Fall 2025 Releases on My TBR

It is somehow Fall already? (*cough*shenanigans*cough*) And you know what that means! Aside from cozy clothes, warm drinks, and a stunning atmosphere? Yup, you guessed it: a new list of releases that I’m looking forward to!

This year, I actually have a lower reading goal than previous years, as I’ve been focusing on other aspects of my well-being lately. So I’m not planning on getting to read these as soon as I would like. Is that going to keep me from unceremoniously dumping them on my TBR for later, though? Heck no! Because that would require constraint, and who has time for that?!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a list of Fall 2025 releases that I’ve added to my TBR (and you should, too) that I’m looking forward to picking up! Featuring a lot of fantasy . . . and probably snark.

Now that I’m in charge of collection development at my library, I tend to spend a lot of time looking at upcoming books. Good news is that does wonders for my mental health and well-being! Bad news is it really hurts my poor TBR. So I’m here today to share some exciting Fall releases with you all. Because if my TBR has to weep, yours should too.

Normal caveat that if you’ve read any of these books and think I will love them, please let me know to prioritize them!

Higher Magic

In this incisive, irreverent, and whimsical dark academia novel for fans of Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series and R.F. Kuang’s Babel, a struggling mage student with intense anxiety must prove that classic literature contained magic—and learn to wield her own stories to change her institution for the better.

First-generation graduate student Dorothe Bartleby has one last chance to pass the Magic program’s qualifying exam after freezing with anxiety during her first attempt. If she fails to demonstrate that magic in classic literature changed the world, she’ll be kicked out of the university. And now her advisor insists she reframe her entire dissertation using Digimancy. While mages have found a way to combine computers and magic, Bartleby’s fated to never make it work.

This time is no exception. Her revised working goes horribly wrong, creating a talking skull named Anne that narrates Bartleby’s inner thoughts—even the most embarrassing ones—like she’s a heroine in a Jane Austen novel. Out of her depth, she recruits James, an unfairly attractive mage candidate, to help her stop Anne’s glitches in time for her exam.

Instead, Anne leads them to a shocking and dangerous discovery: Magic students who seek disability accommodations are disappearing—quite literally. When the administration fails to act, Bartleby must learn to trust her own knowledge and skills. Otherwise, she risks losing both the missing students and her future as a mage, permanently.

Why I Want To Read:

• Look at that gorgeous cover, OH MY GOSH!!!
• Nerdy protagonist with anxiety! (Is this me? Do I have magic?!)
• Digimancy definitely feels like the type of magic I would choose, if I had a choice.
• Talking skulls! What fun. 😀
• Dark academia romantasy.
• I love the idea of learning to “wield your own stories”. So cool!

Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World

WARNING! Under no circumstances must employees strike a deal with unauthorized personnel on Dark Enterprises property. Such behavior could result in death…or the end of the world.

Colin is a low-level employee at Dark Enterprises, a Hell-like multinational corporation solving the world’s most difficult problems in deeply questionable ways. After years of toiling away in a cubicle, he’s ready to climb the corporate ladder and claim the power he’s never had.

The only problem is, he’s pretty sure he’s about to be terminated. Like, terminated. That’s tough, because his BFF has just set him up with a great guy. In fact, maybe he’s a little too great. And asks a lot of questions…

When Colin meets a shadowy figure promising him his heart’s deepest desire, he can’t resist the urge to fast-track his goals. In return for a small, unspecified favor, he asks for the one thing that will improve his life: a promotion.

But that small favor unleashes an ancient evil. People in New York are disappearing, the world might be ending, and Management is starting to notice. Getting to the top is never easy, and now it’s up to Colin to save the world. It’s the ultimate power move, after all.

Why I Want To Read:

• Queer fantasy horror . . . which sure is an interesting blend of genres
• Dark Enterprises sounds like an interesting—and dubious—organization
• I haven’t met Colin yet buuuut . . . I’m pretty sure I sympathize with him
• +1 for ancient evils!
• I’m a sucker for books involving New York. And strange disappearances.
• Colin sounds like the hero we didn’t ask for. And don’t want. And probably don’t need. But we’re stuck with. I like him.

Cinder House

Ella is a haunting.

Murdered at sixteen, her ghost is furiously trapped in her father’s house, invisible to everyone except her stepmother and stepsisters.

Even when she discovers how to untether herself from her prison, there are limits. She cannot be seen or heard by the living people who surround her. Her family must never learn she is able to leave. And at the stroke of every midnight, she finds herself back on the staircase where she died.

Until she forges a wary friendship with a fairy charm-seller, and makes a bargain for three nights of almost-living freedom. Freedom that means she can finally be seen. Danced with. Touched.

You think you know Ella’s the ball, the magical shoes, the handsome prince.

You’re halfway right, and all-the-way wrong.

Why I Want To Read:

• Novella retelling of Cinderella. Except . . . darker, somehow?
• I’ve enjoyed the author’s other work.
• Gothic romance is the best kind of romance.
• Cinderella is a murdered ghost, and I have questions.
• According to the reviews, not really queer but sort of at the end . . . so I’m skeptical but endlessly curious now.

Recipes for an Unexpected Afterlife

An undead orc knight leaves battle behind for a new kind of afterlife—one with good food, good friends, and maybe even fatherhood.

Rottgor is worn out. Literally. Barely held together by dark magic, he has protected the necropolis for centuries. When he’s forced into retirement, he’s faced with a new to forge a future guided not by obligation, but by passion.

Following his heart (and stomach), he decides to open a restaurant where the city’s undead and living residents can share food and community. He’s helped in his quest by an unlikely assortment of neighbors, including elves, skeletons, vampires—and a young orphan girl named Astra, whose ancestry, if discovered, could put her and the entire necropolis in danger. To protect Astra and the life he’s building, Rottgor must face his past and form new alliances built on friendship, loyalty, and love. As comforting as warm pumpkin bread, this gentle fantasy traces how even a dark history can rise into a bright future.

Why I Want To Read:

• Undead orc knight protagonist. Color me interested!
• Sounds like an utterly adorable cozy fantasy.
• Reminds me of Delicious in Dungeon and similar books like Legends & Lattes
• Squad vibes! With a touch of supernatural and magic.
• Shenanigans and hilarity, I’m sure. (Maybe a little chaos, too?! For good measure.)

Slayers of Old

Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Golden Girls in this humorous contemporary standalone fantasy about a group of former Chosen Ones coming out of retirement to save the world one last time.

Three former Chosen Ones have joined together to spend their retirement in peace and quiet, running Second Life Books and Gifts in Salem, MA. A calm, peaceful, tourist-filled oasis, where they never have to worry about saving the world. Until some of the locals start summoning ancient creatures best left where they were…and they discover that their bookstore basement just may be the portal to the underworld. These ex-heroes may have thought they were done…but if they want to finish their retirement in peace, they’ll have to join together to save the world one last time.

Fun, funny, and heartwarming, this is a story of community, second chances, and the healing power of scones

Why I Want To Read:

• Buffy meets Golden Girls. Duh! (Two of the best parts of my childhood.)
• I love the idea of what happens to Chosen Ones . . . after.
• Summoning ancient creatures. (Can I get in on this action too?! I want an ancient creature. Especially if it looks like the cute Cthulu kitty on the cover!)
• Sounds action-packed and funny.
• Squad vibes! (Especially if they’ve got Golden Girl type squad vibes.)
• Older protagonists, still kicking butt!

Hazelthorn

Evander has lived like a ghost in the forgotten corners of the Hazelthorn estate ever since he was taken in by his reclusive billionaire guardian, Byron Lennox-Hall, when he was a child. For his safety, Evander has been given three ironclad rules to follow:

He can never leave the estate. He can never go into the gardens. And most importantly, he can never again be left alone with Byron’s charming, underachieving grandson, Laurie.

That last rule has been in place ever since Laurie tried to kill Evander seven years ago, and yet somehow Evander is still obsessed with him.

When Byron suddenly dies, Evander inherits Hazelthorn’s immense gothic mansion and acres of sprawling grounds, along with the entirety of the Lennox-Hall family’s vast wealth. But Evander’s sure his guardian was murdered, and Laurie may be the only one who can help him find the killer before they come for Evander next.

Perhaps even more concerning is how the overgrown garden is refusing to stay behind its walls, slipping its vines and spores deeper into the house with each passing day. As the family’s dark secrets unravel alongside the growing horror of their terribly alive, bloodthirsty garden, Evander needs to find out what he’s really inheriting before the garden demands to be fed once more.

Why I Want To Read:

• I love C.G. Drews’ writing style. (And blog!)
• Creepy old buildings . . . which clearly hold dangerous secrets!
• Queer Gothic Dark Academia Horror Fantasy . . . which is all the best things rolled into one.
• How hard can it be to follow three rules? (Just kidding. Very hard. They’re obviously all going to be broken.)
• All the spooky, horror vibes, which just screams fall!

The White Octopus Hotel

Journey to a magical hotel in the Swiss Alps, where two lost souls living in different centuries meet and discover if a second chance awaits them behind its doors.

London, 2015. When reclusive art appraiser Eve Shaw shakes the hand of a silver-haired gentleman in her office, the warmth of his palm sends a spark through her.

His name is Max Everly—curiously, the same name as Eve’s favorite composer, born one hundred sixteen years prior. And she has the sudden feeling that she’s held his hand before . . . but where, and when?

The White Octopus Hotel, 1935. In this belle époque building high in the snowy mountains, Eve and a young Max wander the winding halls, lost in time.

Each of them has been through the trenches—Eve through a family accident and Max on the battlefields of the Great War—but for an impossible moment, love and healing are just a room away . . . if only they have the courage to step through the door.

Why I Want To Read:

• Magical hotel! (Which I obviously want to visit.)
• Sounds like an utterly adorable romantasy!
• I, too, am a sucker for older, silver-haired gentlemen.
• Sounds heartwarming and uplifting and the hopeful read I need right now!

The Bookshop Below

In this extraordinary standalone from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The City of Stardust, a disgraced bookseller is offered the chance to restore a magical bookshop to its former glory, and enters a dark underworld of unscrupulous collectors, deadly ink magic and shady societies.

If you want a story that will change your life, Chiron’s bookshop is where you go. For those lucky enough to grace its doors, it’s a glimpse into a world of deadly bargains and powerful, magical books.

For Cassandra Fairfax, it’s a reminder of everything she lost, when Chiron kicked her out and all but shuttered the shop. Since then, she’s used her skills in less . . . ethical ways, trading stolen books and magical readings to wealthy playboys looking for power money can’t buy.

Then Chiron dies. And if Cassandra knows anything, it’s the bookshop must always have an owner.

To restore the shop, she’ll need the help of Lowell Sharpe, a rival bookseller who is everything Cassandra is not – and knows it, too.

But as she is plunged into a world of unscrupulous collectors, deadly ink magic and shady societies, a dark force threatens to unravel the bookshops entirely . . .

Why I Want To Read:

• Bookshops are one of my favorite places to be! Even dangerous ones.
• I’m wary of any bookshop run by a guy named Chiron. But . . . eh, I’d visit it anyway.
• For deadly powers and magical books, obviously. Duh!
• A dark underworld that revolves around books . . . and magic! Sounds like my kind of shady business!
• A very nerdy romantasy centered around books and bookish people.

The Wolf and His King

Bisclavret is cursed: to live his life in exile; to take a wolf’s shape involuntarily; to lie to everybody he meets. And yet he has always dreamed of knighthood, of brotherhood and belonging. When the old king dies unexpectedly, Bisclavret travels to the royal court to seek his rightful inheritance and swear fealty to the new king. It’s here that he discovers the mysterious young warrior now wearing the crown is willing to offer him far more than just his father’s lands, and suddenly the life that seemed like an impossible fantasy is catapulted within his grasp. But can someone who is hardly a man ever truly be a knight?

The king is lonely: recently returned to court from an exile of his own to inherit a crown he never wanted. And yet he’s fascinated by his newest knight, a man who carries secrets along with his sword, and fascination quickly turns to longing. When Bisclavret is seemingly killed by a wolf, the weight of the king’s grief almost destroys him. He swears to have his vengeance, but at the height of the hunt he encounters an animal that seems too intelligent to be the violent beast he seeks. One might even say it has the mind of a man…

Why I Want To Read:

• Queer retelling of the 12th-century tale of Bisclavret the werewolf
• Comped to books and authors I enjoyed, like Swordcrossed and Katherine Arden
• I would voluntarily take a wolf’s shape. I dunno what he’s complaining about. (The lying thing does seem inconvenient, though.)
• Queer historical romantasy.
• The cover is stunning!

Snake-Eater

In an isolated desert town, a young woman seeking a fresh start is confronted by ancient gods, malevolent supernatural forces, and eccentric neighbours. A witty horror-tinged fantasy, perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Chuck Tingle, and Rachel Harrison.

When Selena travels to the remote desert town of Quartz Creek in search of her estranged Aunt Amelia, she is desperate and short of options. Fleeing an unhappy marriage, she has exactly twenty-seven dollars to her name, and her only friend in the world is her dog, Copper.

On arrival, Selena learns Amelia is dead. But the inhabitants of Quartz Creek are only too happy to have a new resident. Out of money and ideas, Selena sees no harm staying in her aunt’s lovely house for a few weeks, tending to her garden and enjoying the strange, desolate beauty of the desert. The people are odd, but friendly, and eager to help Selena settle into her new home.

But Quartz Creek’s inhabitants share their town with others, old gods and spirits whose claim to the land long predates their human neighbours. Selena finds herself pursued by disturbing apparitions, visitations that come in the night and seem to want something from her.

Aunt Amelia owed a debt. Now her god has come to collect.

Why I Want To Read:

• T. Kingfisher is one of my favorite authors!
• Ancient gods and malevolent supernatural forces. Sounds like a great time!
• Good doggo sidekick named Copper.
• Creepy neighbors in a creepy new town.
• I love Kingfisher’s horror! It’s always has a creepy atmosphere with a slow build.

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