Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For October, we’re looking at vampire horror, historical fiction spanning the 1800s and 1900s, literary fiction, a twisty new thriller with an unusual premise, ecologically themed nonfiction, a story of a spinach empire, and an audiobook about a safari that takes a murderous turn.
If you want horror:
Stephen Graham Jones’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025)*
If you’re looking for horror for Halloween, you can’t go wrong with this vampire tale set on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana in 1912. A Lutheran priest’s diary unearthed in 2012 reveals a terrifying and bloody tale of vengeance.
Recommended for those who enjoyed Victor D. LaValle’s Lone Women, Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and/or Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory.
*Ebook also available on Libby.
If you enjoy historical fiction:
Chris Bohjalian’s The Jackal’s Mistress (2025)
Based on a true story, the latest from Chris Bohjalian, a historical romance, follows Libby Steadman. Life is precarious in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War. Libby’s Confederate husband is missing, the Confederate army requisitions all the grain her farm can produce, and control of the Valley changes hands on the regular. When she discovers a Union officer left for dead near her farm, she makes a fateful decision.
Recommended for those who enjoyed James Lee Burke’s Flags on the Bayou and Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts.
Karen Russell’s The Antidote (2025)**
If you like your historical fiction a bit more recent or with more of a magical realism flair, try this new book from Karen Russell, who wrote Swamplandia. Set during the Great Depression in a fictional Nebraska town during the historic Black Friday dust storm, the novel focuses on a wide range of characters as they grapple with the storm and other problems on top of that, including a time-traveling camera and a talking scarecrow.
Recommended for those who enjoyed Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams and Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Woman of Light.
**Ebook and audiobook also available on Libby.
Ellen Yardley’s Eleanor and the Cold War (2025)***
The first book in a new series, Eleanor and the Cold War offers up a fictional mystery set in the 1950s and starring former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor and her new secretary Kay are drawn into investigating a murder when a woman is found dead in the train station.
Recommended for those who enjoyed Marie Benedict’s The Queens of Crime.
***Ebook also available on Hoopla.
Katherine Reay’s The English Masterpiece (2025)
Diana Gilden expects her Picasso exhibit at the Tate Museum in London to be the capstone of her tremendous career, particularly with the painting she has newly acquired and intends to unveil. That all goes up in flames when her new assistant takes the opportunity to announce in the middle of the opening that the new piece is a fake. Complications ensue.
Recommended for fans of the work of Patti Callahan Henry, Kate Quinn, Ariel Lawhon, and Donna Tartt.
If you prefer contemporary literary fiction:
Shobh Rao’s Indian Country (2025)
A newly married couple from India relocates to Montana–they are tied through love but not for each other. The husband, Sagar, is drawn to America by his love for rivers and his work on a new dam. The wife, Janavi, is there only because her beloved sister was supposed to marry Sagar instead and didn’t want to, so Janavi accepted the marriage her parents had arranged. They are strangers in a strange land, and things get even stranger when one of Sagar’s coworkers is found dead in the river.
Recommended for those who enjoy the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
If you love experimental thrillers:
Peter Swanson’s Kill Your Darlings (2025)
Peter Swanson’s latest thriller is billed a mystery in reverse. It starts at the end, with Peter and Wendy Graves as an ostensibly successful married couple. They’ve been together 25 years, live in a gorgeous home, share a son, and have cultivated successful careers. Wendy is a poet, while Peter is a literature professor. Nevertheless, Wendy wants her husband to die, and this novel explains why, by telling the story backwards.
Recommended for those who enjoyed Liane Moriarty’s Apples Never Fall, as well as the work of Alice Feeney, Ruth Ware, Riley Sager, Shari Lapena, and Lisa Jewell.
If you like nonfiction:
Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty’s Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie (2025)
The American Prairie looms large in the United States’s history and cultural identity. It was a substantial barrier to settlement in the 1800s, the source of the nation’s breadbasket for many years, and the original scene of the crime (so to speak) for the Dust Bowl. It is also one of the most ecologically rich environments in the country, housing an astonishing range of organisms in every cubic yard. This new book, penned by two Midwestern environmental journalists, tells the story of the Prairie’s past, present, and future.
Recommended for those who enjoyed Amy Gamerman’s The Crazies and Jordan Thomas’s When It All Burns.
Sara Kehaulani Goo’s Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai’i (2025)
A more personal story in a very different setting but equally as invested in the fate of the land is Kuleana. The author’s Hawaiian family received 60 acres along the Maui coast from King Kamehameha III in 1848. Over the years, they have managed to hang on as many of their neighbors have sold to developers. But a massive tax bill forces the family to reconsider whether they should sell or try to keep fighting to maintain their inheritance. In telling her own story, Sara Kehaulani Goo also discusses the history of Hawaiian land and her own efforts to reconnect with her Hawaiian culture.
Recommended for fans of memoirs that also incorporate stories about families and ancestral land.
John Seabrook’s The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty (2025)****
Once upon a time, the Seabrooks of New Jersey rose to become wealthy from their humble vegetable business. The Gilded Age patriarch of the family was known as the “Henry Ford of agriculture,”but within a few generations, it all came crashing down. Get the inside scoop on the rise and fall of the Seabrooks, courtesy of descendant John Seabrook, who airs out a lot of dirty family laundry in the process.
Recommended for those who enjoyed Sonia Purnell’s Kingmaker and David Hill’s The Vapor.
****Audiobook also available on Hoopla.
If you need audiobooks:
Jaclyn Goldis’s The Safari (2025)
Odelia is a high-powered fashion executive who’s all set to marry a man much younger. Not everyone in the family may be happy about it, but she is determined to celebrate and invites all those closest to her to a South African safari resort. One thing leads to another and Odelia is found murdered just hours before her wedding was to take place.
Recommended for those who enjoyed Chris Bohjalian’s The Lioness.
What’s your favorite new-ish books? What books are you buzzing about for 2025? Have you read any of these books? Tell us in the comments! As always, please follow this link to our online library catalog for more information on any of these items or to place them on hold.
Berryville Book Buzz 