As the new year is set to roll around, our team have already got their sights set on a bumper year of awesome releases! The beginning of the year has our readers frothing over occult and ghostly horrors, journeys of self-discovery, tormented artists, time travelling detectives, and even a moon made of cheese.
Witchcraft and witches feature commonly in this upcoming list in a slew of different guises and examinations, while dark explorations of the human psyches are also common. But there’s some fun and comedy along the way too.
Buckle up for a bumper beginning to 2025.
January
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Gollancz (Hachette) | Pub Date: 14 January | Preorder HERE
Simon: Multi-award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor returns with a brand new science fiction and fantasy novel – and this time it’s all a bit meta. Death of the Author follows the Zelu, a disabled Nigerian American, and budding science fiction author. She’s been fired from her university job, her latest novel has been rejected, and she’s pretty much had her life turned upside down all within the space of her sister’s wedding. That night she decides to take a risk and write a novel that’s unlike any of her past work – she decides to write a science fiction novel about androids and AI and the extinction of humanity. Success follows, but soon the lines between fact and fiction begin to blur (because of course, they do!).
Okorafor is an author I’ve always wanted to read more of and January 2025 is going to be the month to do it. I enjoyed Okorafor’s Binti series and the way in which she weaves her culture into the science fiction and fantasy genres. Okorafor is a strong proponent of africanfuturism and africanjujuism; and it sounds like Death of the Author will likely fall into that realm too. It promises to be a story of family, culture and identity – just with added androids and sentient AI – what’s not to love?
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Pan Macmillan Australia | Pub Date: 14 January | Preorder HERE
Annie: I’m always a sucker for horror, especially of the atmospheric and weird sort, and Grady Hendrix‘s books never fail to satisfy me in that particular department, making this one a to-read for me. While his last novel, How to Sell a Haunted House, wasn’t without its flaws it was a great time and an interesting story, and there’s a good reason his earlier novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires was so popular.
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, an occult horror story set in an institution to ‘help’ unwed mothers, promises to be just as deliciously dark as his previous novels, and if the official blurb is anything to go by, it’s with the good helping of social commentary and criticism I’ve come to expect from his books. If it’s as good as his previous work – which I’m sure it will be – there will be plenty of reasons to look forward to this upcoming novel.
The Cicada House by Ella Ward
HarperCollins | Pub Date: 1 January | Order HERE
Emily: “When Caitlin inherits a significant sum of money on her fortieth birthday, she decides to break the habits of a lifetime and throw caution to the winds. She’s about to tell her husband Paul that they’re leaving London on a once-in-a-lifetime journey to Eat Pray Love their way around the world, only … she doesn’t tell Paul that, because before the candles are lit, he tells her that he’s very much in love with someone else. After a drunken night trying to console herself, Caitlin books tickets to Australia – anything to get as far away as possible.
What does the world feel like when it’s ending for you, and no-one else? What does life feel like when you are running away from it? This is a story that begins in a way you expect, and ends very far from there. It is a story of creaking English hallways and vast Australian skies. Of hands that feel like warm sandpaper. Cicadas that sing so loudly they drown out the grief. Of white wine and an old piano and children who want their parents back from the dead. It is a magical tale of travel and mystery. And a very human tale of sex and loss and seawater and the primal joy of coming home. This is The Cicada House.”
This book has been calling to me ever since I saw someone post about reading their advanced reading copy at the beginning of November. It’s described as a Dolly Alderton novel meets a Richard Curtis movie meets Seachange meets The Time Traveller’s Wife. In 2024 I was really embracing genre fiction, and in particular, fiction that combines the best part of a few genres. This book seems to be doing just that and I’m excited to dive into it.
Tartufo by Kira Jane Buxton
Hachette | Pub Date: 28 January | Preorder HERE
Jemimah: A literary fiction work about a dying Italian village filled with a cast of colourful characters, and a giant truffle that may just be the miracle – or the curse – that will change everything.
I don’t tend to pick up literary fiction, spec fic being more my jam, but this looks to be a funny and heartwarming story about a community and how they fare in both hardship and times of plenty, and that is something I am very interested in reading about!
Motheater by Linda H. Codega
Kensington/Penguin | Pub Date: 21 January | Preorder HERE
Jodie: When her best friend dies in a coal mine, Bennie Mattox sets out to uncover exactly what it is that’s killing miners on Kire Mountain. Instead she finds a woman who calls herself Motheater, half drowned in a dirty mine slough. Mothereater says she’s a witch of Appalachia, and her doomed quest to keep industry off of Kire Mountain has brought her here, nearly a century and a half into the future.
Bennie takes her in – it’s the right thing to do, after all. But what secrets might this curious stranger reveal about what’s happening up on Kire Mountain? And how will this battle of industry and nature play out amidst the Appalachian Mountains?
Let’s be honest – you had me at Appalachian witch.
North is the Night: The Tuonela Duet Book 1 by Emily Rath
Hachette Australia | Pub Date: 14 January | Preorder HERE
Jess: In the harsh interior of the Finnish wilderness, Aina is kidnapped by a death goddess and taken to the mythical underworld of Tuonela. Determined to save her friend, Siiri embarks on a dangerous journey to seek out Vainamoinen, the only mystical shaman to travel to Tuonela and return alive. The journey itself is filled with trials and tribulations, but it’s only the beginning.
Once she gets to Vainamoinen, she still needs to convince him to share his magic so she can sneak into Tuonela and save Aina. Meanwhile Aina is forced to play the sadistic games of the cruel queen of the underworld alongside other captured maidens. When she meets the god of death, the king of Tuonela, she is presented with an opportunity to save both him and the other girls, by becoming his bride. Unaware that Siiri is on her way and plotting a daring escape, Aina must make a decision that could alter the course of her fate forever.
This book sounds like it will be a dark, daring, adventurous and romantic tale and I am one hundred percent here for it. A story of both female friendship as well as individual personal growth, it’s going to be a great start to the year!
February
The Night of the Scourge by Lars Matting (Trans. Deborah Dawkin)
MacLehose Press | Pub Date: 11 February | Preorder HERE
Simon: The Night of the Scourge is one of my most anticipated books of 2025 – not just the first quarter. The novel is the final book in Lars Mytting‘s The Sister Bells trilogy of books. For the uninitiated the trilogy follows the residents of Butangen in Norway – with a particular focus on the Hekne family – across the 19th and 20th centuries. When we last visited the village of Butangen it was the 1920s – and they were just recovering from the Spanish Flu and the aftermath of the First World War. In The Night of the Scourge, we move through into the 1930s and all that comes with it – Nazi’s, occupation, resistance and rebuilding.
I am a big fan of this trilogy, I love the way it explores daily life in rural Norway, and the way in which everyday people get caught up and buffeted by the great events of history. It’s also a beautiful story of family (across the generations) and of myth making and community. According to the press release The Night of the Scourge can be read as a standalone novel – but I really do recommend reading the previous two books and let yourself be immersed in a different world.
The Crimson Road by Angela Slatter
NewSouth Books | Pub Date: 11 February | Preorder HERE
Jemimah: Previous readers of my reviews will know that I absolutely love A.G. Slatter‘s works, particularly those set in her Sourdough universe. This latest installment is about a young woman trained in underground fighting arenas, who suddenly finds herself fatherless and thus a rich young heiress with a world of possibilities in front of her.
Until it becomes clear that she was trained to fight for a particular purpose, a purpose that she must fulfill if she hopes to live long enough to enjoy her freedom. So begins a journey in which she seeks the help of three other young women – young women whose stories have been told in Slatter’s previous Sourdough stories: All The Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns and The Briar Book of the Dead.
I am literally buzzing with excitement to read this book, as it ties together Slatter’s novels from the last several years, all of which I have read and loved.
Voice Like a Hyacinth by Mallory Pearson
47North | Pub Date: 1 February | Preorder HERE
Jodie: Art students Jo, Caroline, Amrita, Finch, and Saz are more than best friends. They’re each other’s muses, with their own language and devotion to their crafts. And they’ll do anything to keep their inspiration alive. Even dabbling in the occult.
After an attempt to unlock their creativity goes awry, Jo feels haunted by something dark and dangerous. Her art is changing, and so is everyone else’s. There’s growing tension in the classroom and in their relationships. Gradually, their world begins to crumble, and the five friends will go to any lengths to right the wrong they’ve done.
Voice Like A Hyacinth feels like dark academia meets The Craft, and I’m here for it.
The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths
Hachette Australia | Pub Date: 11 February | Preorder HERE
Jess: A lot of time travel books involve governments using time travel to change the course of events that lead to war and famine or to take control of situations that will put them in places of power, so the premise for this book immediately caught me for its slightly unusual use of time travel as a plot device to help an individual MP clear his family name.
Ali Dawson is a police officer working on cold cases where the team travel back in time to complete their research. So far they’ve only travelled back a few years, but for her latest case Ali is sent all the way back to 1850 to clear the name of an eccentric great-grandfather of a Tory MP. Cain Templeman was part of a sinister group in the Victorian Era called The Collectors, the rumour being that you had to kill a woman to become a member. Now back in the London of 1850, she finds herself in a house used by artists with dead women at her feet.
This time travelling crime thriller sounds right up my alley.
The Sirens by Emilia Hart
HarperCollins | Pub Date: 29 January | Preorder HERE
Emily: ‘Lucy is running from what she’s done: the terror of waking with her hands around her ex-lover’s throat, his face turning purple and eyes bulging. Pursued by nightmares – and with nowhere else to go – she makes for her big sister’s clifftop home. But when she arrives, Jess is nowhere to be found. The town is strange and full of rumours: a dozen men disappeared, without a trace. Women’s voices murmuring on the waves. A foundling discovered in a sea-swept cave. As Lucy searches for Jess, her dreams seem to draw closer. She can see two sisters in a murky past. She can see a world where men always seem to get their way. And something in her body wants to fight back. Could the answer to who she is – and what’s happening to her – lie in this quiet, sea-soaked town? Could it lie two hundred years deep in the past?’
I was probably the last person to read Weyward but when I finally did, I read it in a single afternoon. A seamless marriage of women’s contemporary fiction with two historical timelines, an examination of witchcraft and the othering of women, and a compassionate exploration of violence and coercive control, Weyward managed to be both compulsively readable and the bearer of an important message. Hart’s sophomore novel, The Sirens, seems to have echoes of Holly Ringland in its blurb, and I am looking forward to Hart turning her pen to seafaring history and the mythology of the siren.
March
Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh
Titan Books | Pub Date: 1 March | Preorder HERE
Jess: A horror tale of posession, malevolent ghosts, family tensions, secrets and murder set in Nigeria and written by a Bram Stoker Award-winning author – yes please!!!
Bata, an 11-year-old girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin’s door. Her cousin is to get married the next morning, but only if she can escape the murderous attack of the ghost-bride, who used to be engaged to her groom.
A supernatural possession helps Bata battle and vanquish the vengeful ghost bride, and following a botched exorcism, she is transported to Ibaja-La, the realm of dead bodies. There she receives secret powers to fight malevolent ghost brides before being sent back to the human realm where she must learn to harness her new abilities and protect those she loves.
The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall by J. Ann Thomas
Penguin/Crooked Lane Books | Pub Date: 18 March | Preorder HERE
Jodie: Fifteen restless spirits roam the corridors of Thorne Hall, and it’s Elegy Thorne’s job to keep them in line. But when a mischevious child spirit begins to wreak havoc on the manor, Elegy can’t undo the damage done by herself. The family’s preservationist is called in, but he doesn’t come alone – his son Atticus joins him, and Elegy is captivated.
Torn between her heart and her duty to her family legacy, Elegy desperately searches for a way to release the spirit collection to the afterlife – freeing both the ghosts and herself.
A gothic ghost story with romance and a hint of folklore? Sign me up.
By Her Hand by Marion Taffe
HarperCollins | Pub Date: 5 March | Preorder HERE
Emily: ‘Peak District, Mercia, AD 910: a young girl, Freda works hard to avoid her father’s temper, while longing for his approval. She loves foraging in the woods and hearthside stories of heroes. Secretly she thinks in poetry and dreams of one day being able to write; her quills are grass stalks and sticks, her parchment the sky, the earth, her skin. But Freda’s world is at war, and when her village is decimated in a savage raid and her father goes missing, Freda must find the strength to survive.
Taken in by the church, her only options are a life of servitude or prayer. But the cunning bishop sees an opportunity. As well as teaching Freda to write, he uses her survival as evidence of a miracle so as to attract pilgrims who bring wealth. As Freda chafes against the bishop’s increasing control, she develops a friendship with the Mercian leader Ethelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who shows her what it is to lead as a woman in a world that worships warrior kings. Soon Freda must choose. Does she remain the powerless, subservient quill whose fate lies in the hands of another, or does she fight for the right to create – and write – her own story?’
Marion Taffe’s debut novel looks at a totally different period of history, way earlier than most popular novels in the genre. I’m excited to explore a new time period, and to learn more about what life was like at a time I know absolutely nothing about. The concept of women’s oppression, and the manifestation of female autonomy in different and surprising and often subversive ways is something that tempts me back to historical fiction again and again, and I’m also fascinated by what the research process must have been like for books set so long ago.
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
Tor Books | Pub Date: 25 March | Preorder HERE
Annie: This is a novel about the moon suddenly being replaced by a moon-sized wheel of cheese, and how the world deals with that fact, following multiple points of view as different people deal with the change in different ways.
It’s very hard for me not to be delighted at this premise. This is especially the case when it’s coming from John Scalzi, whose previous sci-fi/comedy novels Starter Villain and The Kaiju Preservation Society were similarly ridiculous and an utter hoot, with a good dose of heart as well. I cannot wait to get my hands on this one – I just know it’s going to be a great time.
The Winter Goddess by Megan Barnard
Penguin Random House | Pub Date: 11 March | Preorder HERE
Jemimah: This story is a reimagining of Gaelic mythology, in which the goddess of winter is cursed to live and die as a mortal until she learns the value of human life.
I love mythology, and I’m so excited to read a story based on Gaelic myths!
Orpheus Nine by Chris Flynn
Hachette Australia | Pub Date: 26th March | Preorder HERE
Simon: I see Chris Flynn I hit the pre-order button. It’s as simple as that. Flynn has quickly become one of my favourite Australian writers. I will rave about Mammoth to anyone who will let me; and loved the creativity and playfulness of his most recent short story collection Here Be Leviathans. Now Flynn has turned his attention a bit closer to home with Orpheus Nine – a supernatural thriller about a mysterious global event, set in an Australian rural town.
It has all the hallmarks of a classic science fiction horror – global disruption, conspiracy theories, riots, violence and chaos. As the press release chillingly states: “One hundred and thirty million died that first day. Every day since, on the morning of a child’s ninth birthday, it happens again. No one knows why.” Add in a somewhat creepy, pulp fiction cover, and the promise of a small- town Australian setting, you’ve got me hooked. After all there’s nothing quite like a world changing apocalyptic event to put you off your sausage sizzle at the footy.
Thanks to Jemimah Brewster, Simon Clark, Emily Paull, Annie Mills, and Jodie Sloan for their contributions to this article.
