The Fall 2025 Reading Guide

Get your fall reading list ready because I have the best books to read this Fall 2025 with all the top choices of great books to read.

Hallelujah, fall is just around the corner!

With back-to-school season and cooler weather come some of the best fall reads I’ve seen in a while. All summer long, I’ve been perusing the upcoming release lists. I’ve wrestled over which books to include and which to leave out.

Here for your reading pleasure is my list of the best books of Fall 2025. I’ve got book club favorites, historical fiction, mysteries, thrillers, and some nonfiction books. Some I’ve read and some I can’t wait to read, but all of them are perfect for my Fall 2025 Reading Guide.

In the exciting of the Allied victory in Europe during WWII, Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt share an intimate moment that will affect their families for generations to come. Haunted by his inability to fight in the war, Cal lives with his wife Becky, a seer who helps families connect with the dead they have lost. Meanwhile, Margaret’s husband is serving on a Navy cargo ship when she gets word that the unthinkable may have happened. Over the ensuing decades, Cal and Margaret’s secrets haunt their families since nothing can stay secret forever in a small Ohio town.

Publication Date: 2 September 2025
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Alice Law has sacrificed everything to become one of the best in the fields of Magick and to study under Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge. When the professor dies in a magical accident, Alice decides even Hell won’t stop her from her goal. Even though she doesn’t like the man, she needs his academic recommendation. So she sets off to recover him from Hell only Peter Murdoch, her academic rival, as come to the same conclusion and sets off with her.

Publication Date: 26 August 2025
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Decades ago, Claire’s older sister Natalie disappeared and a man was quickly arrested and convicted. Now a investigative journalist, Claire returns home and takes a job at the South Carolina vineyard where her sister used to work. When Claire stumbles on an old journal of one of the owner’s, she is engrossed but a tale of youthful rebellion and love. As the journal starts to reveal details of unsolved crimes, Claire finds herself obsessed and can’t stop thinking it all connects back to her missing sister.

Publication Date: 26 August 2025
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In the last days of the Civil War, cruel master Mr. Harper separated enslaved siblings Coleman and June and took June with him to Mexico where he could keep her his slave. When Coleman receives a letter from Mr. Harper, he thinks his sister’s freedom is finally at hand. But disaster forces Coleman and Mr. Harper’s daughter to flee into the Mexican desert searching for June while being pursued by two desperate men intend on capturing them.

Publication Date: 2 September 2025
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Elin Hilderbrand teams up with her daughter Shelby to pen a tale of a drama-filled year at a New England boarding school. Tiffin has been ranked one of the top boarding schools in the country but a new campus app starts revealing the secrets of its students and faculty. The queen bee, a history teacher, a transfer student and even the Admissions Director are all caught up in its web.

Publication Date: 16 September 2025
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After the pandemic, rival editors Rebecca Blume and Ben Heath are forced to share the same desk on alternating days. When a revered literary legend dies, Rebecca and Ben must decide how far they are willing to go to win his estate. Until Rebecca discovers a connection between her mother and the author, a story of her mother’s friendship in Manhattan decades earlier that changed her life forever.

Publication Date: 2 September 2025
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Struggling author Lane Warren has finally secured a book deal based on the life of her friend/rival Gala Margolis who is now missing. Ten years ago, Gala and Lane met amid the 1960s L.A. party scene. The writers were drawn to each other. But as Gala’s writing started garnering acclaim, Lane’s jealousy led her to an act that would change both of their lives.

Publication Date: 5 August 2025
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Known for her celebrity book club, Reese Witherspoon tries her hand at a thriller with acclaimed author Harlan Coben. A highly skilled combat surgeon, Maggie McCabe loses her license after a heartbreaking series of events. When a plastic surgeon with elite clientele who want to demand utmost privacy offers her a job, Maggie is excited to work again. But when her patient disappears, Maggie finds herself accused of murder.

Publication Date: 14 October 2025
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The daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont, Jet Mason has lived a normal, boring life. When she is attacked on Halloween, Jet receives a head injury that doctors say will kill her in the next week. That gives Jet seven days to solve her own murder and she can’t help but look at everyone – her parents, her best friend turned sister-in-law and her ex-boyfriend – in a new light.

Publication Date: 22 July 2025
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Beckett Bowery never expected to return to Wyatt Valley, the beautiful mountain town where her parents are professors at a small college. Decades earlier, Beckett’s college best friend disappeared after setting a fire that killed two locals and everyone thought Beckett knew more than she let on. When Beckett’s daughter Delilah decides to go to the same college, Beckett is on edge, knowing the town’s memory lasts a very long time.

Publication Date: 29 July 2025
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Karin Slaughter debuts a new series set in North Falls, a small town where everyone knows each other. On a night of fireworks, two teenage girls disappear. Officer Emmy Clifton feels guilty that when her best friend’s daughter asked for help, she turned her away and now she’s missing. As Emmy dives into the teenagers’ lives, she realizes there are more secrets in the town than she could ever have guessed.

Publication Date: 12 August 2025
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In rural Virginia, Simon Latch is making just enough as a local lawyer while his marriage slowly falls apart. When elderly widow Eleanor Barnett walks in, Simon is excited to secure his richest client ever. Eleanor needs a new will and her recently deceased husband left her fortune that no one knows about. After Eleanor is hospitalized in a car accident, Simon finds himself accused of murder in John Grisham’s first whodunit.

Publication Date: 21 October 2025
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Beth and Frank live a happy life on a farm until their world takes a turn when Frank’s brother shoots a dog going after the sheep. Turns out the dog belongs to Beth’s teenage love, Gabriel Wolfe. Suddenly Beth is brought back in Gabriel’s life whose young son reminds Beth of her own who tragically died. As tensions, rumors, and jealousies mount, Beth must choose between who she was and who she wants to be.

Publication Date: 4 March 2025
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Raised by a single mother in Maine, Mia and Cricket Lowe have always been close. While Mia has become the academically minded caretaker, Cricket has thrown herself into become a soccer superstar. As the two sisters grow, they must grapple with their mother’s past and how to balance loyalty to each other with their own wishes and desires as they make impossible choices to pursue their dreams.

Publication Date: 1 July 2025
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Taylor Jenkins Reid is always a book club favorite so of course she belongs on my list of top book club books in 2025. In the 1980s, Joan Goodwin loves her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. Until she sees an ad for the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Suddenly, Joan finds herself training to be an astronaut with a colorful cast of characters that teach her about the transformative power of love.

Publication Date: 3 June 2025
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Katarina Shaw always knew she was destined to be an Olympic ice skater even if she didn’t have the support or pedigree it usually requires. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid in foster care, Katarina finds the perfect partner to make her dreams – and desires – come true. Ten years after a shocking event ends their Olympic careers and relationship, an unauthorized documentary forces Katarina to break her silence about what happened in this sports romance inspired by Wuthering Heights.

Publication Date: 14 January 2025
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Soon after her son’s birth, Cora and her young daughter Maia set out to officially register the baby’s birth. Gordon expects that Cora will name the baby after him like generations of his family have done. Yet, Cora is tempted to name the baby Julian and Maia wants to name her brother Bear. The Names is a thoughtful story that showcases how each potential name – and the abusive father’s reaction to each name – changes the family’s trajectory.

Publication Date: 6 May 2025
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When their autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, the Cassidy-Shaw family suddenly finds themselves in the center of a series of moral dilemmas about the use of AI. Lorelei is a world leader in artificial intelligence but she was at home while her seventeen year old Charlie was driving with his father Noah in the passenger seat and his tween sisters Alice and Izzy in the back. As the police investigate, each family member holds their own secrets as to their culpability for the accident while Lorelei’s boss seems much too interested in the entire matter.

Publication Date: 8 July 2025
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Most students believe the Professor’s lessons on Local Legends and Urban Myths but Holland St. James believes in magic. When she tracks down local legend The Watchman, he tells Holland she will die at midnight if she doesn’t find an ancient magical object, the Alchemical Heart. As Holland searches the magical world of L.A., she feels drawn to a magical stranger. But everyone in this magical world seems to be lying to her and he might not be any different.

Publication Date: 7 October 2025
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In a sequel to Bride, Serena Paris is an orphaned pack-less Human-Were hybrid who hoped she would be able to heal the rift between humans, vampires, and werewolves. Instead she has found herself a target of both. To stay alive, Serena must become the mate of Koen Alexander, the fierce Alpha of the Northwest pack. But even Koen might not be able to protect her if her past catches up to her.

Publication Date: 7 October 2025
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From a long line of witches, Mallory Fontaine’s only has the magical ability to see ghosts. With her sister, Mallory sells bogus spells to gullible buyers and gives tours about the bloody history of the Saphir mansion. When Mallory meets the heir of the Saphir estate, he offers her a vast sum of money to rid the mansion of ghosts. What seems like an easy scam becomes much more treacherous when people begin dying again at the mansion.

Publication Date: 4 November 2025
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In Purgatory, Blackwood Academy exists on the edge of the afterlife. Once you enter, the only way to escape is the Decennial, a cutthroat magical competition with only one winner. This year, six of the Academy’s top students will compete as ambition, love, obsession and hate might make them succumb to fates worse than death in this dark academia young adult novel.

Publication Date: 29 July 2025
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Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, was surprised by her intense reaction to her mother’s death. Mary Roy was a force of nature that Arundhati has ran from at age eighteen. In her first memoir, Roy details her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school and shaped the author in the woman she is today.

Publication Date: 2 September 2025
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Cynthia Erivo arose to global acclaim in the role of Elphaba in the movie musical Wicked. In her new memoir, Erivo writes to anyone who has felt like the world thinks they are “too much.” In a series of personal vignettes, Erivo ponders the way that physical and mental challenges in her life have pushed her to become more than she thought she was capable of.

Publication Date: 18 November 2025
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Codenamed Pioneer, Kamala Harris was the first woman to be the Vice President of the United States. After a disastrous debate against Donald Trump, President Joe Biden shocked the nation by announcing that he would no longer seek reelection. In a new memoir, Kamala Harris shares her story of the 107 days she had to put together a presidential bid.

Publication Date: 23 September 2025
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After the success of his bestselling memoir Greenlights, actor Matthew McConaughey returns with a collection of personal poetry and prayers. McConaughey likes to wax philosophical and Poems & Prayers shares his thoughts on life and the pursuit of belief.

Publication Date: 16 September 2025
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Once romanticized as the disease of poets, tuberculosis still rages in the world today, mostly in poverty-stricken populations. In 2019, bestselling author John Green struck up a friendship with Henry Reider, a tuberculosis patient in Sierra Leone. Since then, Green has become a major advocate for spreading awareness of this curable, preventable disease that still kills over a million people every year.

Publication Date: 18 March 2025
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