1. Sunrise on the Reaping – Suzanne Collins

Publish Date: 18 March 2025

Why I’m excited for it: We are finally getting Haymitch’s story, need I say more?

When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town.

As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

2. They Bloom at Night – Trang Thanh Tran

Publish Date: 04 March, 2025

Why I’m excited for it: I love a Lovecraftian-horror. Algae turning the dead into zombified sea creatures – what more could one want?

A red algae bloom has taken over Mercy, Louisiana. Ever since a devastating hurricane, mutated wildlife lurks in the water that rises by the day. But Mercy has always been a place where monsters walk in plain sight. Especially at its heart: The Cove, where Noon’s life was upended long before the storm at a party her older boyfriend insisted on.

Now, Noon is stuck navigating the submerged town with her mom, who believes their dead family has reincarnated as sea creatures. Alone with the pain of what happened that night at the cove, Noon buries the truth: she is not the right shape.

When Mercy’s predatory leader demands Noon and her mom capture the creature drowning residents, she reluctantly finds an ally in his deadly hunter of a daughter and friends old and new. As the next storm approaches, Noon must confront the past and decide if it’s time to answer the monster itching at her skin.

3. The Undoing of Violet Claybourne – Emily Critchley

Publish Date: 04 March, 2025

Why I’m excited for it: The reviews for this book have me itching to give it a read. Historical Fiction, Gothic, Mystery Thriller – all the things I love rolled into one neat boarding school package.

1938. Gillian Larkin is used to going unnoticed, until she is sent away to school and befriended by her roommate, the vibrant and spirited Violet Claybourne. As the Christmas holidays approach, Gilly can’t believe her luck when Violet invites her to spend them at her home, the crumbling Thornleigh Hall.

At Thornleigh, Gilly is dazzled by the family’s faded grandeur, and above all by Violet’s beguiling older sisters who seem to accept her as one of their own. But following a terrible accident in the house’s grounds, Gilly begins to realise the Claybourne sisters aren’t quite what she thought they were. And if she’s to survive in their world, she may have to become just like them . . .

A captivating novel of family secrets, desperate ambition and deepest betrayal, set against the winter of 1938, The Undoing of Violet Claybourne is the irresistible new mystery from the acclaimed author of One Puzzling Afternoon.

4. Saltwater – Katy Hays

Publish Date: 25 March, 2025

Why I’m excited for it: I was not a fan of The Cloisters, Hays’s debut novel. However, I did like the writing style of it and am willing to give Hays another chance. Already, Saltwater is being received a lot better than the first.

In 1992 Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah’s death is ruled an accident, and every year the family returns to prove it’s true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of Sarah’s death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them—the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh – Colwill Brown

Publish Date: 04 Feb, 2025

“A brilliant portrait of female friendship, nearly the equal in honesty and subtlety to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Anexuberant and ribald debut novel about three adolescent girls, as sweetly vulnerable as they are cunning and tough, coming of age in a gritty postindustrial town in nineties Yorkshire, England

“Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punchline of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.” But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz, and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin plotting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace—the girls are inseparable, their friendship as indestructible as they are. But as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.

Written in a Yorkshire dialect that brings a place and its people magnificently to life, Colwill Brown’s debut novel spans decades as its heroines come of age, never shying from the ugly truths of girlhood. Like Trainspotting and Shuggie Bain, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, turning one overlooked and forgotten town into the very center of the world.

Luminous – Silvia Park

Publish Date: 25 Feb, 2025

Prescient yet timeless, perfect for fans of Klara and the Sun and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, this highly anticipated, sweeping debut set in a unified Korea tells the story of three estranged siblings—two human, one robot—as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood.

“I once had a family. At least, the earliest version of me had a family.”

In a reunified Korea of the near future, the sun beats down on a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, broken down for parts. Eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through the scraps, searching for a piece that might support her failing body. There among the piles of trash, something catches her eye: a robot boy—so lifelike and strange, unlike anything she’s ever seen before.

Siblings Jun and Morgan haven’t spoken for years. When they were children, their brother Yoyo disappeared suddenly, leaving behind only distant memories of his laughter and near-human warmth. Yoyo—an early prototype of a humanoid robot designed by their father—was always bound for something darker and more complex. Now Morgan makes robots for a living and is on the verge of losing control of her most important creation. Jun is a detective with the Robot Crimes Unit whose investigation is digging up truths that want to stay buried. And whether they like it or not, Ruijie’s discovery will thrust their family back together in ways they could have never imagined.

At once a thrilling work of speculative fiction and a poignant exploration of what it really means to be human, Luminous is an unforgettably brilliant debut.