Books to Look Out For in October 2025

Slim pickings for October’s new fiction with a couple outside my usual literary territory including Harriet Lane’s Other People’s Fun which sees Ruth facing an empty nest and the end of her marriage while enduring a humdrum job. Her tedium is brightened by the reappearance of Sookie, confident, vivacious and keen to be Ruth’s pal after ignoring her when they were teenagers. ‘Unputdownable, funny, spiky and subtle, Other People’s Fun is a novel about modern life and the lies we tell our neighbours, friends, families and selves through the hall of mirrors that is social media’ says the blurb promisingly. I remember enjoying Her in my early blogging days so may well give this one a try.

I’m a bit more confident about Chris Kraus’s The Four Spent the Day Together. When Catt Greene and her husband move from L.A. to their summer home in  Minnesota she becomes obsessed with a murder committed by three teenagers who shot an acquaintance after spending the day with him a decade ago. Catt’s attempts to understand the teenagers lead her back to her own youth in working-class Brooklyn and blue-collar, smalltown Connecticut. ‘Written in three linked parts, The Four Spent the Day Together explores the histories of three generations of American lives and the patterns that repeat over lifetimes and is piercing commentary on the pressures of lives lived on the edge’ according to the blurb. I didn’t get around to reading I Love Dick but I’m tempted by this one.

Chloe Michelle Howarth’s atmospheric Heap Earth Upon It is very different from her debut, Sunburn. Set in 1965, it follows the O’Learys who have left their home village hoping to put a distance between themselves and the most recent of their tragedies. There’s a good deal of curtain twitching at their arrival but Tom, the eldest, sets about ingratiating himself, desperate for work and eager for acceptance. A prosperous, childless couple takes the O’Learys into their lives, Betty longing to mother nine-year-old Peggy while Tom finds a father in Bill. Things look set for a new start, but the uneasiness provoked by Anna O’Leary’s intense need for Betty’s attention is worsened by her increasingly sinister behaviour. A dark, brooding novel whose distinctly gothic overtones suits its publication date well. Review soon…

I was very happy to spot a new Lily King on the publishing horizon having enjoyed several of her novels, particularly Writers & Lovers. Heart the Lover sees a successful writer, happily married with a family, catapulted back to the heady days of first love when she was taken up in her senior year at college by two star students. A surprise visit sees her reassessing the decisions she made during her youth, threatening her comfortable life. ‘Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. This is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today’ promises the blurb somewhat ambitiously. This one’s high on my wishlist.

I’m wondering if that cover indicates that Perrine Tripier’s Our Precious Wars may be a wee bit sentimental for my taste or, even worse, twee, but I often enjoy the old person looking back at their life set-up. Here, Isadora is in a hospice thinking about the ways in which her life became intertwined with the sprawling, beloved house in which she spent most of it. ‘Told in lyrical, beguiling language, Isadora guides the reader through the maze of her memory by classifying, like a watercolourist, her recollections by season’ says the blurb sweetly.

I enjoyed Jake Arnott’s The Fatal Tree and The Long Firm, two very different crime novels: one set in the eighteenth century, the other in the’60s. Blood Rival sees Lee Royal, the King of Kent, murdered on the M25 apparently in a brutal act of road rage. Keen to make his mark in Kent’s criminal underworld and infatuated with Lee’s wife, Eddie Pierce is determined to track down the murderer. Meanwhile Commander Ray Spinks of the Yard, a long-time associate of Lee, has his own agenda. ‘What starts as a seemingly random act of violence will soon turn into a high-stakes man hunt for a killer and the revelation of an explosive secret that will have devastating consequences. Blood Rival is a fast-paced, addictive and twisty thriller told at a whiplash speed, rife with dark family secrets and deadly stakes. A story of lust, betrayal and tragedy’ says the blurb rather excitedly.

That’s it for October’s new fiction. A click on a title will take you to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more. Paperbacks soon…