Here are my most anticipated books of 2025

25 new science fiction, fantasy, and horror books that I'm looking forward to the most this year

Graphic: Andrew Liptak

We talk a lot about books here at Transfer Orbit, and this year, I've already been plotting out the next several months of book lists for you. Each year brings a ton of new books, and looking over the lists that I compiled for 2024, I included a total of 316 books.

That's a lot! And while I select books based on what look interesting to me (and sometimes include more than just science fiction, fantasy, and horror books), there's always a smaller pile that I'm the most excited for, and accordingly, I'll round those up at the beginning of the year. (Here are my lists from 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024)

Looking back over those lists, there are a bunch that I did get to and did really enjoy, as well as a handful that looked excellent, but which I ultimately didn't like or finish. And there are plenty of others that I still haven't found the time to pick up that are still on my longer to-read list. Someday! Sometimes, I just need to be in the right mindset to get into a book.

I write up this list and the others as a way to encourage people to look ahead to the coming year, and to think about what you're looking forward to. It's exciting to think about these reads coming up and the worlds that they'll introduce us to. I'd also encourage you to preorder those titles that you're excited for: preorders really help on the publishing side, because it provides them some indications of demand and excitement, and that always helps the author.

Here are 25 new SF/F books hitting stores in the coming year that I'm most excited to check out.

January

Motheater by Linda H. Codega (January 21st)

In this debut novel from Linda H. Codega (formerly of io9), we're introduced to Bennie Mattox, who decides to throw everything aside to try and discover why miners working on Kire Mountain have been dying. While investigating, she discovers a half-drowned white woman and takes her in. The woman tells her she's called Motheater and can't remember her real name or how she got there. She's a witch, bound to the land, and has vowed to preserve the mountain. The unlikely pair now have the opportunity to change the town forever.

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (January 14th)

With books like Binti and Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor has become one of those "must read" authors for me whenever I see that she's got a new book coming out. Her next looks like it's going to be an incredible read: it follows a woman named Zelu who finds her life turned upside down: she learns she's been fired in the middle of her sister's wedding, and her latest novel has been rejected from a publisher. She decides to write something completely different: a science fiction novel about a war between androids and AIs on a devastated Earth, Rusted Robots. When she finishes and publishes the book, it goes on to become a major bestseller, bringing her fame and attention that she never anticipated.

I love these sorts of meta, books-about-stories like Gabriella Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow or Austin Grossman's You, so this looks like it'll hit that sweet spot nicely.

February

The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories edited by André M. Carrington (February 4th)

When word of this book dropped last year, I was immediately intrigued: a new anthology of Afrofuturist stories, edited by André M. Carrington, who's an Associate Professor of English at UC Riverside, and the author of Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction. It looks like it'll be packed with an outstanding Table of Contents, with stories from Nalo Hopkinson, P. Djéli Clark, N. K. Jemisin, Justina Ireland, Tochi Onyebuchi, Victor LaValle, Sofia Samatar, and many others.

The Desert Talon and A Covenant of Ice by Karin Lowachee (February 11th/June 17th)

I read Karin Lowachee's latest book The Mountain Crown shortly after it came out and really enjoyed it: it's an engrossing story of colonization and tradition clashing against modernity. I'm eager to see where Lowachee takes the story. She'll round out the trilogy with The Desert Talon in February and A Covenant of Ice in June.

Star Wars: The Mask of Fear Alexander Freed (February 25th)

I've largely fallen out of the habit of reading the latest Star Wars novel when they comes out, but this one looks like it'll break that streak. The first of a trilogy set during the early years of the Galactic Empire, this installment follows Mon Mothma as she navigates the halls of power in this oppressive new regime. She finds allies in the form of revolutionary Saw Gerrera and Senator Bail Organa, working out how to move forward to build a movement that could one day topple Emperor Palpatine and his forces.

March

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (March 4th)

Amal El-Mohtar's debut novel brings us to the town of Thistleford, which sits on the edge of Faerie. It's the home to a mysterious family who tends to and harvests enchanted trees, and they're bound by an ancient pact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. Two of the family's daughters, Esther and Ysabel, are the most devoted, and when Esther rejects a suiter from Faerie, it'll test the bond between both of their sisters and will put both of their lives at risk.

The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal (March 18th)

Some of my favorite near-future science fiction stories have been from Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronaut series: The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky, and The Relentless Moon. She's bringing the series to a close this year with The Martian Contingency, in which humanity is working to establish permanent colonies on the Moon and Mars.

When Elma York heads out to Mars to aid with the construction of the planet's first colony, she realizes that something's a bit off: something has been hidden about the nature of the first expedition, and when they try and find details, they're stonewalled. Left unexposed, those secrets could have a devastating impact on the future of humanity.

As a fun bonus, Kowal is releasing Silent Spaces, a collection of her Lady Astronaut stories in July after successfully funding it via Kickstarter

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (March 18th)

Stephen Graham Jones has been steadily knocking books out of the park, such as The Only Good Indian and My Heart is a Chainsaw. His next is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, a historical horror novel set in 1912, following a Lutheran priest who took down the story of Good Stab, a Blackfeet man who haunted a reservation looking for revenge.

Transmentation Transience: Or, an Accession to the People's Council for Nine Thousand Worlds by Darkly Lem (March 18th)

One of the projects that I've been fascinated by is Many Worlds, a collaborative writing group that includes Cadwell Turnbull. It inspired a neat anthology, Many Worlds: Or, the Simulacra, and members of the writing group have come together as "Darkly Lem" to produce a new novel: Transmentation Transience: Or, an Accession to the People's Council for Nine Thousand Worlds.

Over millennia and across thousands of worlds, societies of interdimensional travelers and explorers have worked to explore the cosmos. When a training mission goes wrong, two such societies are brought into conflict: intelligence officer Malculm Kilkeneade of the Burel Hird group is blamed for an assassination attempt, while the Roamers of Tala Beinir and Shara also find themselves swept up in it. Their involvement sets into motion plans that could ripple across the Many Worlds.

The Sea Eternal by Emery Robin (March 11th)

This book captured my attention from the cover alone: it's the sequel to 2022's The Stars Undying, about a princess who's lost everything after her twin sister claimed the throne and control of a system that contains the soul of their planet's god. She allies herself with the Empire of Ceiao and a dangerous commander named , Matheus Ceirran to try and retake the planet, which brings its own complications.

In this sequel, Ceirran is dead, and his captain Anita has been hunting down those responsible. When her quest for vengeance brings her across the borders into a neighboring empire, she discovers a secret that could upend the fragile balance within the galaxy.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi (March 25th)

I'm a big fan of John Scalzi's books, ranging from his more serious space operas like Old Man's War or The Collapsing Empire, to his funnier reads like Kaiju Preservation Society. This new one looks like it'll be a really interesting read: the moon turns into cheese and humanity has to figure out what to do. While it's a funny premise, what has my interest piqued is the fact that each chapter is something different: a series of shorter episodes that are loosely tied together into a bigger narrative. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Life Became Very Blurry: An Oral History of COVID-19 in Vermont edited by Garrett M. Graff (March)

This one's a little self-serving, because it's a project that I've been working on with my day job, but it's one that I'm eager to read. A couple of years ago, we stood up a big project to document the impact that COVID-19 had on the state of Vermont, collecting more than 100 oral histories from folks all over the state. As part of the project, we'll be releasing a book edited by Pulitzer finalist and Vermont author Garrett M. Graff, which will pull those oral histories into a narrative.

April

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (April 1st)

Robert Jackson Bennett kicked off a new trilogy in 2024 with The Tainted Cup, which has been high on my to-read list. I need to get to it soon: it's about the investigation into the death of an Imperial official by an eccentric investigator named Ana Dolabra at the edges of a fantastical empire.

In this follow-up, a treasury officer has seemingly disappeared from a locked and guarded room. Ana and her assistant Dinios Kol soon discover that they're dealing with a murder perpetrated by someone anticipating Ana's moves, and that they have plans to target a high-security facility that holds secrets vital to the Empire's survival.

Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler (April 1st)

With books like The Mountain in the Sea and Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler has become one of my favorite authors in recent years looking at what the near future has in store for us. His next book looks wild: under an oppressive Federation, there's an assassination attempt in the works to topple and replace the President, who's been holding onto power by downloading his mind into new bodies. At the same time in Western Europe, people have given over power to AI Prime Ministers, and one of these minds has begun malfunctioning, kicking off a chain of events that could spell trouble for the world.

June

The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear (June 17th)

I really dug Elizabeth Bear's space opera novel Ancestral Night when I read it back in 2019, and I'm looking forward to a new installment of the series (there's one that I missed, Machine, which I need to get to), The Folding Sky.

In this adventure, Dr. Sunya Song heads out on a journey across the Milkyway to reach an AI known as Baomind, which could hold the key to humanity's survival in a hostile universe. The intelligence is orbiting a dying red star, and it's up to her and her team to try and retrieve data from it before it's too late. As they head out, the research station and its ships are attacked by pirates who believe that the Baomind needs to be destroyed. This has everything I love: ancient technologies, pirates, space adventures, and historians saving the day.

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (June 10th)

S.A. Cosby blew me away with books like Blacktop Wasteland, Razorblade Tears, and All The Sinners Bleed and I'm really looking forward to his next, King of Ashes.

In this new crime thriller, Roman Carruthers is called home after his father is involved in a car accident, only to discover that his brother Dante is in debt to criminals and his sister barely holding everything together. He discovers that the crash was no accident and that Dante's troubles have brought their family into danger, and it's up to Roman to try and get his brother out of the deal. As he begins to figure out a way forward, those criminals soon realize that he's not the pushover they think he is, and that he'll do anything to protect his loved ones. If this is anything like his prior novels, Cosby has a real treat for us.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (June 10th)

V.E. Schwab has released a string of excellent fantasy novels recent years, such as A Darker Shade of Magic (and its sequels) and The Invisible Life of Addie Larue. Her next looks like a compelling (if somewhat cryptic) read, following three young women living in Santo Domingo de la Calzada in 1532, London in 1837, and Boston in 2019.

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (June 3rd)

Adrian Tchaikovsky has a new book about aliens and first contact, something that he's well-versed at by this point. An expedition arrives at a distant solar system, where it finds a moon humming with radio activity. It isn't habitable to humans: its gravity is too high and atmosphere is toxic for us, but it seems like a promising world for exploration. When an accident forces two members of the expedition's crew, Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne, down in an escape vehicle, they have to make their way across the hostile environment to escape, learning about the world's unnerving alien species as they do so.

July

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (July 15th)

Silvia Moreno-Garcia turns her attention to witches in her next novel, which follows Minerva, a graduate student studying the history of horror literature, and who's been researching the life of an obscure author named Beatrice Tremblay.

In the midst of her work, she discovers that Tremblay's best-known novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: the author's encounter with a strange and otherworldly roommate at the same university she's now studying at. As Minerva delves into the manuscript, she begins to sense the same presence haunting the school, and discovers that there might be a personal connection to her family.

August

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders (August 19th)

In this new fantasy from Charlie Jane Anders, Jamie seems like she's your usual New England academic: she's got her dissertation underway, is in a stable relationship, and is dealing with a bit of generational trauma. She's also a witch. Her mother Serena has been hiding from the world after the death of her wife and abrupt disintegration of her career.

Jamie has been trying to help, teaching her spells from a centuries-old spell book, and is trying to figure out what happened to her mother and how secrets from her past are coming back to haunt her before both of their lives are completely upended.

The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas (August 19th)

Isabel Cañas came to my attention a couple of years ago when she released Vampires of El Norte, an excellent horror / romance set during the Mexican-American war in the 1800s. Her next brings us to 1762 Mexico as a plague devastates the city of Zacatecas. Alba flees with her parents and fiancé to her family's mine to wait it out, but once there, she begins experiencing hallucinations, convulsions, and sleepwalking: she's possessed by something uncanny.

At the same time, her fiancé's cousin Elías has escaped to the New World ahead of a troubled past, and begins noticing that there's something wrong with Alba. The two become entangled in a string of secrets and conspiracies that could spell their doom.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (August 25th)

R.F. Kuang has released a string of excellent books in recent years: I particularly liked Babel and Yellowface. Her next looks intriguing: Alice Law has been working on a singular goal her whole life: to become a master magician, sacrificing anything that stood in the way of working with Cambridge Professor Jacob Grimes, the greatest magician in the world.

When he dies in a mysterious accident (that she might have caused), he's sent down to Hell, and she sets off after him, hoping to score a recommendation that will secure her future. She's accompanied by her rival, Peter Murdoch, and together, the pair need to rely on their knowledge of stories like Orpheus and Dante, whatever chalk they can carry with them to save someone they don't even particularly like.

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (August 5th)

I'm always excited for a new Annalee Newitz book: not only was I someone who worked with them at io9, but their fiction and nonfiction books alike are always interesting. Their latest looks particularly good: it's about a group of food service bots in a war-torn San Francisco that have taken over their own delivery app account and have begun selling their own, high-quality noodles to customers. Standing in their way? Someone who's been review bombing their restaurant, which threatens to destroy everything they've worked to build.

This reminds me a little of their short story "When Robot and Crow Saved Saint Louis," which you should read right away.

September

The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi (September 16th)

The 7th installment of Scalzi's Old Man's War series comes as the first novel turns 20 years old in 2025. Set after the events of The End of All Things, where humanity had figured out a peace settlement with the Conclave, a consortium of alien civilizations that had been competing for galactic real estate.

A decade into that peace, a new threat has emerged: the Consu, an advanced civilization (who we first encountered in Old Man's War) have descended into a jarring civil war, a conflict that threatens to drag the Colonial Union, Earth, and the Conclave into it. A former Colonial Union diplomat, Gretchen Trujillio (a familiar name from Zoe's Tale), is called in to assist with a diplomatic mission that could forever upend the balance of power in the galaxy.

Beyond

Publishing schedules get a little more slippery the further out you go, and beyond September, there'll be some additional books that will pop up with more exact release dates and covers later this spring or early summer.

Some of the books that I'm anticipating arriving later this year that should be worth checking out? King Sorrow, a new novel from Joe Hill (and his first novel since 2016!). There's also All That We See or Seem, an AI thriller from Ken Liu that's due out in October), Travis Baldree's next cozy fantasy Brigands & Breadknives (November 11th), a new installment of Max Gladstone's Craft Wars series, and a second installment of James S.A. Corey's Captives War series.

It's always interesting to look at these lists now and then later in the year: will I get to all of them? Probably not, but I'm looking forward to the possibilities that these books bring with them!

Thanks for reading: what books caught your eye that are coming up?