Publishers Weekly - 25 Aug 2025
FALL Announcement
Independent presses of all sizes are winning by mixing it up.
Indies are sailing into the season with courage and creativity.
This year’s regional bookseller conferences focus on education and community-building.
We spotlight self-published sci- and fantasy titles, plus we’ve got reviews and more.
A sponsored uide to hot fall titles from independent presses.
The Week in Publishing
We talk with authors R.T. Ester and Angie Hobbs, and Pegasus publisher Jessica Case.
We look at Christina the Astonishing by Marianne Leone.
Deals
Based on a real-life mystery, Anna North’s latest novel explores a puzzling death, Iron Age druids, and climate change.
Big Names, Small
General Non ction
General Fiction
Picture Books
Religion & Spirituality
SF, Fantasy & Horror
Mysteries & rillers
Romance & Erotica
Nonfiction
Inspirational
Bestsellers
120… Comics
Comics
Fiction
Mothers
Take Your Time
GOOGLE PICTURE BOOK AI RANKLES
WHITE HOUSE KILLS CREATIVE WRITING GRANTS
DIAMOND BANKRUPTCY ENTERS HOME STRETCH
INDIE PUBLISHING WORLD
LOSES TWO PIONEERS
Top 10 Overall Bestsellers, Aug. 10–16
IBPA NAMES NEW BOARD CHAIR
HARPERCOLLINS REINVESTS IN IN-HOUSE DISTRIBUTION
HUGO AWARDS MAKE A COMEBACK
BIG NAMES, SMALL
HOUSES
—Claire Kirch
Hardcover Frontlist Nonfiction
THREE’S COMPANY
STAR STRICKEN
HIDDEN COSTS
Children’s Picture Books
Trade Paperback Frontlist
IN BRIEF
“For me, growing up was a process of being pretty uncertain about how human interaction was supposed to work.”
In this universe, arti cial intelligence has progressed to produce fully sentient technolo y, but protagonist V-Dot doesn’t trust the sentients. Why?
JESSICA CASE PUBLISHER, PEGASUS BOOKS
R.T. ESTER
ANGIE HOBBS
Where the Bodies Are Buried
A DARK TURN
STAR POWER
NOVEL CHALLENGES
HISTORY MATTERS
THE BIG INDIE CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF FALL
STRENGTH
IN NUMBERS
STRENGTH
IN NUMBERS
OUT WITH THE OLD
CHAMPAGNE WISHES & CAVIAR MEMES
Jonathan Blake Fostar, editor-in-chief
Harris Lahti, cofounder and editor
FALL REGIONALS PREVIEW
PROGRAMMING
PROGRAMMING
HIGHLIGHTS
Creating a Salon: The Magic of Conversations That Matter
A Task Force Called Faith
Thrill Ride: The Transformation of Hersheypark
Facing Climate Anxiety
DIY Spirituality: Chart Your Own Sacred Path
Embodying Autism
Someday All the Adults Will Die!: The Birth of Texas Punk
Get Started in Finger Knitting
Touching Peace
Peace Is This Moment Journal
The Mental Health Contagion
I Give Myself Permission
Starman Tarot: Remastered
How to Dream
Healing the Trauma of Infidelity
The Orvis Quick-Start Guide to Fly-Fishing
Finding Home: A Memoir
A Brilliant Adaptation
Heartbeats: A Memoir
John Candy: A Life in Comedy
A Little Piece of Cuba: A Journey to Become Cubana-Americana
MORE: A Memoir
Love Made Me an Inventor
More Than Half Way Home
No Woman Left Behind: A Journey of Hope to Heal Every Woman Injured in Childbirth
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: The Outrageous, Definitive, Untold History
Mothership Connected: The Women of Parliament-Funkadelic
A Talk in the Woods: Voices Along the Appalachian Trail
Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood
Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging
Beyond Control
Women Shaping the West: Stories from Wyoming
Eyes in the Soles of My Feet: From Horseshoe Crabs to Sycamores, Exploring Hidden Connections to the Natural World
The Forgotten Teachers: How Nature Wrote the Story of Life
One Hand Clapping
The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs
The Gaslit Brain
Ahhh, Milk!: The Many Ways Milk is Made
Attention Authors of Earth
The Adventures of Cipollino
The Academy
Wavelength
The Crimson Throne
Andy: A Dog's Tale
A to Z Alphabet Seek & Find
Around the World Celebrations
Bea's Balikbayan Box of Treasures
Don't Eat Me! The Almost True Story of Belladonna
Bravo for Backstage
Dear Duck, Please Come!
Flora and the Jazzers
The Great Tamale Treasure Hunt/La gran búsqueda de los tamales
Hello, Snow!
From Earth to Eris
The Giving Flower
Tummies Flip, Hearts Skip: A Book About How Feelings Feel
My Grandma and Grandpa Rock
Rafa and the Wrong Legs
The Sweetest Taste
Sweet Dreams
These ABCs Belong to Me!
The Mood Swing
Painting Wonder
Sacrament
Heart the Lover
Eye of the Monkey
Norwegian writer Leif Høghaug spins a phantasmagoric western from the perspective of a lawn gnome in The Calf, trans. by David M. Smith.
A Nigerian restaurateur and a British diplomat
seek bloody vengeance against the men in their
lives in Nuzo Onoh’s Futility.
Bestseller Brynne Weaver’s Tourist Season, a dark romantic comedy, pairs up rival serial killers in a quaint seaside town.
Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story
Nova Scotia House
The High Heaven
The Museum of Future Mistakes
Time Tunnel: Stories and Essays
Th e Calf
Th e Mind Reels
Vaim
Self Care
Attacking Earth and Sun
Analog Days
Crawl: Stories
A Stranger Comes to Town
Looking for Tank Man
Th e Elopement
The Wax Child
The Third Love
Last Night at the Disco
Rumoured
The Haunting of Emily Grace
Peace, Love & Haight
A Season for Spies: A Lane Winslow Prequel
The Hidden River: A Murder in the Everglades
A Case of Life and Limb
Who Killed One the Gun?
In Deadly Fashion
She’s Going to Pay
The Dentist
Murder in Constantinople
The Ganymedan
Exo
I Make My Own Fun
A Harvest of Furies
Vampires at Sea
Futility
Local Heavens
Call and Response: Stories of the Fantastic
Audition for the Fox
Grape Juice
The Hunger We Pass Down
We Are Always Tender with Our Dead
The Reluctant Reaper
Only Rakes Need Apply
Summer Skate
Undead and Unwed
Tourist Season
It Happened on a Sunday
C Is for Courting
The Songbird and the Surveyor
The Last Time We Spoke: A Story of Loss
Even If I Perish
Cannon
Spectators
More Weight: A Salem Story
Our Reviewers
Hitler and My Mother-in-Law: A Memoir
Can I Say That? Why Free Speech Matters and How to Use It Fearlessly
Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed
In Unabridged, journalist Stefan Fatsis takes a look at the minor and major dramas of dictionary making across its centuries-long history.
Tech entrepreneur David Tuch profiles his late cousin, whom he credits with shaping modern drug trafficking, in The Wireless Operator.
Patchwork: A Sewist’s Diary
Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon
Why Plato Matters Now
DILF: Did I Leave Feminism?
Racebook: A Personal History of the Internet
Love Will Save Us, Right? A Memoir Suzette Partido. City Lights, $16.95 trade
Chasing Down the Zombie Hunter: The True Story of a Small-Town Accountant, an Elite Group of Detectives, and Arizona’s Most Terrifying Cold Case
California Rewritten: A Journey
rough the Golden State’s New Literature
Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary
Eyes in the Soles of My Feet: From Horseshoe Crabs to Sycamores, Exploring Hidden Connections to the Natural World
John Candy: A Life in Comedy
Chet: King Picker and Pioneer of the Nashville Sound
The Future Is Collective: Effective Workplace Strategies for Building a Culture of Care
Murder on the Mississippi: The Shocking Crimes That Shaped Abraham Lincoln
AI for the Rest of Us: An Illustrated Introduction
Born: A History of Childbirth and the Female Struggle to Govern Our Bodies
Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA
Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time
Alabama Village: Faith, Hope, and Survival in a Southern Town
The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late
Wim Carton and Andreas Malm. Verso,
Squirrel: How a Backyard Forager Shapes Our World
The Wireless Operator: The Untold Story of the British Sailor Who Invented the Modern Drug Trade
Food Fight: From Plunder and Pro t to People and Planet
Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley
Israel on the Brink: And the Eight Revolutions at Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence
Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights
The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War
Seven Rivers: A Journey Through the Currents of Human History
So You Want to Own Greenland?: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump
Living Beyond Offense: Doing the Hard Work of Forgiveness God’s Way
Moving in Stereo: Ric Ocasek, the Driving Force of the Cars
The Shabbat Effect: Jewish Wisdom for Growth and Transformation
Mystic Nomad: A Woman’s Wild Journey to True Connection
World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading
The Five Blessings of Ifá: Reclaiming Black Futures Through Afro-Indigenous Spirituality
How Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Power of the Arts for Christian Life
PICTURE BOOKS
A countryside inn
acts as a way station between life and death in Vivi Partridge’s speculative YA graphic novel debut, Quiet Crossings.
Guadalupe García McCall’s latest YA novel, Fall of the Fireflies, hearkens back to the world of Summer of the Mariposas.
Song of Myself
My Quiet Place
I Am the Sun
This Is Me: Getting to Know Yourself and Others Better
Waiting for Max: A NICU Story
Dragon Flower
Late Today
Tic-Tac-Toe Chicken
The Snow Theater
Wolf in the City
A Spoonful of the Sea
Rus and Moose
Secrets of the Snakestone
The Invincible List of Lani Li
How to Save a Library
All the Things We Found
The Writing Room
Higher Ground
Fall of the Fireflies (Seasons of Sisterhood #1)
Indoor Kid
Quiet Crossings
The October Girl (The October Girl #1)
The Forgotten Teachers: How Nature Wrote the Story of Life
The Moon Prince
Indie Spotlight
New Titles from Self-Publishers
THE DAY I CARRIED THE
KING
SF/Fantasy/Horror
Mystery/Thriller
BookLife Talks with Samer Abdo
Nonfiction
CLARK L. SELBY JR.
Religion/Spirituality
Children’s/YA
The Cutters
Shades of Yellow
The Rabbi’s Suitcase
Thought-provoking 1970s tale of identity, belonging, and purpose.
Rich portrayal of a Jewish family’s history, migration, and resilience.
Touching story of love, betrayal, and women’s lives across centuries.
Eastern Light: Across Latitudes, Vol. 3
Hearts Under the Sword
Before We Arrived: Three Families. Seven Goats. One Spinning World.
Powerful depiction of war’s human costs amid Ukraine’s fight for freedom.
Unsettling mystery probing the dark lure of wealth and ambition.
Humane novel of healing, centered on an animal sanctuary.
Fauxmances and Wedding Bouquets: A Serenade Creek Novel
Back to You
In the Mountain’s Shadow
Beautiful, wrenching, human story of a woman’s survival in a dystopian future.
Love and loss mingle in this redemptive small-town romance.
Wholesome fake-dating romance with spark and small-town charm.
The Apprenticeship That Saved My Life
Life at Shutter Speed:
Two Decades of Larry Chen Photography
The Supersonic Phallus
Inspiring pathway to purpose and success, through apprenticeship programs.
Surprising novel of America’s flying disc craze, with emotional depth.
Thrilling car photography from two decades of races, stunts, cities, and speed.
Questions about God and Life I Wish My Grandchildren Had Asked
Seven Exits: Leave Behind What No Longer Serves You
The Journey to Spiritual Wholeness: Making Sense of Basic Common Sense
Thoughtful guided reflections on spiritual transcendence and moral alignment.
Brief but touching collection of lessons on faith, love, and purpose.
Discerning, structured framework to personal growth and transformation.
Continuity
Mission: Motherhood: Writing a New Fairy Tale of Love and Family
Transformed by India: A Life
Sweeping memoir imparting India’s rich beauty and diversity.
Gutsy story of a woman’s refusal to give up on her dream of motherhood.
Riveting behind-the-scenes of Hollywood, by renowned hair designer.
Never Wanted
Satrudays with Gramps
Believe: A Memoir in Stories
Powerful teen tale of trauma, redemption, and found family.
Stirring memoir of personal growth spurred by life’s challenges.
Touching story on navigating grief and the bond between kids and grandparents.
Panacea: The Age of AG
The Advenutres of DeeBug
Letterz
Raw, moving story of a queer albino teen runaway finding himself and a home.
Touching viewpoint of overcoming dyslexia, through a teen’s eyes.
Chilling dystopian portrait of humanity’s annexation by AI.
Cover Designer, TG Design Trudi Gershinov
Agent and Partner, Doe Coover Agency Colleen Mohyde
Author Marianne Leone
Publisher, Akashic Johnny Temple
at PressDisplay
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