It’s time for a look at some of what I most enjoyed reading this year – fiction, non-fiction, and graphic novels. As every it is not a complete list, and given how much I read over a year, there are always titles I will only remember well after posting this (with an oops, how did I forget that one? slap to the head, so apologies to anyone missed out).
If you are interested in buying any of these, please, if you can, consider doing so from your local, independent bookshop (Jeff Bezos does not need another yacht, as one of my colleagues put it!). If you buy online, you can use BookshopDotOrg which allows you to order a book and nominate a local Indie bookshop who will get a percentage of the sale (so you don’t have to use Spamazon)
Non-Fiction
The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of Global Britain,
Anna Whitelock,
Bloomsbury
2025 marked four centuries since James VI & I died, and there were several new history books marking this anniversary. I didn’t have time to read them all, of course, but Bloomsbury kindly sent me this one. Not so much a biography of the Scottish king who succeeded Elizabeth I to then sit on both the Scottish and English thrones, but about the world around him, changing, and laying the groundwork for what would come in later centuries (uniting the kingdoms, for both good and ill, something we’re still arguing about, the movement into colonialism that would lead to empire and to global trading, again something we’re still dealing with).
Earth Shapers: How Humans Mastered Geography and Remade the World,
Maxim Samson,
Profile Books
Samson traverses the centuries and the continents, examining the way different human cultures have interacted, for good and bad, with their environments, from the astonishing road networks linking pre-Columbian civilisations in South America to the “green wall” across the edge of the Sahara. It takes in history, politics, psychology, sociology and nature, in a fascinating and thought-provoking manner. Ideal for those who enjoyed the likes of Power of Geography.
Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: the Epic Story of the Making of the Godfather,
Mark Seal,
Gallery Books
Coppola’s movie has earned its place in the pantheon of greatest films of the 20th century, while Puzo’s novel which inspired it has remained in print for decades. This deep-dive explores both, taking in Puzo’s struggling writing career and gambling addiction, a struggling studio deciding to make a film of the book, the many problems that plagued the production, from personality clashes to problems with the real Mafia (from threats to suddenly wanting to be in the film), it is as compelling as the movie itself, and a great read for anyone who loves cinema.
It’s also a reminder that there was a time when now almost gods of cinema like Coppola and Pacino were all but unknown, with producers and studio execs wondering why they were bothering with them (seems bizarre to us now, from our perspective, of course)
Is a River Alive?
Robert MacFarlane,
Hamish Hamilton/Penguin
I love Robert’s work, and have been waiting several years, since his remarkable Underland book, and I was not disappointed. Travelling to different parts of the world, from South America to Canada to India, water is the connection here to each chapter, just as rivers and seas have traditionally been the connections between human societies.
MacFarlane doesn’t just visit these places, though, he travels with and listens to the local people who try to protect these environments, who explain its importance to them, not just a natural resource, but a part of their way of life. It doesn’t shy away from the awfulness of environmental damage, but it also underscores those fighting back – it is a warning, but it is also hopeful and inspiring, wrapped in MacFarlane’s beautiful, lyrical prose; one of those precious books that rekindles your sense of wonder about how remarkable our world is (and why we must take better care of it). My favourite read of 2025.
Graphic Novels
The Casebook of Stamford Hawksmoor,
Bryan Talbot,
Jonathan Cape
I consider Bryan Talbot to be pretty much the UK’s greatest comics creator, someone who has been at the top of his game for decades (I’ve also been fortunate enough to chair Bryan at the Edinburgh International Book Festival). His Grandville series was an absolute masterclass of clever storytelling (building layers with each volume), astonishingly detailed, rich artwork, and with multiple references (to history, art, films, other comics and more, demanding re-readings).
Here we have a prequel to Grandville, with LeBrock’s mentor, the great detective who trained him, Stamford Hawksmoor, a deliberately Sherlock Holmes themed character. It’s a superb piece of work, an engrossing mystery, woven through the last days of the old regime changing hands to the one we know in Grandville, and again layered with references, from Spiegelman’s Maus to The Outlaw Josey Wales (let no-one say Bryan’s influences are not diverse!). Although it is a prequel to Grandville, this could be read by anyone who hasn’t encountered that series, but obviously those who have will find more in the details to spot.
Muybridge,
Guy Delisle,
Drawn & Quarterly
I’ve taken photographs for as long as I can remember – my late Uncle Jim gave me a Kodak 110 camera (remember those?) when I was in primary school, then a few years later, my first 35mm camera – and I have been a huge fan of Guy Delisle’s work, especially his travel literature comics, so Guy looking at the odd life of Muybridge, one of the pioneers of early photography, was always going to fascinate me. If you’re not familiar with the name, you have almost certainly seen his astonishing sequence of still images that first captured a running horse, showing each step, and that the hooves did all leave the ground. Injured in a stagecoach accident, his personality noticeably changed (a head trauma?), and while his photographic genius remained, this is a man who would later commit murder (and get away with it).
It’s a fascinating insight into an unusual man attempting the impossible, and the influence that work had (not least cinema), although I think it could have done without the use of a photograph of animal abuse in one scene (that really wasn’t required, and should have had a warning, I think, the explicit scene not adding anything other than disgust, but that’s just one niggle in anotherwise fascinating book).
Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years,
Reihnhard Kleist,
SelfMadeHero
I’ve shouted out Reinhard’s work since the early days – back before his groundbreaking Cash: I See a Darkness graphic biography of Johnny Cash was published, on the FP Blog we highlighted it and said it needed to be translated and published into English. I’ve followed his work ever since, and had the good fortune to chair him at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Reinhard is a master at creating fascinating graphic biographies, especially of artists (his works on Nick Cave and Johnny Cash are amazing); he interweaves their artwork through the events of their life, knowing with an artist you really cannot separate them, giving a real flavour of the complex person who created that art.
Also, you have Bowie sharing a flat in then West Berlin (still Cold War, so Berlin Wall still up) with the equally iconic Iggy Pop, which almost sounds like the set up for a sit-com.
Second Shift,
Kit Anderson,
Avery Hill
I always find myself backing Kickstarter campaigns for some of Avery Hill’s new slate of publications each year, and this was one of them for 2025. A science fiction work, set on a distant world where three humans, working shifts and spending time between in isolation, plugged into “Station”, their AI, for distraction and amusement. There are echoes of the film Moon here and there – what are they really doing on this distant planet, does the mega corp that sent them even still exist, does the AI tell them the truth?
The discovery of a similar but now empty base to their own opens up a new line of enquiry for the main character, with Kit expertly sliding us into her world from the start so we discover things alongside her.
Dry Cleaned,
Joris Mertens (translated Julia Blackburn & Sandra Van Der Beek)
Jonathan Cape
François is a middle-aged man, the same suit every day, the cigarette dangling from his lips, doing the same work – a daily run in a van for a dry cleaning business. It always seems to be raining (symbolically he lacks even a raincoat), the raise he’s asked for over the years never appears, and now he’s training a younger worker, and worried they will take his job. His only lights are a local single woman and her daughter, who he dotes on, and he dreams of winning the lottery (playing the same numbers every time) and giving them and him a better life.
When a chance delivery for work leads to him stumbling into a bloody crime scene, there’s a chance to make easy money, and it is very tempting… I wasn’t familiar with this European creator until this book, and while I enjoyed the story, I did find it a little predictable in places, but oh wow, the artwork lifts it beyond that. Published in a larger format, it lets you enjoy that art – the rain-lashed streets of the city, the lights reflecting on wet roads, it is simply gorgeous comics artwork.
Fiction
Automatic Noodles,
Annelee Newlitz,
Tor/Macmillan
This was a lovely surprise – the publisher sent me a copy unexpectedly, and I was very pleased they did. A brief novella, it follows some robot workers in a bad fast food joint, waking each other up to discover their former employer has shut their awful business and fled, switching them all off and abandoning then. It’s near-future California, recovering from a war against “the Yankees” for independence (some of the robots also took part in the war, and have issues from it), and while the robots are nominally free, there are some who don’t like that, and the Yankee agitators operate social media sock puppets to sow dissension about things like robot rights.
In an attempt to keep their freedom, they all pool together to turn the abandoned business into a very good noodle place, something they can all enjoy working in and take pride from, while dealing with obstacles along the way. It’s brief, but it is a delightful read, and packs in a lot about identity, acceptance and second chances into a slim volume. Smile inducing.
When the Moon Hits Your Eye,
John Scalzi,
Tor/Macmillan
I’ve enjoyed Scalzi’s work for years, and his most recent works, such as Starter Villain (a man in a career-life crisis discovers he has inherited his estranged late uncle’s business empire, which turns out to be a front for a supervillain organisation, complete with volcano lair!), have veered towards a more light-hearted approach, partly in response to the dismal period of Covid and Lockdown. Moon is another fun read, taking one of the oldest comedy tropes in SF – that the Moon is made of cheese – and making it a reality.
Starting with panic in the Neil Armstrong museum as they realise their prize moon rock specimen is now cheese (“what kind of cheese?” someone asks), it then goes around a diverse cast of people coming to the realisation of what has happened, impossible though it should be, and what it actually means, from physicists to religious figures trying to make sense of it.
Dinner at the Night Library,
Hika Harada (translated Philip Gabriel),
Scribner
Japanese fiction in translation has been big in the UK in recent years, every since the success of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series (which I enjoyed), and it is a bit of a running joke in the book trade that so many feature a bookshop or library and a cat on the cover (as indeed this one does!). Our central character is offered a job by a mysterious employer who only appears online (with no video) to talk to them, at a remote library that houses collections from deceased authors, all the books they wrote, all the ones they collected.
It’s in a distant location, so has its own dormitory and canteen, where the chef makes daily menus inspired by recipe ideas from novels. There’s a mild mystery or two, and it is a gentle read, very Japanese (everything done a certain way), but after a couple of heavy duty books, this was the perfect tonic, well-written but also easy going, and very much aimed at book lovers.
The Haunting of Hero’s Bay,
Amanda Block,
Hodder
I really enjoyed Amanda’s debut novel a few years ago, The Lost Storyteller, and recommended it quite a bit in our bookshop, so I was looking forward to her second book. Following a young man who finds himself drifting a bit following his long-time romance falling apart (and worse, his ex is now marrying someone else and inviting him and his family to the wedding), he takes a job with his aunt, swapping Edinburgh for the West Country, where she is renovating an old buildings as a hotel.
The tiny, seaside village is famed for an enormous painting showing a shipwreck in the bay, created by an aristocratic artist who lost his life swimming to the rescue of a similar shipwreck. The past of smugglers and wreckers on that rugged coast, art and modern day life start to converge in a very satisfying manner. Ghosts, art, history and romance.
Jesus Christ Kinski,
Benjamin Meyers,
Bloomsbury
Yes, this is that Kinski – Klaus, the famously insane German actor (and I do mean insane literally, he was certified and put into care at one point). This is quite a departure for Meyers, very different from his other works, and you find him pondering his choices as half of the book is Kinski’s inner monologue as he performs a one-man show about Jesus on stage in Germany in the 1970s, and the other half is the author debating with himself, why am I writing this, why does this performance by a much-maligned, egotistic, mad German actor most folk don’t remember compel me to write about them instead of doing another “hit” novel or another that gets filmed? It’s very different and totally compelling, one of the more intriguing and unusual novels I’ve read in 2025.
Dark Crescent,
Lyndsey Croal,
Luna Press
I’ve known Lyndsey for some time, through our Edinburgh based Shoreline of Infinity journal of science fiction, and our annual Cymera SF literary festival, and I was delighted to read this collection of short tales by her, ahead of us having an absolutely terrific launch night for it in our bookshops. Dark Crescent’s stories mostly riff on, or are inspired by, Scottish folklore, some with obvious roots, given their own, unique twist and angle, others are more her own invention, but feel very much like there is a real legend inspiring it, which you feel you could go and look up.
The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre,
Philip Fracassi,
RunForIt/Orbit
I really enjoyed Philip’s Boys in the Valley, a horror novel with icy teeth, set in a remote, early 1900s Catholic orphanage during a snowstorm, where a sheriff’s posse bring in a dying suspect covered in arcane tattoos, that looses something demonic within the walls. This new book is tonally totally different from that Exorcist-vibe tale – yes it is horror, there are multiple deaths, but it also much lighter and actually rather fun in places (despite the body count!).
Set in a retirement home where a couple of residents start to suspect the recent spate of deaths is not just due to the age and infirmity of the residents, but a cover for a serial killer to do their work, this is a total hoot – imagine your slasher movie “final girl” being in her eighties, and you start to get the picture. A terrific collision of humour and horror.
