If you’re looking to boost your “read” pile for the year, or even get yourself out of a reading slump, K.W. Colyard has compiled a dope list of short books that include everything from the story of an author contending with her sister’s death by Nobel laureate Han Kang, to the bestselling, coming-of-age memoir by Ashley C. Ford.
And here’s something for the literary award watchers: the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal winners have been announced. James by Percival Everett won the Fiction prize (that James reign just won’t let up), and A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko won for Nonfiction. You can read more about them here.
Among the new books out this week, there’s From These Roots, a nonfiction release in which Tamara Lanier documents her fight against Harvard University to reclaim her ancestors’ legacy’ and Elseship: an unrequited affair by Tree Abraham, a unique kind of queer memoir that explores an asexual person’s unrequited feelings.
In the realm of fantastical fiction, there’s Gate to Kagoshima by Poppy Kuroki, a historical romantasy set in Japan; and On the Wings of la Noche by Vanessa L. Torres, a queer YA fantasy in which the titular Noche turns into an owl at night to escort the dead to the afterlife. Sci-fi lovers will appreciate We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine by Deni Ellis Bechard, which explores AI and the meaning of human existence; while people looking for a little chuckle will dig Kira Jane Buxton’s contemporary and Italy-set Tartufo.
As for the featured books below, just about all of them are on someone’s “most anticipated books of 2025” list, and some are even on multiple lists. They have long-held family secrets, off-kilter girl stories, and amorphous blobs.
Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson
Following up the 2022’s smash hit Black Cake (which has already been adapted into a series on Hulu), Wilkerson has another account of a Black family’s past. This particular family’s history is marred by one singular event. When she was a child, Ebby Freeman found her brother Baz dead on the floor, surrounded by a shattered old jar. It flipped, understandably, flipped her whole life in well-to-do New England upside down. And now, looking to avoid the media frenzy all too ready to descend on the scandal of her high-profile romance disintegrating, she moves to France. But being in France has thinking—thinking about her brother, what happened, and a certain broken stoneware jar that was brought up North by an enslaved ancestor, and that may shine a light on her future.
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry
Perry has followed up the 2022 National Book Award-winning South to America with a look at the color blue and its relationship with Black folks. She looks at the blue cloths of West Africa that were traded for human beings in the 16th century, the Blues, as a genre and general feeling, and even at the more personal—the blue flowers she planted while grieving.
We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin
We love off-kilter girl stories, and this latest from Emily Austin (Interesting Facts about Space) focuses on Sigrid, who works at the local dollar store and hates it. She doesn’t really like the idea of being a full adult, either, much to her older sister Margit’s chagrin. It’s this frustration with Sigrid that causes Magrit to go out of her way to finally understand Sigrid and her detachment. What she finds is a deep sensitivity that’s tried to protect itself from their troubled childhood through imagination. It’s had to turn their arguing parents into swamp monsters, contend with the loss of best friends, and even a town beset with opioid addiction. Magrit also learns that revisiting that imagination might save sisters.
Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su
Yes, this is literally a story about an amorphous blob, and yes the main character falls in love with it. Or, at least tries to. Kinda. I think it goes without saying that finding a blob with black, beady eyes in the dark alley of a drag show bar one night and taking it home and teaching it to be your perfect boyfriend once it gains sentience is the definition of delulu. In her defense, it’s a result of growing up the daughter of a Taiwanese father and a white mother in a Midwestern college town, never fitting in, and an ex-boyfriend unfriending her. Which is why our girl Vi has a glimmer of hope once all the sugary cereal and pop culture she’s been feeding the blob turns it into a Hollywood handsome white man. But, like, it’s a blob deep down, sis.
Old Soul by Susan Barker
Jake and Mariko are strangers when they meet in the Osaka airport, but they both have something in common. They’re both grieving the loss of someone close to them—Jake his best friend, and Mariko her twin brother—but there’s something else, too. Even though the people they lost died 6,000 miles apart from each other, they’d both encountered an enchanting, dark-haired woman right before they died. A woman who had actually come looking for Mariko. Turns out, the trail of the woman that Mariko follows leads them across centuries and continents, to different names and people who all report the same mesmerizing woman. But finding out her motives, and the truth of who and what she is, may not be enough to stop her.
Too Soon by Betty Shamieh
Arabella is 35 and feels like opportunities surrounding her love life and career are becoming fewer and farther between. As a director, she gets offered a chance to direct a gender-bent rendition of a Shakespeare play in the West Bank, and her grandmother Zoya is hoping to set something up between her and Aziz, a Palestinian American doctor volunteering in Gaza. Then Zoya is reminded of how she really wanted to be with Aziz’s grandfather back in the day but was instead paired with another man by her father. She then married her younger daughter Naya off—who gave birth to Arabella at 16—who also had other plans for her future (which involved the Jackson 5, naturally). But it’s a new day, and each of the women must reckon with what it means to be Palestinian, American, and women in their own ways.
Other Book Riot New Releases Resources:
- All the Books, our weekly new book releases podcast, where Liberty and a cast of co-hosts talk about eight books out that week that we’ve read and loved.
- The New Books Newsletter, where we send you an email of the books out this week that are getting buzz.
- Finally, if you want the real inside scoop on new releases, you have to check out Book Riot’s New Release Index! That’s where I find 90% of new releases, and you can filter by trending books, Rioters’ picks, and even LGBTQ new releases!