BLF’s Most Anticipated Reads for 2025

It’s a new year which means new books! Bradford Literature Festival have gathered our most anticipated reads for 2025 across fantasy, historical, non-fiction, sci-fi, food & drink, contemporary, and more. Take a look at these exciting new releases and decide which you’ll add to your reading list this year.

Shroud – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shroud is a sci-fi story of survival and first contact on a hostile planet, as Juna and Mai encounter an unnerving alien species.

A commercial expedition to a distant star system discovers a pitch-black moon alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is deadly to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.

Release date: 27 February 2025.

Katabasis – R. F. Kuang

R.F. Kuang, bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, returns with Katabasis, a story of two academic rivals at Cambridge unexpectedly thrown together into a rescue mission in hell.

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld. Two academic rivals from Cambridge must travel to hell to rescue the soul of their advisor. Getting there was easy. Surviving it – and each other – is another thing entirely.

Release date: 28 August 2025.

Sunrise on the Reaping – Suzanne Collins

Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins’ new prequel to The Hunger Games, takes place 24 years before the original series, during the 50th annual Hunger Games.

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honour 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. 

Release date: 18 March 2025.

Ocean: Earth’s Last Wilderness – Sir David Attenborough, Colin Butfield

Ocean is a book 100 years in the making. With long-term collaborator, Colin Butfield, Sir David Attenborough shares the stories, history and endurance of the last great unexplored wilderness; our oceans.

Through one hundred years, eight unique ocean habitats, countless intriguing species – and through personal stories, history and cutting-edge science – Ocean uncovers the mystery, the wonder and the frailty of the most unexplored habitat on our planet. 

Release date: 8 May 2025.

Onyx Storm – Rebecca Yarros

Onyx Storm is bestseller Rebecca Yarros’ third instalment in The Empyrean series, following Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. In this new edition of the popular romantasy series, Violet searches beyond the walls of Basgiath for allies to join the revolution.

They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find – the truth.

But a storm is coming… and not everyone can survive its wrath.

Release date: 21 January 2025.

So Thrilled For You – Holly Bourne

Four university friends are reunited for an incredibly tense baby shower in Holly Bourne’s So Thrilled For You. Nothing is what is seems in this funny, thought-provoking and dark tale.

Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university. Now in their thirties, life is pulling them in different directions – but when Charlotte organises the baby shower of hell for pregnant Nicki, the girls are reunited.

Release date: 16 January 2025.

Boater: Life on England’s Waterways – Jo Bell

Jo Bell

Boater, Life on England’s Waterways follows Jo Bell’s journey along the country’s waterways. Her story and connection to canal boating form the backdrop to discuss the history, politics and cultural significance of the UK’s canal system.

Release date: Summer 2025.

The World After Gaza – Pankaj Mishra

From the award-winning writer and thinker, Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza is an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza, its historical conditions, and moral and geopolitical ramifications.

The World After Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the West’s triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism, and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the global majority’s frequently thwarted vision of racial equality.

Release date: 6 February 2025.

It Comes from the River – Rachel Bower

It Comes from the River is Rachel Bower’s debut novel, a tale rooted in the folklore of northern England and the power of women when they work together.

The three women flinch: feel something pass outside. A reek of singed fur, scorching damp. Flaming eyes. A creature. It knows these women. They feel its wanting.

From the river it comes.
To the river it always returns.

Release date: 30 January 2025.

Is a River Alive? – Robert Macfarlane

Is a River Alive? explores one single idea: that rivers are living beings and should be recognised as such in imagination and law. Robert Macfarlane explores the past, present and future of this idea through northern Ecuador, southern India, and Quebec.

From celebrated writer Robert Macfarlane comes this brilliant, perspective-shifting new book – which answers a resounding yes to the question of its title.

Release date: 1 May 2025.

Scuttler’s Cove – David Barnett

David Barnett returns with an eerie tale of folk horror set in Cornwall in Scuttler’s Cove. Merrin Moon returns to the cove and discovers forces are at play with the village’s second-homers.

For something old and terrible is awakening beneath the town’s hallowed ground. And with it comes a horror that the residents have fought for generations to keep a secret.

Release date: 13 February 2025.

Nobody Can Give You Freedom: The Real Mission of Malcolm X – Kehinde Andrews

In Nobody Can Give You Freedom, Kehinde Andrews rediscovers the revolutionary programme of Malcolm X, on the centenary of his birthday.

Malcolm’s activism was his philosophy, and paying attention to it reveals the true cultural icon – who, if he were alive today, would tell us to pick up the mantle, and overturn this wicked system for good.

Release date: 1 May 2025.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil – V.E. Schwab

Bestselling author V.E. Schwab returns with a new fantasy novel: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil; a tale you can really ‘sink your teeth into’.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots. One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild. And all of them grow teeth.

Release date: 10 June 2025.

Base Notes: The Scents of a Life – Adelle Stripe

Adelle Stripe shares her lived experience of formative years in a late 20th century northern England in Base Notes: The Scents of a Life, told through the lens of vintage perfumes.

With a keen eye for the absurd, an ear cocked to eavesdropped conversations and a nose that finds perfume wherever it goes, this tragi-comic tale of working-class womanhood is no clichéd story of redemption or escape, but instead a bleakly funny yet unflinching memoir of dead-end jobs, lost weekends, brief encounters and those wild, forgotten characters who slip through the cracks.

Release date: 13 February 2025.

Rooza – Nadiya Hussain

In Rooza, Nadiya Hussain shares her favourite dishes from across the Islamic world, with meal inspiration for each of the 30 days of Ramadan and a special selection of recipes for Eid.

This beautiful book celebrates the Muslim holy month, exploring rituals, traditions and the incredible variety of cuisine.

Release date: 23 January 2025.

The Chemist – A.A. Dhand

Set in Yorkshire, The Chemist is an adrenaline-filled thriller from A.A. Dhand. Local pharmacist, Idris Khan, knows more about the secrets of his local community than his mild manner suggests. When his childhood sweetheart doesn’t turn up for her daily methadone dose, he becomes worried.

The mess Idris finds catapults him into the middle of a turf war between the two most powerful drug cartels in Yorkshire. Now, he must use every bit of intelligence and cunning he has to keep those he loves safe.

Release date: 22 May 2025.

The Line They Drew Through Us – Hiba Noor Khan

Hiba Noor Khan’s new children’s fiction, The Line They Drew Through Us, takes us to 1947 during the Indian partition, and tells the story of three friends and their families as they strive to support each other during this turbulent period.

Three best friends are born on the same day under miraculous circumstances. But by their twelfth birthday, Jahan, Ravi and Lakshmi’s lives are about to change forever.

Release date: 3 April 2025.

The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny – Laura Bates

Laura Bates, bestselling author of Everyday Sexism and Men Who Hate Women, explores our strange new world of AI, deepfakes and technology and their effect on gender equality in The New Age of Sexism.

Gripping and eye-opening, The New Age of Sexism exposes a phenomenon we can’t afford to ignore any longer. Our future is on the line. We need to act now, before it is too late..

Release date: 15 May 2025.