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Coming Soon

Curious about what books will be released in the months ahead so you can pre-order or reserve them? Then click on the months below.

Please note we have not included every book that is coming out, but rather some that caught our eye --- and that we thought should catch yours as well.

May 2025

Hardcover

All the Mothers by Domenica Ruta - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Random House | 9780593734056 | Published May 6, 2025

Sandy thought she was making her greatest mistake yet when she got unexpectedly pregnant in her mid-30s by a dating-app flop. Now, her baby Rosie is the love of her life, but trying to co-parent with her daughter’s dad, a wannabe rock star, is a challenge --- and seems to be veering into catastrophe territory when Sandy finds out through social media that her daughter has a half-sibling Sandy doesn’t know anything about. Enter her ex’s ex, Stephanie, the other mother. Sandy is prepared to hate her, but when the two women meet, they are shocked to learn how much they have in common beyond the deadbeat father their children share. Now Sandy needs to figure out what her and Rosie’s family looks like with all these new additions. Could life in a “mommune” be the answer to her prayers or just a new brand of chaos?

Austen at Sea by Natalie Jenner - Fiction, Women's Fiction

St. Martin's Press | 9781250349590 | Published May 6, 2025

In Boston, 1865, Charlotte and Henrietta Stevenson, daughters of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, have accomplished as much as women are allowed in those days. Chafing against those restrictions and inspired by the works of Jane Austen, they start a secret correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother, now in his nineties. He sends them an original letter from his sister and invites them to come visit him in England.

In Philadelphia, Nicholas & Haslett Nelson --- bachelor brothers, veterans of the recent Civil War and rare book dealers --- are also in correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, who lures them, too, to England, with the promise of a never-before-seen, rare Austen artifact to be evaluated.

The Stevenson sisters sneak away without a chaperone to sail to England. On their ship are the Nelson brothers, writer Louisa May Alcott, Sara-Beth Gleason --- wealthy daughter of a Pennsylvania state senator with her eye on the Nelsons --- and, a would-be last-minute chaperone to the Stevenson sisters, Justice Thomas Nash.

Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family by Jill Damatac - Memoir, Nonfiction

Atria/One Signal Publishers | 9781668084632 | Published May 6, 2025

Jill Damatac left the United States in 2015, first traveling to her native Philippines, Damatac eventually settled in London, England, where she was free to pursue an education at the University of Cambridge. After nine years, she was granted British citizenship, and returned to the United States, for the first time without fear of deportation or retribution. Damatac weaves together forgotten colonial history and long-buried Indigenous tradition, taking us through her time in America and cooking her way through Filipino recipes in her kitchen as she searches for a sense of self and renewed possibility. With emotional intelligence, clarity and grace DIRTY KITCHEN explores fractured memories to ask questions of identity, colonialism, immigration and belonging, and to find ways in which the ritual, tradition and comfort of food can answer them.

Home of the American Circus by Allison Larkin - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Gallery Books | 9781668008416 | Published May 6, 2025

After an emergency leaves her short on rent, 30-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies and old flames --- as well as her 15-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart years ago.

I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir by Keith McNally - Memoir, Nonfiction

Gallery Books | 9781668017647 | Published May 6, 2025

I REGRET ALMOST EVERYTHING is a memoir by the legendary proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern and Morandi, taking us from his gritty London childhood in the '50s to his serendipitous arrival in New York, where he founded the era-defining establishments the Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg and Nell’s. Eloquent and opinionated, Keith McNally writes about the angst of being a child actor, his lack of insights from traveling overland to Kathmandu at 19, the instability of his two marriages and family relationships, his devastating stroke and his Instagram notoriety.

I Will Blossom Anyway by Disha Bose - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Ballantine Books | 9780593875322 | Published May 6, 2025

The third of four children born to a middle-class Calcutta family, quiet Durga is surprisingly the first to leave the nest of her loving, overbearing family. She is not as charming as her older sister, Tia, as lighthearted as her brother, Arjun or as clever as her younger sister, Parul. But when she arrives in Ireland to work at a tech company, she finds that for the first time ever she is free --- to have fun, to stay out, to sample everything that life has to offer. Suddenly, Durga can be whoever she wants to be. And she wants it all. But freedom comes at a price. Durga falls in love with handsome, charismatic Jacob and grows close with his sister, Joy, now Durga’s flatmate and best friend. But when Jacob breaks up with Durga, she’s unmoored. Will she stay in Ireland with her newfound identity and livelihood, or will she return to India, where she is comfortable?

Lessons from My Teachers: From Preschool to the Present by Sarah Ruhl - Essays, Memoir, Nonfiction

S&S/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781668034965 | Published May 6, 2025

Based on her popular class at Yale, this masterful, intimate essay collection from one of our greatest living playwrights and teachers, Sarah Ruhl, is a testament to the singular impact of teachers across every stage of our lives. Anchored in stories both personal and universal, drawing on Sarah’s experiences with her parents and children, with schoolteachers, creative influences and beyond, LESSONS FROM MY TEACHERS offers an uplifting perspective on our basic human need to teach and learn from each other as we navigate the surprising paths that shape our lives. Meant to be shared with loved ones and role models alike and perfect for marking important seasons and milestones, it provides an opportunity to reflect on the human connection between teacher and student and the times in which we ourselves have assumed each role.

My Friends by Fredrik Backman - Fiction

Atria Books | 9781982112820 | Published May 6, 2025

Most people don’t even notice the three tiny figures in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. But Louisa knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures. 25 years earlier, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier. Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into 18-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Ballantine Books | 9780593975091 | Published May 6, 2025

In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, Emilia is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of 17, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan. As Emilia proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, as does Eric. While there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie.

Overgrowth by Mira Grant - Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction

Tor Nightfire | 9781250768230 | Published May 6, 2025

Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she's an alien disguised as a human being and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has believed her. Now, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realize that it's already been warned and it may be too late. The invasion is coming, Stasia's biological family is on the way to bring her home and very few family reunions are willing to cross the gulf of space for just one misplaced child.

Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay - Fiction, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Minotaur Books | 9781250360724 | Published May 6, 2025

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids --- five residents of Campisi Hall --- never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix and Stella --- The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them --- come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Shopgirls by Jessica Anya Blau - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Mariner Books | 9780063052352 | Published May 6, 2025

Nineteen-year-old Zippy can hardly believe it: she’s the newest and youngest salesgirl at I. Magnin. Every week, she walks through the employee entrance five days a week as she saves to buy something new. For a girl who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store with her mother and her mother’s madcap boyfriend, I. Magnin represents a real chance for a better and more elegant life. Zippy may not be in school, but she’s about to get an education that will stick with her for decades. Her fellow salesgirls run the gamut. The cosmetics ladies on the first floor share both samples and advice and her new roommate, Raquel tells Zippy she can lose 10 pounds easy if she joins Raquel in eating only every other day. Just when Zippy thinks she’s getting a handle on how to be an adult woman in 1985, two surprises threaten both her sense of self and her coveted position at I. Magnin.

The Children of Eve by John Connolly - Fiction, Supernatural Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781668083949 | Published May 6, 2025

Wyatt Riggins has gone missing, leaving behind a cell phone containing a single-word message: RUN. Private investigator Charlie Parker is hired to find out why Riggins has fled. Parker discovers that Riggins has been involved in the abduction of four children from Mexico, all belonging to the cartel boss Blas Urrea. Urrea wants them back and has dispatched his agents to secure them, even if it means butchering everyone who stands in their way. One of those agents is Eugene Seeley, a clever, ruthless solver of other men’s problems. The other is an unknown woman. Every child has a mother. Now Charlie Parker will face one unlike any other and learn the terrifying truth about the Children of Eve.

The Manor of Dreams by Christina Li - Fiction, Gothic

Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781668051726 | Published May 6, 2025

Vivian Yin is dead. Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood home. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead --- one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement. In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. As Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, disturbing visions and bizarre behaviors start to take hold of everyone in the house, forcing them to realize they are being haunted by something far more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth behind the house’s origins and the last, tragic summer they spent there --- or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late?

The Night Birds by Christopher Golden - Fiction, Horror, Suspense, Thriller

St. Martin's Press | 9781250285911 | Published May 6, 2025

Charlie Book and Ruby Cahill have history. After their love ended in heartbreak years ago, they never expected to see each other again.

Now, as part of his work for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Book lives aboard the Christabel, a 19th century freighter half-sunken off the shore of Galveston. Over many years, a massive forest of mangrove trees has grown up through the deck of the ship, creating a startlingly beautiful enigma Book calls the Floating Forest. As a powerful storm churns through the Gulf, he intends to sleep on board as usual.

But when he arrives at the dock, he’s stunned to find Ruby there waiting for him. And she’s not alone. With her are a mysterious woman and her infant child, asking Book to hide them safely aboard the Christabel while they're on the run. Only it isn’t the police who are after them, it’s a coven of witches the woman, Mae, has fled, stealing away the helpless infant for whom the coven had hideous plans…or so Mae claims.

The Ones We Loved by Tarisai Ngangura - Fiction

Park Row | 9780778387589 | Published May 6, 2025

On a bus moving across rural landscapes from town to town, two young people are escaping with nothing to hold except hope. She has committed a horrifying act for which there will certainly be retribution. He is staggering from a devastating discovery. They will find each other and attempt to move forward, even as their grief leaves wounds on their new beginnings. Seamlessly transitioning between past lives and present realities, THE ONES WE LOVED tenderly weaves both myth and memory into an account of two people desperate for connection and yearning for a place to belong. They will find sunflowers carrying death, rivers that whisper secrets and trees that will see it all.

The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Doubleday | 9780385551014 | Published May 6, 2025

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future. When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is. 

The Retirement Plan by Sue Hincenbergs - Fiction, Mystery

William Morrow | 9780063398016 | Published May 6, 2025

After 30 years of friendship, Pam dreams of her perfect retirement with Nancy, Shalisa, Marlene and their husbands --- until their husbands pool their funds for an investment that goes terribly wrong. Suddenly, their golden years are looking as dreary as their marriages. But when the women discover their husbands have seven-figure life insurance policies, a new dream forms. And this time, they need a hitman. Meanwhile, their husbands are working on their own secret retirement scheme and when things begin to go sideways, they fear it’s backfired. The husbands scramble to stay alive...but soon realize they may not be quick enough to outmaneuver their wives.

The River Is Waiting by Wally Lamb - Fiction

S&S/Marysue Rucci Books | 9781668006399 | Published May 6, 2025

Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that’s before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model. Buoyed by them and by his mother’s enduring faith in him, Corby begins to transcend the boundaries of his confinement, sustained by his hope that mercy and reconciliation might still be possible. Can his crimes ever be forgiven by those he loves?

The Wanderer's Curse: A Memoir by Jennifer Hope Choi - Memoir, Nonfiction

W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324035510 | Published May 6, 2025

When Jennifer Hope Choi first stumbled upon the “curse” known as yeokmasal she immediately consulted her mother. Technically this wasn’t a revelation. Since 2007, the no-nonsense open-heart surgery nurse had moved suddenly from the Golden State to the Last Frontier, shuttling over the next decade through seven states. For much of her adulthood, Choi had fancied herself nothing like her immigrant mother, late-blooming vagabond spirit and all --- until life in Brooklyn imploded, spurring her to relocate to South Carolina and reckon with startling truths. Artmaking had left her in debt, single and jobless. This probing memoir follows Choi through her many former homes, from a crumbling Chinatown tenement to a haunted museum in Georgia.

This Is Your Mother: A Memoir by Erika J. Simpson - Memoir, Nonfiction

Scribner | 9781668024034 | Published May 6, 2025

When Erika Simpson was growing up, her mother loomed large, almost biblical in her life. But where does a mother’s story end and a daughter’s begin? In this brave, illuminating memoir, Erika offers a joint recollection of their lives as they navigate the realities of destitution often left undiscussed. Her mother’s uncanny ability to endure Job-like trials and manifest New Testament-style miracles made her seem invincible. But while our parents may start out as gods in our lives, through her mother’s final months and fifth battle with cancer, Erika captures the moment you realize they are just people. This gorgeously rendered story of a mother’s life through her daughter’s eyes weaves together a dual timeline, pulling inspiration from both scripture and pop culture as Erika moves through grief to a place of clarity where she can see who she is without her mom --- and because of her. 

Twelve Post-War Tales by Graham Swift - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Short Stories

Knopf | 9780593803387 | Published May 6, 2025

Here are the soldiers and doctors and veterans, wives and lovers and children, who have been affected in ways both subtle and profound by the cataclysms of our times. In the aftermath of World War II, a young Jewish private stationed in Germany seeks the truth about lost family members. In the 1960s, a father focuses on his daughter’s wedding even as the Cuban Missile Crisis approaches the brink of global disaster. On September 11th, a maid working for U.S. Embassy staff in London wonders if her birth on the day of the Kennedy assassination determined the course of her life. And at the height of pandemic lockdown, a respiratory disease specialist comes out of retirement and is faced with a formative childhood memory.

A Curse Carved in Bone: Book Two of the Saga of the Unfated by Danielle L. Jensen - Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Romance

Del Rey | 9780593599860 | Published May 13, 2025

The secret of her divine heritage revealed, Freya finds herself on a path that will see thousands of lives lost to the magic in her blood. Desperate to avoid this dark fate, she risks an alliance with Skaland’s greatest enemy to seek answers from the seer who foretold her future --- the same seer who sent Bjorn to kill her. While Freya still seethes with rage over Bjorn’s betrayal, the blood oaths that bind her demand that she keep him close as she hunts for a way to avert the looming war. Her magic draws her to the front lines of an old enmity, embroiling her with Nordeland’s Unfated --- children of the gods who serve the king she was raised to fear. The same king who, unlike Bjorn, is now willing to fight at her back. For despite the desire that burns hot between Bjorn and Freya, his growing distrust of her chosen path threatens to drag them further apart.

Anima Rising by Christopher Moore - Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Humor

William Morrow | 9780062434159 | Published May 13, 2025

Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, the darling of Viennese society, spots a woman’s nude body in the Danube canal. He knows he should summon a policeman, but he can’t resist stopping to make a sketch first. And as he draws, the woman coughs. She’s alive! Back at his studio, Klimt and his model-turned-muse Wally tend to the formerly-drowned girl. She’s nearly feral and doesn’t remember who she is or how she came to be floating in the canal. Klimt names her Judith, after one of his most famous paintings and resolves to help her find her memory. With a little help from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Judith recalls being stranded in the arctic one 100 years ago, locked in a crate by a man named Victor Frankenstein and visiting the Underworld. So how did she get here? And why are so many people chasing her, including Geoff, the giant croissant-eating devil dog of the North?

Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan - Dystopian Fiction, Fiction

Pantheon | 9780593701409 | Published May 13, 2025

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city, and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge, and ever since Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly she allows her cousin to plan for her escape --- but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly Bo has a reason to stay. Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most.