Must-Read Books
October 2025

Adult Fiction
Guilty by Definition
by Susie Dent

A cryptic letter with references to Shakespeare arrives at the Clarendon English Dictionary offices in Oxford, England. Editor Martha Thornhill thinks the odd missive might be related to her sister’s disappearance a decade earlier, so when more notes appear, Martha and her team work to solve the clues and possibly a crime. This clever debut by English lexicographer and TV presenter Susie Dent will please both mystery fans and language lovers. Try this next: Murder by the Book by Amie Schaumberg.
What We Can Know
by Ian McEwan

Rising seas have changed the landscape of the United Kingdom, where in 2119 Professor Thomas Metcalfe studies every detail he can find about “A Corona for Vivien,” a lost masterpiece read by an esteemed poet at his wife’s 2014 birthday party. In the second half of this eloquent novel, Vivien herself narrates. Try these next: C. Pam Zhang’s Land of Milk and Honey; Eiren Caffall’s All the Water in the World.
Automatic Noodle
by Annalee Newitz

In this cozy near-future novella, a group of decommissioned robots suddenly come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen in San Francisco and decide to make it their own, serving delicious hand-pulled noodles to the humans recovering from the aftermath of war. For fans of: science fiction with hope and heart such as Becky Chambers' Monk & Robot series. 
Buckeye
by Patrick Ryan

On Victory in Europe Day, 1945, while her husband is away in the Pacific, beautiful Margaret shares a celebratory kiss with married hardware store clerk Cal Jenkins, whose physical disability kept him from enlisting. This leads to a connection between their small-town Ohio families for decades, where their sons grow up together but take different paths in the Vietnam era. For fans of: Read with Jenna books; vivid, heartfelt novels about families and war.
Of Monsters and Mainframes
by Barbara Truelove

Demeter, an intelligent interstellar ship that ferries humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri, would rather do anything than ally herself with monsters. However, when an infamous ancient evil begins killing her beloved passengers, she'll have no choice but to assemble a paranormal crew of her own to take him down. For fans of: chilling science fiction horror with authentic and entertaining characters such as Peter Watts' Echopraxia and Mason Coile's William.
We love you, bunny : a novel by Mona Awad
We Love You, Bunny : a novel
by Mona Awad

After publishing a novel that enrages her former MFA classmates, Samantha Heather Mackey is kidnapped by the eerie, cult-like Bunnies, who force her to hear their surreal origin story—an unsettling tale of monstrous creativity, deadly friendship and the violent magic at the heart of dark academia.
Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa
Pick a Colour
by Souvankham Thammavongsa

Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan; over time the friction between Ning's two identities will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.
Adult Nonfiction
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History
by Moudhy Al-Rashid

In her accessible and illuminating debut, historian Moudhy Al-Rashid utilizes eight artifacts, including cuneiform tablets and weapon fragments, to explore everyday life and culture in ancient Mesopotamia. Further reading: The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World by Selena Wisnom.
Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City
by Bench Ansfield

Historian Bench Ansfield's thought-provoking exposé details the ongoing legacy of the 1970s arson epidemic, exacerbated by corrupt landlords and predatory insurance companies, that plagued urban neighborhoods throughout the United States, particularly in the South Bronx. Try this next: The Killing Fields of East New York: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood by Stacy Horn.
 
Youth Fiction
The Poisoned King
by Katherine Rundell

Ever since his first excursion, Christopher has been longing to return to the Archipelago, a hidden realm of mythological animals. So when he’s summoned by a dragon, Christopher is thrilled to follow it into a mystery involving a sphinx, a spreading poison, and a small girl bent on revenge. This exciting, illustrated sequel will be most fun if you’ve already read Impossible Creatures.
Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories
by Cynthia Leitich Smith, editor

Sandy June’s Legendary Frybread Drive-In is a food truck that appears wherever Indigenous people across North America need to meet. It provides the setting for the linked stories in this touching and magical anthology that takes readers from Hawai’i to Alaska to Manitoba and many liminal places in between.
Contact your librarian for more great books!
Cobourg Public Library
200 Ontario Street
Cobourg, Ontario K9A 5P4
905-372-9271

www.cobourg.library.on.ca