PEOPLE's Most-Anticipated Books of 2025, from New Emily Henry and Taylor Jenkins Reid to a 'Hunger Games' Prequel

Mar. 15, 2025

Penguin Random House; Harper; Red Tower Books

As you start to compile your reading list for the new year ahead, get in line to check out books from your local library or start to fill your digital shopping cart. We’ve got recommendations for the most exciting books coming out in just about every genre.We can’t wait to get our hands on hot new releases fromRebecca Yarros,Suzanne Collins,Taylor Jenkins ReidandEmily Henry, who all have books coming out this year. Those will hit shelves alongside debuts from authors who are poised to become new favorites in 2025, in genres likethriller,romantasy,historical fictionand much more.The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!Preordering books helps tip off bestseller lists, award juries and fellow bookworms that an author’s book is worth a read, so if you’re excited about one on this list, do your future self and your favorite writers both a favor and get your order in. Happy reading!

As you start to compile your reading list for the new year ahead, get in line to check out books from your local library or start to fill your digital shopping cart. We’ve got recommendations for the most exciting books coming out in just about every genre.

We can’t wait to get our hands on hot new releases fromRebecca Yarros,Suzanne Collins,Taylor Jenkins ReidandEmily Henry, who all have books coming out this year. Those will hit shelves alongside debuts from authors who are poised to become new favorites in 2025, in genres likethriller,romantasy,historical fictionand much more.

The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!

Preordering books helps tip off bestseller lists, award juries and fellow bookworms that an author’s book is worth a read, so if you’re excited about one on this list, do your future self and your favorite writers both a favor and get your order in. Happy reading!

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G.P. Putnam’s Sons

This sweeping, ambitious novel about the meaning of home and the power of memory follows a pair of separated lovers, Haiwen and Suchi, through six decades of Chinese history as war, famine and chance bring them to Hong Kong, Taiwan, New York, California and many places — and circumstances — along the way.

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Ballantine Books

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Atria Books

Have you ever wanted to run away, assume a new identity and live a completely different life? In this sparkling novel, Cate Kay is just that: the nom de plume of a bestselling author who doesn’t really exist, after a tragedy in her youth sent her on the run under a succession of different identities. But when a shocking revelation comes to light, it may be time for Cate to assume yet another identity: Her real one.

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Berkley

If you like to learn something while lost in a gripping narrative, don’t miss this historical fiction about the woman who kicked off the Harlem Renaissance. Jessie Redmon Fauset was the first Black woman to helm the Black literary powerhouseThe Crisis, and was also founder W. E. B. Du Bois' lover. She’s responsible for launching names like Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and others, even as her success (and theirs) comes at a cost.

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Black in Bluesties the experiences of Black Americans to the color in an incisive, accessible narrative. Think blues music, indigo dye and the term “blue Black” to describe dark-skinned people. You’ll never look at the color the same way.

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Red Tower Books

The hotly anticipated conclusion to the Empyrean Series hits shelves this January. “There will be politics, new adventures, old enemies and, of course, dragons,” author Rebecca Yarrosteased when she first announced the book. “The book is out for pre-order now and I can’t wait to share more details with you later.”

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This beautifully crafted, dual-timeline story follows a mother and daughter each seeking justice and following their dreams during pivotal moments of social reckoning — 1960s Nashville and 1992 Chicago. Even amidst deep struggles comes equally deep determination to achieve their versions of the American dream in this propulsive novel of indomitable women.

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The Dial Press

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Knopf

Gail’s daughter is getting married, she’s lost her job and she isn’t even invited to the pre-wedding spa day the mother of the groom has planned. Then Gail’s ex Max shows up unannounced, her daughter reveals a secret that may jeopardize the wedding and churns up Gail and Max’s own history. It’s an all-too-real family story as only Tyler can tell it.

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Jane and Dan’s 19-year marriage has lost its sparkle, Jane’s writing career isn’t doing much better and she’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When they find themselves in the center of a hostage situation during date night, and everything the criminals say and do are ripped right from the pages of her failed book, they’re the only people who can stop it. This sharply original romp is entirely too much fun.

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Pantheon Books

In Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award and Booker finalist Lalami’s newest, the Risk Assessment Administration uses data collected from people’s dreams to determine whether they’re at risk of committing crimes. That’s how Sara, a museum archivist, finds herself at a detention center where every minor infraction extends the period women must stay there. As months pass, Sara becomes more and more desperate for freedom in this luminous, unsettling look at technology and surveillance.

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After a storm ravages the fictional Dust Bowl town of Uz, Neb., five characters find themselves entangled. There’s the “Prairie Witch,” whose body is a vault for the residents' memories; a Polish wheat farmer struggling under the weight of hoarded blessings; his orphan niece who’s a basketball star and witch’s apprentice; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer with a time-traveling camera. It’s at once a surreal portrait like only Russell can paint and an urgent warning against the encroaching climate crisis.

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Scholastic

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Riverhead Books

If you’re afraid of clowns, consider this your trigger warning: Arnett’s latest is all about a professional clown and the messy, often struggling person behind the makeup. Readers will be rooting for Cherry, who works part time at an aquarium as she pursues her dream of clowning while juggling her judgmental mother, her often disastrous love life and the madcap misfits who make up her social life. With as much heart, humor and gritty realness as can fit between two covers, the latest from the author ofMostly Dead Thingsis a delight.

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The first sizzling sapphic romance from bestseller Guillory follows the uptight Avery who’s exploring her attraction to women for the first time. Taylor, Napa Valley’s resident heartbreaker, offers to give Avery flirting lessons. You’ll just have to pick it up to find out how well they work.

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Penguin Random House

The queen of rom-coms needs no introduction, and her newest already has readers smashing the preorder button. This one’s all about eternal optimist Alice Scott who’s still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning human thundercloud. They’re on Little Crescent Island vying for the chance to write the biography of the elusive octogenarian and former tabloid darling Margaret Ives. Of course, much like the book they’re auditioning to write, grumpy Hayden and sunny Alice’s story could go any number of ways in this delicious romp that’s made for your spring break beach bag.

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Harper

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When a newly divorced young mother brings her daughters back to the house where she grew up, she has to reconcile the secrets of her own childhood with the person she’s become, and is still becoming. A resonant novel on the cycles of family, mothers and daughters and how intertwined our lives can be.

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Penguin Press

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“Like all of my books, it’s about family, how we open our hearts to accept new people into our lives, even as we reconcile with the people who left us,“Wilson told PEOPLE when revealing the book. “It’s also about many of my favorite things — organic chicken farming, college basketball, indie filmmaking and California art communes.”

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This epic novel that follows a romance between two astronauts working on the 1980s space shuttle program explores the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits. Joan Goodwin is an astronomer and astronaut who works at NASA’s Houston Mission Control Center and must think quickly on her feet when the spacecraft carrying her love interest incurs danger.

“I wanted so badly to tell a story that was life or death, where the stakes were so immediate — and we understood that it might not always go the way that we want it to go,“Jenkins Reid told Vogue. “There’s something beautiful to be found in this heightened moment.”

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Louisa is just 10 years old when she and her father, Serk, are last seen together taking a walk on the beach. Later, a barely alive Louisa is found washed ashore, with Serk nowhere to be found. Flashlight looks back at what really happened that night as it introduces us to Serk, a Korean man who grew up in Japan; Anne, Louisa’s American mother who is estranged from her family and Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son who reappears in the family’s orbit.

“During my childhood my family lived in Japan for a little under a year, and my memories of that time have always been very eerie and dreamlike and hard to connect with the rest of my life,”Choi told PEOPLE when announcing the book. “The story inFlashlightcomes out of that feeling. It’s about a family — not my family, but maybe my alternate-universe family, who are far less lucky than my family was.”

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Del Rey

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Katabasis is a noun in Ancient Greek that means “The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld.” The stunning new dark academia from the author behindYellowfaceandBabelis about two graduate students who must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul — which may even cost their own. You don’t need to know the story of Dante’s Inferno to fall in love with a journey that might even take you back to your own school days.

source: people.com