The beginning of a new year can be overwhelming for readers. Trying to stay up with all the new releases is something of an impossible task, so it’s all the more important to start your to-read list early.
Of course, every year comes with plenty of literary delights that will sneak up on you. Our advice is always to read widely and without judgement, and to always allow yourself to be surprised by a story. But if you want to get a head start on your 2025 preorders, we’re here to help! Here are 20 books we’re looking forward to this year.
Dream Count
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf Publishing Group
March 04, 2025
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of my all-time favorite living writers, so I can’t wait to check out her forthcoming novel, Dream Count. I saw promo calling it “a publishing event ten years in the making,” and a Ngozi Adichie novel really does feel like an event.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
I learned about this book while I was in a coffee shop and gasped so loudly, I drew concerned glances from people around me. It’s been 10 years since Adichie’s last novel Americanah, which is one of my favorite books ever. This is, for my money, THE publishing event of 2025
— Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
Sour Cherry
By Natalia Theodoridou
Tin House Books
April 01, 2025
Sour Cherry is a modern fable masterpiece, twisting the folktale of Bluebeard to tell the story of the lingering traumas of toxic masculinity and violence have on the world around us. I think this is a book best experienced with little explanation, but I will say this: Natalia Theodoridou perfectly captures the darkness of his topic while also breaking apart and rebuilding the very idea of storytelling in the most fascinating ways.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Katabasis
By R.F. Kuang
Harper Voyager
August 26, 2025
RF Kuang made me cry and left me speechless in her last 5 books, so I’m super looking forward to Katabasis in August, which looks like it’ll be dark academia meets Dante’s Inferno. Weird but I’m ready!
— Reema Saleh, Daily Editor
The Gloomy Girl Variety Show: A Memoir
By Freda Epum
Feminist Press
January 14, 2025
I know it’s early to call it, but I’m certain Freda Epum’s debut The Gloomy Girl Variety Show will be one of the most important books published this year. Epum examines intersectional identities of being Black, disabled, female, and a first generation Nigerian American through an inventive and brilliant book structured as a search for the safety one can find in home.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
The Antidote
By Karen Russell
Knopf Publishing Group
March 11, 2025
Karen Russell’s ability to bend realism and the otherworldly is undeniable, and The Antidote may be her greatest accomplishment yet. In her long-awaited return to the novel since Swamplandia!, Russell crafts a comprehensive portrait of the Dust Bowl and its devastation on the environment while also weaving in a witch who can store and collect other people’s memories like a bank, a sentient scarecrow, and a photographer who can capture images of the past and possible future. The Antidote is everything you love from a Karen Russell project and more.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Leave: A Postpartum Account
By Shayne Terry
autofocus
February 25, 2025
Shayne Terry’s Leave: A Postpartum Account is an important, stunning book that explores complications of healing from a significant birth injury amid a broken health care system and intergenerational trauma, while also examining the link between birth and death.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Primordial
By Mai Der Vang
Graywolf Press
March 04, 2025
Arriving four years after her much-lauded Yellow Rain, Mai Der Vang’s Primordial (Graywolf, March 2025) is a visually expansive and linguistically captivating collection. Among its various poetic refrains is an examination of the long-term impact of violence on the Hmong people of Vietnam as well as the environmental consequences for the saola, an extremely endangered mammal of the region. Vang’s exquisitely layered contemplations of existence, extinction, location, memory and identity can’t be distilled to one paragraph, nor will one be satisfied by a single reading of this highly anticipated collection.
— Mandana Chaffa, Editor-At-Large
Sunrise on the Reaping
By Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press
March 18, 2025
When Suzanne Collin published her first Hunger Games prequel four years ago, I dismissed it as a simple cash grab. But how foolish I was because it was weirder and more philosophical than the trilogy I read in high school but still nail-bitingly serious. I’m not making that mistake again for Sunrise on the Reaping and appreciating she only puts out a book when she actually has something to say.
— Reema Saleh, Daily Editor
A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature
By Adam Morgan
Atria/One Signal Publishers
September 30, 2025
Our founder’s book is coming out! Here at the CHIRB we’re all excited to dig into Adam Morgan’s A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls. The book is about Margaret C. Anderson, book bans, and an early twentieth century woman-led publication that advocated for women’s suffrage, birth control, and LGBTQ rights.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Waterline
By Aram Mrjoian
Harpervia
June 03, 2025
This is a big year for past Chicago Review of Books team members! Waterline follows the Kurkjian family, who receive news that Mari, the eldest of their youngest generation, has swum into the depths of Lake Michigan with no intent of returning to shore. From there, Aram Mrjoian takes us through time to explore the family’s lineage and their journey for survival through the Armenian Genocide. An epic novel in every sense, Waterline is a necessary look at Armenian life that could only have been written by an author as empathetic and reflective as Aram Mrjoian.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
No Offense: A Memoir in Essays
By Jackie Domenus
ELJ Editions
February 21, 2025
No Offense by Jackie Domenus is another important forthcoming book from a micro-press. Dealing with their coming out in 2014, this memoir-in-essays blends personal experience and cultural critique to examine moments and comments people might not realize are transphobic and homophobic.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
The El
By Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Vintage
August 12, 2025
A Chicago novel inspired by the cult classic The Warriors? Sign me up! The El follows a group of teenage gang members as they trek across the city for a momentous meeting. I love Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.’s work, so I’m thrilled to see him deliver his Chicago classic in 2025.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Savings Time: Poems
By Roya Marsh
MCD
February 04, 2025
I loved Roya Marsh’s 2020 poetry collection dayliGht, so was quick to say yes to the chance to check out the forthcoming Savings Time. These searing poems wrestle with Black Joy, collective action, and healing.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Bear County, Michigan
By John Counts
Triquarterly Books
February 15, 2025
The short story collection I’m most anticipating is Bear County, Michigan by John Counts. The stories are set in a fictional Great Lakes coastal town in northern Michigan with a cast of characters “from addicts to backwoods misfits to ruined lumber families, all bound together by their desire to obtain something just out of reach.”
— Rachel León, Managing Director
The Dream Hotel
By Laila Lalami
Pantheon Books
March 04, 2025
Lalami’s follow up to her AMAZING novel The Other Americans is a dystopian story in a future America where dreams are under surveillance. This has “literary version of Minority Report” vibes and feels terrifyingly timely to our current authoritarian moment.
— Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
Reading the Waves: A Memoir
By Lidia Yuknavitch
Riverhead Books
February 04, 2025
2025 brings us a new memoir from acclaimed novelist Lidia Yuknavitch. Reading the Waves dives deep into Yuknavitch’s history with violence and trauma to deliver a resonate message of storytelling’s power to reframe our memories and shape our future. Perfect for readers and writers alike, this memoir is a testament to our ability to learn and heal through the stories we choose to tell.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
If the Dead Belong Here
By Carson Faust
Viking
September 02, 2025
I adore Carson Faust’s writing (which you can check out in the anthology Never Whistle at Night) and can’t wait for his debut novel, If the Dead Belong Here. I was sold by the publisher’s description: “When a young girl goes missing, the ghosts of the past collide with her family’s secrets in a mesmerizing Native American Southern Gothic.”
— Rachel León, Managing Director
The Set Up
By Jon Wynn
Belt Publishing
May 20, 2025
The Set Up is an old-school crime noir in the best way, a captivating ride from start to finish. Following a series of struggling characters connected through their association in a shady guerrilla-marketing outfit known as The Set Up, Jon Wynn’s novel takes readers on a windy trip through the Strip to the strip-mall suburbs with plenty of shocks and twists to follow. We deserve more competent literary thrillers, and The Set Up more than delivers with a undeniable plot and sharp writing.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Songs of No Provenance
By Lydi Conklin
Catapult
June 03, 2025
I loved Lydi Conklin’s Rainbow Rainbow and I’m excited about their forthcoming novel, Songs of No Provenance about an indie folk singer that deals with queer baiting and appropriation, kink, intimacy, and art. I can’t wait to get my hands on this one.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Their End is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition
By brian bean
Illustrated by Charlie Aleck
Haymarket Books
July 1, 2025
How do we begin to push for a world in which the intricately tied institutions of capitalism and policing no longer exist? Written by Chicago activist brian bean and beautifully illustrated by Chicago artist Charlie Aleck, Their End is Our Beginning is an important study that draws upon the history of global capitalism and colonialism and interviews from activists already doing the work around the world. I’m always looking for nonfiction books that provide both insight and tangible steps to create change, and Their End is Our Beginning delivers both.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
