7 New & Notable Books Coming in October 2025

When a mysterious illness strips its victims of their memories and identity, places like The Center are there to help them find their way back to society. 

Every day, students attend classes to help them relearn how to speak and interact with one another. They’re given names and roles, and in their free time, they practice what they’ve learned.

 But as memories of their old lives start to creep in, the students begin to question everything they’ve been told and embrace the ways in which they might define themselves.

American forensic anthropologist Agnes is called to a bog in northwest England when a body is found. It’s more than 2,000 years old, but it’s almost completely preserved. 

There’s far more than just the body of an Iron Age woman hidden in the peat moss, but peat-cutters and activists both stand in her way. 

As she struggles to understand the deep history of what she has uncovered, she’s forced to question who she is and how she fits in the modern world while examining the past.

Cora and Sam aren’t the type to have an affair. That’s what they tell themselves, anyway. But when the two meet at a baby group in their small town, there’s no denying their chemistry.

As their connection grows stronger, their lives continue to intertwine, moving from romantic tension to all-consuming passion. 

Their lives unravel differently in two timelines. In one, they resist the temptation. In the other, they give in to their feelings.

Is one better than the other? And can Cora and Sam figure out what really matters in the end?

Bathory has managed to create an eclectic job history before her thirtieth birthday. Of course, that’s to be expected considering she comes from a family of assassins. 

What’s not expected is the fact that her family has a rather surprising view on love. They’re for it, Bathory is against it. She’d rather not have any messy entanglements. 

Oh, and she’d also prefer to die young. But doing both is easier said than done, particularly when it comes to one alluring figure from her father’s past.

Gish was born into a much different world than her mother. But that doesn’t mean the patterns started in 1925 Shanghai won’t be repeated. Then, Loo Shu-hsin didn’t behave the way wealthy girls should. 

She ends up at a Catholic school where she is renamed for St. Agnes. Eventually, Aggie leaves China to pursue a degree in America.

By the time Gish is born, her parents live in a small house in the suburbs with a failing marriage. 

Aggie heard the refrain, “Bad, bad girl!” throughout her childhood. And as she struggles to understand her strong-willed American daughter, she finds those words spilling from her mouth more and more.

Not even Milwaukee is immune to the Great Depression. Hicks McTaggart was once a strike-breaker who now hopes to find steady work as a private eye. 

He goes to Wisconsin on what should be a routine case. All he has to do is bring back a missing heiress to a cheese company. But somehow, instead of finding her, he ends up shanghaied to Hungary.

It’s a mad dash across Europe where Nazis are spreading and spies run rampant. His skills keep him alive and out of trouble until he can find the heiress.

And then he can only hope that somehow he can bring them both back to Milwaukee in one piece.

Two years after their vacation on Cape Cod, Rocky and her family are living in Western Massachusetts.

Rocky struggles to balance her anxiety with her expanding family. Her daughter, Willa, is home from college, her father-in-law has moved in, and her son has just started a new job. 

But when Rocky becomes obsessed with a local accident, she might bring about consequences, and maybe even a medical condition, that she hopes won’t affect her family at all.