October 2025 list by Donalee Jacobs |
|
|
|
Alchemised
by Senlinyu
Alchemist Helena Marino, a prisoner with amnesia, fights to survive in a necromancy-ridden world as the ruthless High Reeve attempts to unearth the vital secrets hidden within her missing memories.
|
|
|
|
The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre
by Philip Fracassi
Rose DuBois is not your average final girl. Rose is in her late 70s, living out her golden years at the Autumn Springs Retirement Home. When one of her friends dies alone in her apartment, Rose isn't too concerned. Accidents happen, especially at this age! Then another resident drops dead. And another. With bodies stacking up, Rose can't help but wonder: are these accidents? Old age? Or something far more sinister? Together with her best friend Miller, Rose begins to investigate. The further she digs, the more convinced she becomes: there's a killer on the loose at Autumn Springs, and if she isn't careful, Rose may be their next victim.
|
|
|
|
Boy from the North Country
by Sam Evan Sussman
Summoned home to his dying mother, Evan uncovers the astonishing truth of his origins and the secrets of her life, including a hidden romance with Bob Dylan, as he finally understands her profound wisdom.
|
|
|
|
A Carol for Mrs. Dickens
by Rebecca Connolly
Catherine Dickens, wife of Charles Dickens, experiences her own Christmas Eve transformation as she magically travels through her cherished memories to rediscover her lost love of Christmas.
|
|
|
|
Denied Access
by Vince Flynn
As the CIA faces political scrutiny and a devastating Moscow intel failure, newly minted assassin Mitch Rapp is pulled into a deadly clash with Russian operatives, in the 24th novel of the series following Capture or Kill.
|
|
|
|
Heart the Lover
by Lily King
Decades after a tangled college love triangle shaped her life, a woman is forced to confront her old choices and hidden truths in this intimate novel of friendship and desire from the bestselling author of Writers & Lovers.
|
|
|
|
The Heartbreak Hotel
by Ellen O'clover
After a breakup leaves her nearly homeless, Louisa Walsh convinces her withdrawn landlord to let her turn their Colorado house into a bed-and-breakfast for the brokenhearted, where unlikely guests -- and an unexpected connection with her landlord -- begin to mend wounds neither of them thought could heal.
|
|
|
|
Hopelessly Teavoted
by Audrey Goldberg Ruoff
A failed screenwriter and a spirit-summoning tea shop owner must break a devil's curse that keeps them from touching as they work together to save their haunted hometown and confront their long-buried feelings.
|
|
|
|
Hot Desk
by Laura Dickerman
Two rival editors share a desk, and a growing pile of snarky Post-its, while vying for a legendary author's estate, but as their battle intensifies, long-buried secrets from a 1980s publishing friendship threaten to reshape everything they thought they knew.
|
|
|
|
The Irish Goodbye
by Heather Aimee O'Neill
Three adult sisters grapple with a shared tragedy over a Thanksgiving weekend spent in their childhood home, navigating complex relationships and old tensions. A first novel.
|
|
|
|
It's Me They Follow
by Jeannine A. Cook
In a magical bookshop where stories guide hearts, a bookseller who helps others find love through fiction confronts her own long-buried longing for a vanished customer and discovers that her story may still hold a happy ending.
|
|
|
|
The Killer Question
by Janice Hallett
A weekly trivia night has revived Sue and Mal Eastwood's struggling rural pub, until a body is found nearby and a suspiciously successful new team arrives; five years later the pub lies derelict and the Eastwood's nephew Dominic is determined to discover what happened.
|
|
|
|
A Land So Wide
by Erin A. Craig
Trapped in the prosperous but cursed settlement of Mistaken, mapmaker Greer Mackenzie defies the Warding Stones to rescue her beloved from monstrous creatures, uncovering dark secrets about her town and her own origins.
|
|
|
|
The Librarians
by Sherry Thomas
When two patrons die after a themed game night, four Austin librarians—each guarding painful secrets—must overcome mistrust and unite to protect their beloved library, unraveling a mystery that threatens the refuge they've built and the fragile peace they've found.
|
|
|
|
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
by Kiran Desai
When Sonia and Sunny meet again by chance on an overnight train, their rekindled connection propels them through a journey shaped by family expectations, artistic disillusionment and personal upheaval as they seek meaning, love and belonging across continents and generations.
|
|
|
|
The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes
by Chanel Cleeton
As American book hunter Margo Reynolds races to recover a rare volume in 2024 London, her search uncovers the intertwined lives of Pilar, a defiant librarian in 1960s Havana, and Eva, a Cuban teacher in 1900 Boston, each woman risking everything to protect a powerful literary legacy.
|
|
|
|
The Maiden and Her Monster
by Maddie Martinez
Malka has seen how the wood's curse has plagued her village, but the Ozmini Church does not protect heretics with false stories of monsters in the trees. So when Malka's mother is accused of murder, Malka strikes a bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest to bring the monster out to spare her mother from execution. Malka does find a monster: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself, but only if Malka helps her fulfill a promise and free the imprisoned rabbi who created her. As their bargain begins to unravel, Malka may have to endanger the one person she left home to save—and face her feelings for the creature she was taught to fear.
|
|
|
|
Picket Line
by Elmore Leonard
This never-before-published gem from a master storyteller describes an unprecedented farmers' movement in Trinity, Texas; the complex cast of Chicanos, Anglos, and migrants that impact the union; and the careful balance of passion, patience, and pure, stupid guts that it takes to hold the line.
|
|
|
|
Poems & Prayers
by Matthew McConaughey
From the Academy Award–winning actor and bestselling author of Greenlights comes an inspiring, faith-filled, and often hilarious collection of personal poetry and prayers about navigating the rodeo of life and chasing down the original dream, belief.
|
|
|
|
Road Trip With a Vampire
by Jenna Levine
A gorgeous vampire who can't remember his past and reformed bad witch Grizelda "Zelda" Watson -- with secrets of her own -- hit the road for answers -- only to find what they're looking for in each other.
|
|
|
|
Saltcrop
by Yume Kitasei
Skipper, a skilled sailor who earns money skimming and reselling plastic from the ocean after an ecological disaster. When her eldest sister, Nora, goes missing, Skipper and her other sister, Carmen, receive a cryptic plea for help, and they must put aside their differences and sail across the sea to find—and save—her. As they voyage through a dying world both beautiful and strange, encountering other travelers along the way, they learn more about their sister's work and the corporations that want what she discovered. But the farther they go, the more uncertain their mission becomes: What dangerous attention did Nora attract, and how well do they really know their sister—or each other?
|
|
|
|
Someone is After LuLu Dupree
by Josi S. Kilpack
After a traumatic brain injury, LuLu's peaceful new life in Sedona shatters as deadly threats force her to confront her buried past and unravel a dangerous mystery.
|
|
|
|
Soul Searching
by Lyla Sage
When out-of-work Collins Cartwright returns to Sweetwater Peak under false pretenses and moves in above a shop haunted by ghosts who won't speak to her, she clashes and connects with the new upholsterer Brady, whose own buried reasons for relocating may be just as haunted.
|
|
|
|
Spread Me
by Sarah Gailey
Kinsey has the perfect job as the team lead in a remote research outpost. She loves the isolation and the way the desert keeps temptations from the civilian world far out of reach. When her crew discovers a mysterious specimen buried deep in the sand, Kinsey breaks quarantine and brings it inside. But the longer it's there, the more her carefully controlled life begins to unravel. Temptation has found her after all, and it can't be ignored any longer.
One by one, Kinsey's team realizes the thing they're studying is in search of a new host—and one of them is the perfect candidate.
|
|
|
|
To the Moon and Back
by Eliana Ramage
Steph Harper is on the run. She has been all her life, ever since her mother drove five-year-old Steph and her younger sister through the night to Cherokee Nation, a place they had never been, but where she hoped they might finally belong. In response to the turmoil, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon. Spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph's turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her.
|
|
|
|
Tourist Season
by Brynne Weaver
Cape Carnage is a seaside town of colorful houses, quirky shops and an unusually high body count, and with tourists comes trouble, but Harper Starling won't let anyone ruin her picture-perfect home.
|
|
|
|
The Wasp Trap
by Mark Edwards
At a London dinner party, six former friends face a deadly ultimatum: reveal their darkest secrets or be targeted one by one, as past betrayals tied to a psychological dating experiment resurface and expose a murderer lurking within their circle.
|
|
|
|
The Whistler
by Nick Medina
After a ghost-hunting accident leaves Henry Hotard paralyzed, he returns to his reservation and begins experiencing terrifying visions tied to a Native superstition, forcing him to confront buried trauma and the consequences of breaking sacred taboos.
|
|
|
|
Wild Reverence
by Rebecca Ross
Born in the firelit domain of the under realm, Matilda is the youngest goddess of her clan, blessed with humble messenger magic. But in a land where gods often kill each other to steal power and alliances break as quickly as they are forged, Matilda must come of age sooner than most. She may be known to carry words and letters through the realms, but she holds a secret she must hide from even her dearest of allies to ensure her survival. And to complicate matters . . . there is a mortal boy who dreams of her, despite the fact they have never met in the waking world.
|
|
|
|
The Wilderness
by Angela Flournoy
Five young Black women — Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia — navigate strained family ties, motherhood, ambition, and identity as they support and challenge each other while forging their adulthoods in New York and Los Angeles across two turbulent decades.
|
|
|
|
|