Summer Reads 2025 from Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly

The Bewitching

Sylvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)

In the 1990s, a college student’s investigation into her favorite horror author’s mysterious past turns up strange echoes of the stories her superstitious great grandmother told her in her youth and lands her in supernatural peril. Braiding a classic New England gothic with a tale of bloody witchcraft in 1900 Mexico, the sophisticated latest from bestseller Moreno-Garcia is dark academia at its most chilling and irresistible.

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Harmattan Season

Tochi Onyebuchi (Tor)

Told with Raymond Chandler swagger, this gripping fantasy noir combines an edge-of-your-seat mystery with a searing indictment of colonialism. World Fantasy Award winner Onyebuchi’s magic-infused West African setting comes vividly to life as private investigator Boubacar takes on an impossible case against a background of increasing political turmoil. The hardboiled tone hits just right, and the fast pace keeps the pages flying.

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The Magician of Tiger Castle

Louis Sachar (Ace)

The National Book Award–winning author of Holes makes his adult debut with this transportive, fairy tale–inflected meditation on whose history gets told and who does the telling. Set in a Renaissance-esque fantasy world and narrated by a hapless court magician, it chronicles the forbidden romance between a princess and a scribe. Sachar, writing in his singular and often understated voice, proves his storytelling chops transcend genres and ages.

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Of Monsters and Mainframes

Barbara Truelove (Bindery)

Dracula, werewolves, and Frankenstein’s monster make their way to outer space in this gloriously gonzo genre-bender. As the sentient spaceship Demeter contends with a barrage of Halloween monsters preying on her human passengers, Truelove gleefully blends pulp science fiction and B-movie horror tropes. The result is pure entertainment.

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Six Wild Crowns

Holly Race (Orbit)

Race’s Queens of Elben series launch invites readers into a lushly imagined alternate Tudor England where Henry VIII is married to all six of his wives at once. As Boleyn navigates her marriage to Henry and fraught relationship with lady’s maid Seymour, who is secretly a spy, she uncovers startling truths about the way magic works in her patriarchal world. Add in an abundance of dragons and plentiful romantic angst, and this is a winner.

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