New Books Releasing WE 26.10.25
New Books Publishing the
Week of
20 October 2025
When They Burned the Butterfly
by Wen-yi Lee
Singapore, 1972: Newly independent and grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters in Chinese secret societies are the last conduits of their ancestors' migrant gods, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place magic has not been assimilated and legislated away.
Loner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never needed more company than the flame she can summon at her fingertips. But when her mother dies in a house fire with a butterfly seared onto her skin and Adeline hunts down a girl she saw in a back-alley barfight—a girl with a butterfly tattoo—she discovers she’s far from alone.
Ang Tian is a Red Butterfly: one of a gang of girls who came from nothing, sworn to a fire goddess and empowered to wreak vengeance on the men that abuse and underestimate them. Adeline’s mother led a double life as their elusive patron, Madam Butterfly. Now that she’s dead, Adeline’s bloodline is the sole thing sustaining the goddess. Between her search for her mother’s killer and the gang’s succession crisis, Adeline becomes quickly entangled with the girls’ dangerous world, and even more so with the charismatic Tian.
But no home lasts long around here. Ambitious and paranoid neighbor gangs hunt at the edges of Butterfly territory, and bodies are turning up in the red light district suffused with a strange new magic. Adeline may have found her place for once, but with the streets changing by the day, it may take everything she is to keep it.
The Isle in the Silver Sea
by Tasha Suri
In an England fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes.
Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen’s court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?
As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them.
But what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?
The Forsaken and the Fated
by Camilla Raines
Time is running out, and the dead are hungry…
Gabriel Hawthorne is missing, and Miles Warren—psychic, co-conspirator, and aspiring boyfriend—is terrified. The prophecy stands unbroken; if the future remains unchanged, Gabriel will die. Armed with Florence’s grimoire, they might stand a chance of breaking the Hawthorne curse and preventing Gabriel’s murder—but only if Miles can find him.
Meanwhile, Miles’s parents are furious that he’s been helping Gabriel at all—and they don’t even know the half of it. The mystery of the century-long feud between their two families continues to deepen, but Miles is certain that healing the rift is key to lifting the curse and saving Gabriel’s life. Plus, he’d like his parents to give the boy he’s maybe, sort-of dating a chance.
With new premonitions changing everything and the dark power of the grimoire whispering in their ears, Miles and Gabriel are running out of time. Both their lives are on the line, and danger lives closer to home than they know…
The Lost Reliquary
by Lyndsay Ely
The Devoted Lands was once home to many gods. Now, after centuries of brutal wars, only Tempestra-Innara, the Enduring Flame, remains.
As a divine warrior, Lys is outwardly loyal to her goddess. If she dreams of deicide, that’s her business. When a routine heretical execution erupts into a near-fatal assassination attempt on Tempestra-Innara, Lys sees a glimmer of hope for her freedom.
Lys is chosen to hunt down the heretics and find an ancient reliquary with the power to kill a god. Annoyingly, she’s not alone. Paired with Nolan, a warrior from a rival cloister who is as pious as he is determined, Lys must feign devotion if she hopes to keep her own god-killing ambitions within reach.
But as they pursue the heretics linked to the assassination, Lys uncovers a world with more possibility—and peril—than she ever anticipated.

Slayers of Old
by Jim C. Hines
Three former Chosen Ones have joined together to spend their retirement in peace and quiet, running Second Life Books and Gifts in Salem, MA. A calm, peaceful, tourist-filled oasis, where they never have to worry about saving the world. Until some of the locals start summoning ancient creatures best left where they were . . . and they discover that their bookstore basement just may be the portal to the underworld. These ex-heroes may have thought they were done . . . but if they want to finish their retirement in peace, they’ll have to join together to save the world one last time.
Why leave saving the world to the young? Cozy mystery readers looking for an extra dash of magic will eat this story up: fun, funny, and heartwarming, it's a novel about community, second chances, and the healing power of scones.
King Sorrow
by Joe Hill
Arthur Oakes is a reader, a dreamer, and a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters, exceptional library, and beautiful buildings. But his idyll—and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot—is shattered when a local drug dealer and her partner corner him into one of the worst crimes he can imagine: stealing rare books from the college library.
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.
But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.
Girl Dinner
by Olivie Blake
Good girls deserve a treat.
Every member of The House, the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni, are beautiful, high-achieving, and universally respected.
After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being one of the chosen few accepted into The House is the first step in her path to the brightest possible future. Once she's taken into their fold, the House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as easy prey.
Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after accepting a demotion to support her partner's new position at the cutthroat University. After 18 months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane's clothes don’t fit right, her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is, and even the few hours a day she's apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in the way the alumnae seem to have it all, achieving a level of collective perfection that Sloane so desperately craves.
As Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs. And when they are finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.
The Midnight Knock
by John Fram
In the frigid west Texas desert, weary travelers converge at a lonely roadside motel nestled at the foot of a massive mountain. Ethan and Hunter have left behind a corpse, a fire, and a horrific act of violence. Kyla and Fernanda are fleeing for the border. Stanley and his granddaughter are returning from Mexico with a mysterious man in hot pursuit. All of them are on the run from something. All of them are hiding something.
And somehow, they’re all connected to the motel’s other guest, an enigmatic woman named Sarah Powers.
Within hours, Sarah is dead. The strange twins who run the Brake Inn Motel inform the surviving guests that her murder demands justice. The guests are given an ultimatum: uncover the killer by midnight—or die when the protective lights around the motel go out.
Because something very old and very dangerous lurks in this corner of the desert. And it’s hungry.
But nothing at the Brake Inn Motel is quite as it seems. As time ticks away, alliances fracture, secrets unravel, and the guests will not only have to confront the violence of the past—they will need to face the darkness within themselves.
Labyrinth
by A.G. Riddle
Alan Norris has lost everything. Except for his daughter. And he's willing to do anything to protect her.
The day of his wife's funeral, as he's walking to give the eulogy, the ringing in his ears starts. His tinnitus began when he was in the Marines, the day a roadside bomb went off. Usually, it's a low whine - a tea kettle that never quite boils. But as his prosthetic and his good leg sink into the soggy grass, the ringing changes. That afternoon, the ringing only he can hear sounds like three jagged rocks dropped in a tin can and shaken.
When the rattling hits a crescendo, he sees a series of numbers: 12122518914208.
He assumes it's a stress reaction. A hallucination. He's wrong about that. And several other things.
The ringing and the numbers are a mystery, but the worst part is that when that unseen hand shakes the can, Alan begins to lose time.
A few minutes at first.
Then longer.
Until one night, he wakes up next to a dead body.
He could call the police. Or run. He doesn't do either. Because he doesn't know what happened to his daughter during the time he lost, leaving him no choice but to dig deeper.
Alan soon discovers he's not the only one seeing the numbers. And that the sequence is key to a conspiracy with far-reaching consequences. For him and the entire world.
The Demon and the Light
by Axie Oh
The battle is over, but the war is just beginning...
With the help of her friends and allies, Ren managed to topple the General's insurrection, but the Floating World and its territories are still under threat of attack from the rival Volmaran Empire. And far worse, she was powerless to save Sunho from being overcome by the monstrous power in his blood. Now he's gone, transformed into a feral, deadly creature that doesn't even recognize her anymore, and her heart aches for the sweet boy she's grown to love.
But the escalating war will not pause for her grief. Seen by some as a heavenly savior and others merely a figurehead to be manipulated, Ren must use all her courage and cunning to survive the royal court's game long enough to find Sunho and bring him home before he loses himself to the Demon forever.
The Rose Field
by Philip Pullman
Picking up right where The Secret Commonwealth left off, this story finds Lyra alone in a city haunted by daemons, searching for her beloved Pan. Malcolm Polstead isn't far behind, searching for Lyra. And they are both racing toward the desert of Karamakan, following the trail of roses said to hold the secret of Dust.
Their allies and enemies are converging on the mysterious red building at the heart of the desert: Marcel Delamare and the military might of the Magisterium; the radical Men from the Mountains; scientists, scholars and spies; troops of witches and other people of the air. And awaiting them all is a previously unseen and chilling new threat that will change everything.
The intertwining odysseys of Malcolm and Lyra, their journeys both internal and external, will test their limits and challenge even their most dearly held beliefs.
A Curious Kind of Magic
by Mara Rutherford
Everyone in Ardmuir knows that Willow Stokes is a charlatan, including Willow herself. Her father’s shoppe hasn’t sold anything magical in decades, and it’s only hanging on by the skin of the fake dragon’s teeth Willow sells as charms, along with “enchanted” ostrich eggs, taxidermied chimeras, and talismans made of fools’ gold.
Until outlander Brianna Hargrave appears and turns Willow’s fakes into exactly what they’re purported to be. But try as Willow might to enlist Bri’s help, she wants nothing to do with Willow and her curiosities.
Because Brianna is harboring a secret of her own: everything she touches turns to magic, and the consequences have chased her all the way to Ardmuir. All she wants to do is find a particular missing grimoire, which contains a spell that can finally put an end to her curse.
Desperate to keep her father's shoppe, Willow proposes a bargain that could save them both. Together with the frustratingly handsome printer's assistant, the girls will uncover a plot that goes far deeper than either could have imagined. But when Willow is forced to participate in an ambitious collector's quest for the rarest magical object in the world—a quest that risks almost-certain death—she learns that not all treasure is for sale, and that true magic is closer than she ever could have imagined.
Witches of Honeysuckle House
by Liz Parker
Florence and Evie Caldwell have long disagreed on how to break their family’s curse, and tension has been high since their mother’s death thirteen years ago. Honeysuckle House, the family estate where every Caldwell has lived, now only houses one of the sisters. Evie has crafted it into an enchanted bed-and-breakfast while Florence runs a magical bookstore in town, refusing to even set foot inside Honeysuckle House.
But when the house starts behaving dangerously and catches fire, Florence and Evie must set aside their differences and dig into past generations of their family and the town’s history before the curse claims someone they love.
Good Spirits
by B.K. Borison
He’s the Ghost of Christmas Past. She’s not exactly Scrooge.
Ghost of Christmas Past Nolan Callahan intends to spend this holiday haunting like every other—get in, get out, return to his otherwise aimless existence as a ghost awaiting the afterlife. But when he’s faced with Harriet York, the sweetest assignment he’s ever had, he suddenly finds himself wishing for a future.
Harriet York has no idea why she’s being haunted. She’s a good person—or, at least, she tries to be. A people pleaser to her core, she always does what’s expected of her. But as she and Nolan begin to examine her past, they discover there are threads that bind them together— and realize there might be more to moving on than expected.
With the deadline of Christmas Eve fast approaching, will they find the key to their futures in each other’s pasts? Or will they stay firmly in the present, indulging in their unexpected, spirited connection?
The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah
by Jean Meltzer
Can these exes rekindle their love this Hanukkah?
Evelyn Schwartz has the perfect Hanukkah planned: eight jam-packed days producing the live-action televised musical of A Christmas Carol. Who needs family when you’ve got long hours, impossible deadlines, and your dream job? That is, until an accident on set lands her in the medical bay with one of her chronic migraines, and she’s shocked to find her ex-husband, David Adler, filling in for the usual studio doctor.
It’s been two years since David walked away from Evelyn and their life in Manhattan, and his ex-wife is still the same workaholic who puts her career before everything else—especially her health. But when Evelyn begins hallucinating “ghosts” tied to her past heartbreaks, and every single one leads to David, he finds himself spending much more time with her than he anticipated. And denying the still-smoldering chemistry between them becomes impossible.
As Evelyn revisits her ghosts of Hanukkah past, she and David both begin to wonder if they can have a Hanukkah future. But with a high-stakes production ramping up the pressure on Evelyn, and troublesome spirits forcing them both to confront their most difficult shared memories, it might just take a Hanukkah miracle for these two exes to light the flame on their second-chance at love.
Blind Date with a Werewolf
by Patricia Briggs
Dear Asil:
We are worried about you. A werewolf alone is a sad thing, especially at Christmastime. So we have a challenge for you: five dates in three weeks. We have taken the work out of it and connected you with five people from online dating sites. You should also know that we have informed the whole pack and instigated a betting pool. Have fun!
Sincerely,
Your Concerned Friends
The Things Gods Break
by Abigail Owen
The gods want her dead...Hades will bury them.
You’d think I’d have learned by now:
Don’t mouth off to deities.
Don’t fall for the King of the Underworld.
And definitely don’t get dragged into a divine death match where I’m the cursed mortal prize.
But here I am—trapped in Tartarus, humanity’s worst pit stop, squaring off against monsters who make the gods look merciful. Titans, twisted by centuries of rage and ruin, are sealed behind seven ancient locks.
And guess what?
I'm the key.
To escape, I’ll have to survive every horrifying trial they throw at me.
To win, I might have to become something the gods never saw coming.
Oh, and Hades?
He's about to break every rule the gods ever wrote.
Because to save me...the god of death will burn the world.
But if I break free? So do the Titans.
And the world won’t just suffer—it'll beg for the end.
The Captive and the First Blood Game
by K. A. Linde
Everyone wants a piece of her.
He wants it all.
Reyna Carpenter trusted the wrong people…and paid the price.
Held captive in the heart of a vampire empire, her freedom stripped and blood claimed, Reyna survives the only way she knows how—hope. Hope that she’ll find a way to escape. Hope that she’ll be reunited with Beckham. Hope that when she gets out of here, love will be waiting on the other side.
Except escape isn’t salvation. It’s only the beginning.
Because the world outside has changed. Lines have been drawn. Allegiances have shifted. And Reyna? She’s no longer the girl who walked willingly into the dark.
But she’d do it all over again for Beckham.
Now she has to decide how far she’ll go to reclaim her freedom…and the vampire she’s fallen for. Because power runs through Reyna’s veins, power others will do anything to control—which means she’ll have to do more than just survive.
She’ll have to fight back.
Comments
Post a Comment