Books to Look Out For in November 2025: Part Two

This second batch of November titles begins with one I’m particularly keen to read. John Tottenham’s Service sees John working as a bookseller in Los Angeles having failed at journalism and writing fiction. Now in his late forties, he’s dismayed at working in something he considers beneath him, irritated by his privileged customers’ demands, out of step with his younger colleagues and much of the rest of the world. ‘With dry wit, John Tottenham’s debut novel reflects on a farrago of contemporary afflictions: gentrification, debt, self-medication, male vanity, professional jealousy, the perils of political correctness, and the role of literature in the digital era’ says the blurb. I can’t resist a bookselling novel.

Allan Radcliffe’s Blurred Faces sees two men meet via a dating app: Jordan back in Edinburgh to visiting his complicated family; Davie still sore from a breakup. When they meet, Davie recognises Jordan as a boy he bullied at school but Jordan seems blissfully unaware that he’s hooking up with his persecutor. ‘Against the backdrop of a city steeped in memories, Davie and Jordan find themselves drawn together again and again. A fragile intimacy blossoms between them, but can anyone ever be free of their past?’ asks the blurb. I like the sound of that set up and it’s from Fairlight Press, the small indie who published several books by Douglas Bruton, author of With or Without Angels, Hope Never Knew Horizon and Woman in Blue.

I like the premise of Viola van de Sandt’s The Dinner Party set during a heatwave. The titular event is to be planned, cooked and cleared away by Franca who has left the Netherlands to live with Andrew whose wealthy parents have lent them a flat in South Kensington. Andrew insists that Franca concentrates on her writing rather than get a job but, clearly, there’s a price to pay. Just to add to her stress, an unexpected guest turns up, the fridge breaks down and everyone drinks far too much. The blurb comes with a quote setting up us up nicely: ‘I remember everything that happened in those three minutes at the beginning of the evening, him and me in the kitchen. That, and what happened at the end: the knife, and what I did with it’.

I would once have been thrilled at the prospect of a new John Irving but Queen Esther is included here more for old times’ sake than anything else. It takes his readers back to the setting of The Cider House Rules where Dr Wilbur Larch has taken in Esther, born in Vienna in 1905, whose father died on their transatlantic voyage and whose mother was murdered by anti-Semites. Larch struggles to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther in Maine, resorting to the Winslows when she’s fourteen, to whom she remains grateful for life. The novel ends in 1981 with Esther in Jerusalem having retraced her birth family’s steps. Not at all sure about that.

I’m ending with Ingvild Rishøi’s Winter Stories whose characters struggle to cope with disadvantage, from a young single mother trying to support her daughter to an ex-con’s attempts to build a relationship with his son. ‘With empathy and sensitivity, Ingvild Rishøi beautifully illuminates the vulnerability of the human condition. In a time when levels of scepticism and distrust are rising, these stories remind us of the humanity that unites as all’ says the blurb which sounds right up my street.

That’s it for November’s new fiction. As ever, a click on a title will take you to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with part one it’s here. Paperbacks soon…