The new year can be a bittersweet time. Amid the optimistic resolutions and hopeful expectations comes the book lover’s nagging self-reproach: What about all the books from last year that I never got to?
Still on my to-be-read list from 2024 are a number of titles, including the novels Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez and Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly and nonfiction such as John Ganz’s When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s and Cher: The Memoir, Part One (perhaps I should wait for Part Two and just binge the whole thing).
But enough regrets! This issue of Kirkus Reviews features our Spring 2025 Preview, and the editors have harvested a bumper crop of new and forthcoming books—100 in all, across the categories of fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and young adult. Once you get a look at these gorgeous covers and tantalizing titles (full reviews are available on our website), we think you’ll be ready to turn the page on 2024 and dive into the new year’s bounty. Here are a handful that are already on my upgraded TBR:
Shattered: A Memoir by Hanif Kureishi (Ecco/HarperCollins, Feb. 4): I’ve been a fan of Kureishi since the release of the film My Beautiful Laundrette (for which he wrote the screenplay) and the publication of his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia. So I was horrified when, in 2022, I saw on social media that he’d fallen and suffered spinal nerve damage that resulted in partial paralysis. He began to dictate reflections on his condition (and life, generally), and these form the basis for his new memoir. Our starred review praises its “grace, dignity, and black humor.”
The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor (Europa, Feb. 4): Here’s a pick that cleverly does double duty. I’ll check one book off my yet uncompleted 2023 list by first reading My Father’s House, the previous entry in O’Connor’s projected WWII trilogy. Then I’ll be ready for this second installment continuing the story of an Irish monsignor stationed at the Vatican who orchestrates safe passage out of Nazi-occupied Rome for thousands of Jews and escaped Allied POWs. Our starred review calls it “top-notch storytelling filled with emotion and drama.”
The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe by Nancy Goldstone (Little, Brown; Feb. 25): Biographer Goldstone has established a cottage industry writing about the women royals of Great Britain and Europe, including Marie Antoinette and Mary, Queen of Scots. With her latest book, she turns her attention to two lesser-known but equally fascinating 19th-century figures. Our starred review calls it a “richly detailed, entertaining dual biography.”
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Pantheon, March 4): In my last column, I wrote about the resurgence of dystopian fiction in the wake of the U.S. presidential election. Here’s a title that would have fit right in. The latest novel by the author of The Moor’s Account and The Other Americans envisions a future America where everyone is being continuously surveilled—so far, so normal—even in their dreams. Our starred review calls it an “engrossing and troubling dystopian tale.”
Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.
