By Carole Reedy
The end of the year creates a wondrous feeling of bookish anticipation that helps move us through the post-holiday doldrums. To whet your appetite for our upcoming reading pleasure, here’s a brief preview of new books by several favorite authors, both fiction and nonfiction. Publication dates are, as always, subject to change.
Fox: A Novel, by Joyce Carol Oates (July 2025)
Lolita for feminists! In yet another of her original novels, the prolific and amazing Joyce Carol Oates this time takes on Vladimir Nabokov’s classic Lolita (1955), shifting the perception to that of the woman in the tale, a temptress schoolteacher named Frances Fox.
I try to read everything Joyce Carol Oates creates. Despite writing more than 100 books, she still finds new, varied, and creative paths to entertain and captivate her readers.
Flashlight: A Novel, by Susan Choi (June 2025)
Susan Choi won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019 for her novel Trust Exercise: A Novel (2019).
Her newest novel, Flashlight, tells the story of Louisa and her family after her father disappears when she is ten years old. By focusing every other chapter on a different family member, complicated stories are revealed through time, patience, and memory.
Sounds challenging and intriguing.
The River Is Waiting: A Novel, by Wally Lamb (May 2025)
We eagerly await new novels from this skilled writer of the best sellers She’s Come Undone (1992) and I Know This Much Is True (a Novel) (1998).
Advance press for Lamb’s new novel refers to a great deal of pain created by the protagonist’s own mistakes. He goes to prison, where, pondering his errors, he wonders if he can ever be forgiven. Is there a possibility of atonement for the unforgivable?
Fever Beach: A Novel, by Carl Hiaasen (May 2025)
With 14 novels and many best sellers – Skinny Dip: A Novel (2004), Sick Puppy: A Novel (2000), and Squeeze Me: A Novel (2020), among others – under his belt, Hiassen returns with two unique characters who continue yet another laugh-out-loud adventure story in the author’s home state of Florida.
Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie, by James Lee Burke (June 2025)
Burke, who spent most of his life in the US South, is one of the most popular mystery writers of our time. Currently splitting his time between Montana and Louisiana, he says the greatest influence in his life was the 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.
His latest takes place in Louisiana and New York City and is told through the eyes of 14-year-old Bessie Holland. Holland finds solace in her mentor, a suffragette English teacher who encourages her to always keep fighting, but the challenges presented at the beginning of the 19th century seem almost insurmountable.
Warhol’s Muses: Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine, by Laurence Leamer (May 2025)
Bestselling biographer Leamer explores the lives of 10 superstar women Andy Warhol manipulated for his own artistic benefit while also revealing the mysteries of Warhol’s turbulent life and work. Surely meant to sensationalize!
Leamer is the author of Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era (2023), Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession (2023), and The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family (1996).
Men in Love, by Irvine Welsh (July 2025)
This much-anticipated sequel to the 1993 cult classic Trainspotting joins the two existing sequels, Porno (2005) and Dead Men’s Trousers (2018), but this new novel takes place immediately after Trainspotting.
Recall the characters in Trainspotting (Renton, Spud, Sick Boy, and Begbie) were heroin users in Edinburgh. In this new novel, the crew is dispersed to Scotland, London, and Amsterdam where they try to substitute love for heroin. The author tells us he has never stopped writing about these strange, beloved characters from Trainspotting.
Three years after Trainspotting was published, Danny Boyle converted it into a successful movie starring Ewen McGregor, Robert Carlyle, and Johnny Lee Miller.
Vianne, by Joanne Harris (May 2025)
We know Joanne Harris for her multi-million-copy bestselling Chocolat (1999). Vianne is the story that takes place six years before the famous chocolaterie opens.
It appears this newest novel is equal to its predecessor both in its sensuality and its ability to provoke thought.
Mark Twain, by Ron Chernow (May 2025)
Ron Chernow is the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who has tackled the challenge of relating the varied and exciting life of the famous journalist, satirist, and performer Mark Twain.
We know Mark Twain for his two novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), but there is much more to his life and story that comes via his thousands of letters and unpublished manuscripts.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted the moniker Mark Twain and thus gave the world hundreds of hours of entertainment in his vast library of writing. More than a hundred years after his death, Twain, who travelled the world and wrote about it, is still voraciously studied in schools worldwide.
His clever use of words, description, and phrases is still quoted. Some of his most famous aphorisms include, “A classic is a book that people praise and don’t read.” Then there’s “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education,” as well as the popular, “Never put off until tomorrow what may get done the day after tomorrow just as well.”
Speak to Me of Home: A Novel, by Jeanine Cummins (May 2025)
Cummins is the author of the Oprah Winfrey-recommended and highly controversial novel American Dirt (2018), in which a woman and her son must escape their home in Acapulco when they are pursued by narcos. The journey through Mexico and the doubts arising from the purpose of their adventure are the basis for the book.
This new novel takes place in Puerto Rico and the US, telling the tales of fifty years and three generations of immigrants. It is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters and the decisions they face and are haunted by.
This is only a sampling. Many more book recommendations forthcoming over the next few months.
Happy Reading New Year 2025!