Books to Look Out For in 2025 Q1

I love looking at all the wonderful books we have to look forward to, and that’s particularly true at the start of the year. Here are a few of the titles that I’m particularly excited about from the next three months. Covers and publication dates are correct at time of writing.

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The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay
(Headline, 30 January)

I loved Alex Hay’s debut novel, The Housekeepers and I’m really looking forward to this second offering. I have an ARC from Netgalley, so I’ll be reading this one soon!

They whisper her name in every corner of town.
The lady with a hundred faces, a thousand lives.
Five moves, five days – for such are the rules of her game.

1898. Quinn Le Blanc, London’s most talented con woman, has five days to pull off the seemingly impossible: trick an eligible duke into marriage and lift a fortune from the richest family in England.

Masquerading as a wealthy debutante, Quinn is the jewel of the season. Her brilliant act opens doors to the grand drawing rooms and lavish balls of high society – and propels her into the inner circle of her target: the corrupt, charismatic Kendals.

But as she spins in and out of their world, Quinn becomes tangled in a dangerous web of love, lies and loyalty. The Kendal family all have secrets of their own, and she may not be the only one playing a game of high deception…

But when Tom finds a secret market that appears only in moonlight, where charms and spells are bought with memories, he starts to wonder whether he’s been here before…

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Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
(Tinder Press, 4 February)

I’ve really enjoyed Eowyn Ivey’s previous novels, The Snow Child and To the Bright Edge of the World and particularly the descriptions of the Alaskan wilderness and I’m looking forward to more of the same from Black Woods, Blue Sky.

Birdie’s keeping it together, of course she is. So she’s a little hungover on her shifts, and has to bring her daughter to the lodge while she waits tables, but Emaleen never goes hungry. It’s a tough town to be a single mother, and Birdie just needs to get by.

And then Birdie meets Arthur, who is quieter than most men, but makes her want to listen; who is gentle with Emaleen, and understands Birdie’s fascination with the mountains in whose shadow they live. When Arthur asks Birdie and Emaleen to leave the lodge and make a home, just the three of them, in his off-grid cabin, Birdie’s answer, in a heartbeat, is yes.

Out in the wilderness Birdie’s days are harsher and richer than she ever imagined possible. Here she will feel truly at one with nature. Here she, and Emaleen, will learn the whole, fearful truth about Arthur.

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Making a Killing by Cara Hunter
(Hemlock Press, 13 February)

A new DCI Adam Fawley novel?! I love this series, and I’m intrigued by the premise of revisiting the disappearance of Daisy Mason, which was the case that introduced us to Fawley in Close to Home.

In 2016, eight-year-old Daisy Mason vanished from her Oxford home.

Her disappearance made the national press and the final culprit shocked everyone. DCI Adam Fawley remembers the case well, he arrested Daisy’s mother for murder himself.

But her body was never found.

Now, forensic evidence at a current murder scene calls the whole case into question. DCI Adam Fawley and the team are brought back in to investigate. And they all have one question on their minds.

What really happened to Daisy Mason?

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Once Was Willem by M. R. Carey
(Orbit, 4 March)

I love M. R. Carey’s work, and while this sounds quite different to other novels of his that I’ve read, I can’t wait to get this one.

From the bestselling M. R. Carey comes an enthrallingly dark medieval tale – a story of twisted folklore, macabre magic and the strangest of found family. This is the tale of Once-Was-Willem.

Eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England, I, Once Was Willem, rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham. The words enclosed herein are true.

I speak of monsters and magic, battle and bloodletting, and the crimes of desperate men. I speak also of secret things, of that which lies beneath us and that which impends above. By the time you come to the end of this account you will know the truth of your own life and death, the path laid out for your immortal soul, your origin and your inevitable end.

You will not thank me.

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The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
(Bloomsbury, 4 March)

I really enjoyed Lalami’s The Moor’s Account, and I’ll be reading The Other Americans soon. This one appeals to my dystopian-loving heart.

In a world without privacy, what is the cost of freedom?

Sara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport and inform her that she will commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she presents an imminent risk to the person she loves most, and must now be transferred to a retention centre for twenty-one days to lower her ‘risk score’.

But when Sara arrives at Madison to be observed alongside other dangerous dreamers, it soon becomes clear that getting home to her family is going to cost more than just three weeks of good behaviour. And as every minor misdemeanour, every slight deviation from the rules, adds time to her stay, she begins to wonder if there might be more here than first meets the eye.

Then, one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and setting off a chain of events that lead Sara on a collision course with the companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how much we can ever truly know those around us – even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.

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These are just a few of the wonderful books coming out in the next few months that I’m really excited about. Anything here take your fancy? Anything you’re particularly looking forward to? Let me know in the comments!