10 Books On My Autumn 2025 To-Read List

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It’s time for another seasonal TBR post! Although I am not the type to plan what I am going to read and stick to it, I do find these posts quite fun to see what I am vibing with at the moment, and look back at what I did actually read from last time. I restrict my TBR lists to books I have bought, so all of these I already own as eBooks or physically.

Books I read off my Summer TBR

1. ✅ Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
2. ✅ My Husband by Maud Ventura
3. ✅ Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
4. ✅ Sweetpea by C.J. Skuse
5. ✅ Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
6. ✅ Retreat by Krysten Ritter

I think that is a record! I was on a roll over summer!

Staying on the list

➡️ 1. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend.

This will be my pick when I want something completely different to my usual reads, or I’m just in the mood for pirates!

➡️ 2. Tiamat’s Wrath (The Expanse #8) by James S.A. Corey

In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay.

At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father’s godlike ambition. The sociopathic scientist Paolo Cortázar and the Mephistophelian prisoner James Holden are only two of the dangers in a palace thick with intrigue, but Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets even her father the emperor doesn’t guess.

And throughout the wide human empire, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte’s authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia’s eternal rule — and with it, a battle that humanity can only lose – seems more and more certain. Because against the terrors that lie between worlds, courage and ambition will not be enough…

I am waiting on Husband to buddy read this one. This is the first one in the series that won’t be a re-read!

New Additions

🆕 3. I Cheerfully Refuse by Lief Enger

Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.

I feel a science/speculative fiction mood coming on, and I heard good things about it. It sounds a bit like She’s a Killer, but more literary.

🆕 4. Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal–an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

Same mood! I need to give the author another shot after Station Eleven underwhelmed me.

🆕 5. White Noise by Don deLillo

White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultra­modern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an “airborne toxic event,” a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the “white noise” engulfing the Gladneys—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

Again, I feel the mood for some speculative, dark, weird stuff. Also, doesn’t that last line feel a bit too familiar?

🆕 6. Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

The land of Terre d’Ange is a place of unsurpassing beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good… and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.

Phèdre nó Delaunay is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her left eye. Sold into indentured servitude as a child, her bond is purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with very a special mission… and the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel’s Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.

Phèdre is trained equally in the courtly arts and the talents of the bedchamber, but, above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Almost as talented a spy as she is courtesan, Phèdre stumbles upon a plot that threatens the very foundations of her homeland. Treachery sets her on her path; love and honor goad her further. And in the doing, it will take her to the edge of despair… and beyond. Hateful friend, loving enemy, beloved assassin; they can all wear the same glittering mask in this world, and Phèdre will get but one chance to save all that she holds dear.

And now for something completely different… This is an outlier and not at all what I’d normally read. I’m going to buddy read with my Husband as part of this “smutty books” project. This kinds of Fantasy is not usually my thing, but you never know.. I might like it.

🆕 7. The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery

The land of Terre d’Ange is a place of unsurpassing beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good… and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.

Phèdre nó Delaunay is a young woman who was born with a scarlet mote in her left eye. Sold into indentured servitude as a child, her bond is purchased by Anafiel Delaunay, a nobleman with very a special mission… and the first one to recognize who and what she is: one pricked by Kushiel’s Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.

Phèdre is trained equally in the courtly arts and the talents of the bedchamber, but, above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Almost as talented a spy as she is courtesan, Phèdre stumbles upon a plot that threatens the very foundations of her homeland. Treachery sets her on her path; love and honor goad her further. And in the doing, it will take her to the edge of despair… and beyond. Hateful friend, loving enemy, beloved assassin; they can all wear the same glittering mask in this world, and Phèdre will get but one chance to save all that she holds dear.

After all that bleak stuff, I might want a nice little romance story from the author of my beloved Anne of Green Gables.

🆕 8. The Launch Date by Annabelle Slater

Grace Hastings’s dream job at the popular “true love” dating app, Fate, has turned into a nightmare. Her boss is a leech, her career is stagnating, and her fiancé has just brutally dumped her. Her hope for finding her own love story is waning, and she feels like a fraud for promoting a concept she no longer believes in. When the company’s CEO offers her an opportunity to earn a big promotion, she resolves to fight her imposter syndrome to show she deserves a seat at the table.

The opportunity? To launch a brand-new app focusing on IRL dating and genuine connection.

The problem? She must develop and test-drive a series of “first dates” with the other person gunning for the job: notorious socialite playboy and Grace’s biggest work rival, Eric Bancroft.

During their disastrous hikes, dangerous cooking classes, and steamy yoga sessions, they begin to realize their stark differences may just be surface level and Eric might just be the perfect person to challenge Grace’s perceptions of love, dating culture, and self-worth.

Or a more contemporary office romance with a ridiculously contrived premise.

🆕 9. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

Jason Taverner woke up one morning to find himself completely unknown. The night before he had been the top-rated television star with millions of devoted watchers. The next day he was just an unidentified walking object, whose face nobody recognised, of whom no one had heard, and without the I.D. papers required in that near future.

When he finally found a man who would agree to counterfeiting such cards for him, that man turned out to be a police informer. And then Taverner found out not only what it was like to be a nobody but also to be hunted by the whole apparatus of society.

It was obvious that in some way Taverner had become the pea in in some sort of cosmic shell game—but how? And why?

I keep putting this on lists recently, so I should just bloody read it!

🆕 10. How To Be Perfect by Michael Schur

Most people think of themselves as “good,” but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad”—especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.

Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?” (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we’ll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we’ll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day.

Every few seasonal TBR’s this has to resurface, and eventually I’ll shame myself into actually reading it. It’s been sat on my desk for about 3 months.