – and 2025 is no exception. From heavyweight literary returns and genre-defying stories to unexpected memoirs and a bumper crop of mushrooms, the next six months promise plenty to keep your shelves (and brain) busy. We’ve picked 15 fiction and 15 non-fiction titles worth clearing some space – and time – for. Here’s what to look forward to as the year unfolds.

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Look forward to new books from (left to right): Heather Rose, R.F Kuang, Tony Birch and Evelyn Araluen.

Arborescence by Rhett Davis (July 30)

Following his acclaimed debut Hovering, Rhett Davis returns with Arborescence, a novel whose three-word pitch he describes, enticingly, as “people becoming trees”. With Davis’ sharp eye and irreverent humour, the genre-blurring story is set to branch into the tangled roots of suburban life and the natural world.

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang (August 26)

Her social media and publishing industry satire Yellowface was the cult book of 2023, but R.F. Kuang now returns to her roots with Katabasis, a dark academic fantasy which follows two Cambridge PhD students who descend into hell to try to save the professor who can write their all-important recommendation letters. The landscape might feel like a shift for fans introduced to Kuang through her last novel, but her humour is as razor-sharp and provocative as ever.

The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown (September 9)

Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist who cracked The Da Vinci Code, interpreted The Lost Symbol and stopped Angels & Demons in their tracks, is back in Dan Brown’s first novel in more than eight years. This time, he’s putting his powers of problem-solving and eidetic memory to use to solve the case of a celebrated academic who disappears from her hotel room during a conference in Prague.

Cannon by Lee Lai (September 1)

The eagerly awaited successor to the Stella-shortlisted graphic novel Stone Fruit, Cannon offers a blend of sharp wit and raw emotion – an intimate, beautifully drawn slice of queer friendship in crisis. When Cannon, a stoic second-generation Chinese cook in Montreal, smashes up her restaurant during a swampy summer breakdown, only her oldest friend Trish shows up to help. With black-and-white and colour panels alive with detail, Lai maps the wreckage of growing up, and the fragile glue that holds us together.

Clown Town by Mick Herron (September 9)

Mick Herron returns to his masterclass in spy satire with Clown Town, a new chapter in the Slough House universe. Once again, those so-called “slow horses” are thrust into chaos as River, waiting for medical clearance to return to work, investigates his late grandfather’s library. Herron’s trademark dark wit and merciless skewering of British bureaucracy promise more brilliantly grubby thrills.

The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey (September 16)

If you’ve read her novels Nobody is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew or Biography of X, you’ll be familiar with Catherine Lacey’s commitment to experimenting with the literary form with her innovative and intellectually rigorous narratives, dreamlike style and interest in themes of selfhood and connection. The Möbius Book might be her most ambitious work yet, taking the idea of no beginning and ending literally, with a novel printed from both ends, as fiction and non-fiction collide.

Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood (September 23)

Patricia Lockwood’s singular voice – caustic, tender, internet-braided – found dazzling form in her memoir Priestdaddy and you either hate-it-or-love-it debut novel No One Is Talking About This. Drawing on her own surreal experience during the global pandemic, the Booker Prize finalist’s sophomore novel follows a “woman’s dissolution and her attempt to create a new way of thinking”. Expect fierce humour and unsettling truths about identity in the age of infinite mirrors

Pictures of You by Tony Birch (September 30)

This collection brings together the best of Tony Birch’s short stories from the past two decades. The anthology displays his deep affection for ordinary people navigating the edges of Australian cities – working-class families, drifters, elders and kids whose resilience shines in the cracks. For readers of Blood, Ghost River and The White Girl, Pictures of You is both a retrospective and a celebration of a master storyteller of country and community.

Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton (September 30)

In the fourth novel since his record-breaking debut Boy Swallows Universe, we enter the world of journalist Noah Cork, who should be flying high after publishing his white-hot true-crime book. Publishers have billed Trent Dalton’s latest offering as a “deeply personal exploration of marriage and ambition, truth-telling and truth-omitting, self-deception and self-preservation”.

A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose (September 30)

From literary fiction (Museum of Modern Love) to satire (Bruny) and memoir (Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here), Heather Rose proves her versatility yet again, turning her hand to historical fiction. The novel follows Caroline Douglas, a young woman of means who arrives in Van Diemen’s Land with a boy in her care in 1829. She leases an old cottage next to an abandoned vineyard, aiming to forge a new life for herself. Rose has described writing the novel as a “seven-year adventure through global history, family history and the untold history of early winemaking in Tasmania”.

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (October 14)

Megha Majumdar’s A Burning marked her as one of the most exciting chroniclers of contemporary India. Her new novel, A Guardian and a Thief, expands her moral vision: a layered, tense story set during the course of a week in a near-future Kolkata, ravaged by climate change, where two families must battle it out to protect their children. Expect Majumdar’s piercing clarity and unsparing look at the price of power.

The Rose Field: The Book of Dust Volume Three by Philip Pullman, illustrated by Chris Wormell (October 23)

A publishing event of the year – at last, the long-awaited conclusion to The Book of Dust trilogy. Philip Pullman promises answers to the fate of Lyra Silvertongue, Malcolm Polstead and the alethiometer in a story that moves between Oxford and the far reaches of Pullman’s richly imagined multiverse. For readers who grew up with His Dark Materials, this is the end of an era – and the beginning of new questions.

The Underworld by Sofie Laguna (October 28)

The Miles Franklin award-winner is a master of writing from a child’s perspective with psychological acuity and tenderness, as she showed in The Choke, The Eye of the Sheep and Infinite Splendours. Her fifth novel follows outsider Martha Mullins, who seeks refuge and solace in tales of the underworld after learning about it in Roman mythology classes. Laguna promises another luminous, compassionate study of trauma and resilience.

The Hiding Place by Kate Mildenhall (October 28)

Seeking an idyllic escape, four families buy a remote mining town in this literary thriller from Kate Mildenhall (Skylarking, The Mother Fault). But their dream turns nightmare on the first night when someone dies and they seek to hide the body. But, as they discover, the buried always finds a way of resurfacing. The Hiding Place is billed as “White Lotus meets The Slap”.

The Rot by Evelyn Araluen (November 4)

Goorie and Koori poet Evelyn Araluen has said she never expected to write another poem after finishing her “weird little pink book” – the Stella Prize-winning, bestselling Dropbear (2021). Back with a searing new collection that refuses to look away, Araluen says The Rot is a “romance of lost objects and expired hopes, a study in the abject injustices of the world”.

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From left: Samin Nosrat, Ron Chernow, Elizabeth Gilbert and Margaret Atwood have books coming in 2025.

The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century by Tim Weiner (July 17)

From the War on Terror to Russian interference, disinformation, cyber ops and moral quagmires, The Mission promises a deep dive into how the CIA has (and hasn’t) adapted to a world far messier than the Cold War chessboard. Drawing on interviews with former CIA directors, station chiefs, and scores of top spies it asks: What does intelligence look like when truth itself is contested?

Mark Twain by Ron Chernow (August 19)

Ron Chernow, the biographer whose Alexander Hamilton launched a Broadway juggernaut, turns to America’s original literary celebrity: Mark Twain. Expect the same sweeping research that defined Chernow’s work on Grant and Washington, and fresh insight into Twain as the first modern superstar – a man who shaped how writers could court fame while skewering it.

Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (August 19)

Scholar Nicholas Boggs gives readers an intimate new portrait of James Baldwin – not just as an icon of American letters, but as a man who loved, grieved and changed the lives of those around him. This hybrid work braids biography, memoir and cultural history into a tender reckoning with Baldwin’s enduring power.

All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert (September 9)

In her first non-fiction book in a decade, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert charts the messy aftermath of grief, transformation and desire. All the Way to the River is billed as an unflinching reckoning with heartbreak, spiritual seeking and the deep currents that carry us where we least expect.

Waiting for Britney Spears by Jeff Weiss (September 16)

Journalist Jeff Weiss dives headlong into the fever dream of 2000s celebrity culture with this bracing cultural study of Britney Spears and the paparazzi machine that consumed her and of which she was a part. Part tabloid archaeology, part drug-fuelled noir, Weiss lays bare how complicity, obsession and profit worked in concert to devour a pop star in real time.

Fly, Wild Swans by Jung Chang (September 16)

Jung Chang, whose Wild Swans remains a landmark of twentieth-century memoir, returns with a sweeping new personal history that traces the echoes of her family’s story across the changing face of modern China. Fly, Wild Swans is set to be a searching look at what it means to witness – and survive – generational upheaval.

Softly, as I Leave You by Priscilla Presley (September 23)

Decades after Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley returns with a memoir that promises new insights about her life alongside – and beyond – the King of Rock and Roll. Expect reflections on her role as guardian of Elvis’s legacy, but also her path to independence and the woman she became after Graceland’s gates closed behind her.

Good Things by Samin Nosrat (September 23)

Nearly a decade after Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat became an instant classic, Samin Nosrat returns with Good Things, a joyful collection of more than 125 new recipes and kitchen rituals she cooks for herself and the people she loves. Expect simple, delicious dishes, gorgeously photographed and brought to life with playful infographics. Generous, precise and warm-hearted, this book feels like an invitation to savour the everyday moments that make good food truly good.

Elizabeth Harrower: The Woman in the Watch Tower by Susan Wyndham (October 1)

This much-awaited biography peels back the layers on Australian literary legend Elizabeth Harrower, who died in 2020 after decades as an enigmatic figure. The former Sydney Morning Herald literary editor explores Harrower’s fiercely private life, complicated friendships and searingly sharp fiction. It’s one of two biographies set to hit shelves this year, with Helen Trinca’s Looking for Elizabeth out now.

Surviving Climate Anxiety by Thomas Doherty (October 7)

A leading voice in environmental psychology, Dr Thomas Doherty addresses the escalating mental health crisis fuelled by climate change. In Surviving Climate Anxiety, he presents a timely psychological framework for confronting eco-anxiety, offering readers practical strategies to process environmental distress, cultivate resilience, and engage constructively with our climate-altered world.

Paper Girl by Beth Macy (October 7)

Beth Macy, acclaimed for Dopesick and Raising Lazarus, turns her trademark blend of deep reporting and narrative compassion on her own past. Paper Girl chronicles the changes in Urbana, Ohio, where Macy grew up as a paper girl, delivering the local newspaper. Expect vivid storytelling from one of America’s fiercest chroniclers of inequality, addiction and resilience.

Unapologetically Ita by Ita Buttrose (October 28)

Pioneering editor and former ABC chair Ita Buttrose reflects on her time in Australia’s media from battling sexism in boardrooms, fronting the ABC through controversies and refusing, in her 80s, to fade quietly from Australia’s cultural conversation. Publishers are promising the memoir is frank, intimate and razor-sharp. Cue the next Asher Keddie miniseries.

The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein (November 4)

Three of Australia’s sharpest non-fiction writers collaborate to tackle the murder case that has gripped the nation. The Mushroom Tapes sees Helen Garner (This House of Grief), Chloe Hooper (The Tall Man) and Sarah Krasnostein (The Trauma Cleaner) join forces in the Latrobe Valley courtroom – and in conversation. Fungi fever doesn’t end there – Greg Haddrick’s Mushroom Murders and Duncan McNab’s Recipe for Murder will also sprout on shelves this spring.

Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood (November 4)

The literary legend’s mind roams free in Book of Lives, a playful, elliptical memoir that refuses the conventional timeline. Instead, the grand dame of speculative fiction is set to offer fragments – dreams, diaries, mini-essays – that explore mortality, mischief and the many selves she’s inhabited as poet, novelist, critic and constant observer of our species.

Joy Ride by Susan Orlean (November 4)

Beloved New Yorker writer and author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book, Susan Orlean is often called a national treasure for good reason. In Joy Ride, her most personal work yet, Orlean turns her sharp eye and boundless curiosity inward, charting a life spent chasing stories – from tiger owners to ten-year-olds, Saturday nights to Mt. Fuji. Part memoir, part masterclass in living a creative life, it promises to be a warm, witty reminder to find wonder in the everyday.

What books are you most looking forward to reading? Tell us in the comments below.

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