Listener writers pick their favourite books of the year so far and point to tantalising titles to come.

Thrills & chills

Some first-class Kiwi thrillers have been a hallmark of 2025. In Rachel Paris’s Sydney-set See How They Fall, homicide squad detective Mei O’Connor investigates a poisoning at the grand estate of the Turner dynasty.

Jennifer Trevelyan’s A Beautiful Family finds a family on a long summer holiday, in which the youngest, Alix, pairs up with a boy named Kahu to find a girl who disappeared in the area a couple of years back.

In Michael Bennett’s Carved in Blood, set during Matariki, retired detective Hana Westerman is faced with a new case and lots of twisty surprises.

Gareth and Louise Ward’s Bookshop Detectives are going strong with the second in their cosy-crime series, Tea and Cake and Death, and Liam McIlvanney is back with missing-child chiller The Good Father.

Just out is King of Ashes from SA Cosby, the award-winning author of Southern noir crime novels, in which a son returns home to Virginia and must protect his family.

Also recommended is Belinda Bauer’s The Impossible Thing, a page-turner thriller about birds’ eggs, and Callan Wink’s tense, compelling Beartooth, about two tree-chopping brothers in backwoods Montana who are made a lucrative, risky offer.

Also new for crime aficionados is Murderland, a readable, lyrical account of a spree of American serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

But hold on to your rosary beads – there’s a new Dan Brown coming in September. In The Secret of Secrets, symbologist Robert Langdon must use all his arcane knowledge – while being stalked – to find an academic who goes missing in Prague.

Also out that month is a new Thursday Murder Club from Richard Osman. In The Impossible Fortune, the team are in action again as Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who fears for their life and a baddie wants access to an uncrackable code.

Also coming is Clown Town, the much-awaited new Slow Horses novel from Mick Herron.

In October, Gone Before Goodbye sees Hollywood books-to-screen mogul Reese Witherspoon team up with Harlan Coben for a tale about a combat surgeon who’s thrown into intrigue and danger in the world of the super-rich.

Sunday Afternoon Reads

Former PM Jacinda Ardern’s memoir, A Different Kind of Power, received a largely warm reception from the nation’s critics, who said it offered a rare insight into the private life of a public figure in New Zealand, particularly one who went through as many national crises and personal events as she did; though some sought more explanation of her government’s more controversial policy decisions.

For those who prefer intrepid travel from the comfort of an armchair, Naomi Arnold’s North Bound is a travelogue and tale of endurance on the Te Araroa trail. Also in the wilderness vein is Fire & Ice, from Hazel Phillips, packed with stories about Tongariro National Park. When the Going Was Good is former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s entertaining account of running an influential magazine in times of journalistic plenty.

Bookish is bibliophile journalist Lucy Mangan’s second captivating love letter to reading, her tastes running from serious literature to thrillers, bonkbusters and young adult tales.

Later this month sees the release of Bad Friend, a personal history of the pleasures and difficulties of women’s friendships from cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith.

In Dianaworld, in ebook and audiobook now and hardback in August, British writer Edward White presents a vivid portrait of the late Princess of Wales and of those whose lives she touched.

Among self-help titles on the way is Protocols, a guide out in September that aims to improve your physical and mental health, by US neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman.

Chewy fiction

The Waikato fiction machine that is Catherine Chidgey has delivered another doozy – a literary novel that’s a critical and commercial success, topping the bestseller charts since its release and being widely praised here and overseas. The Book of Guilt centres around boy triplets in an alternative Britain in 1979. The three are the last orphans in a house in the countryside, part of a mysterious government scheme.

Dominic Hoey’s coming-of-age novel, 1985, pulls no punches and comes highly recommended by several Listener reviewers.

Wonderland, by Tracy Farr, is set at a theme park on the Miramar Peninsula in Wellington in the early 20th century and persuasively imagines scientist Marie Curie visiting New Zealand incognito.

Also out now is Elaine Feeney’s potent Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way, in which Claire returns to her family home in the west of Ireland to look after her dying father only to rekindle relations with an old flame and stir up past history.

Florence Knapp’s The Names is a compassionate and affecting tale of family told through three alternative realities.

In September, Ian McEwan has a new novel, the dystopian What We Can Know, set in a future Britain reduced by rising seas.

Joyce Carol Oates is back with Fox, a literary suspense novel about a charming English teacher at an elite US boarding school who may be involved in a missing persons case.

And Catherine Lacey has written The Möbius Book, a hybrid fiction-fact story of trust, anger and love.

For diehard Harper Lee fans, in October there’s The Land of Sweet Forever, unpublished short stories alongside previously published essays.

In November, The Eleventh Hour sees Salman Rushdie return to fiction, in the form of short stories pondering life and death that range in location from England to America to India.

Also that month, Josie Shapiro’s second novel, Good Things Come and Go, will appear.

Human Stories

Careless People, by Kiwi Sarah Wynn-Williams, was released with little fanfare. Hardly surprising, really, given that it was a blow-by-blow public airing of the inner workings at Facebook and the company tried to stop its distribution and promotion. Wynn-Williams was the former director of global public policy, and her very readable book throws a strobe light on the sometimes shocking ethical failings of the tech oligarchy.

In John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, Ian Leslie offers a fresh perspective on the changing relationship of the twin drivers of The Beatles.

In Memorial Days, Geraldine Brooks writes about how her apparently healthy partner, Pulitzer-winning journalist Tony Horwitz, collapsed and died on a Washington, DC street, and how she came to properly grieve on a remote Australian island.

Ruth Shaw’s Three Wee Bookshops at the End of the World, the second part of her fascinating life, continues to please Kiwi readers.

Also well received by critics and book buyers were Tony Fomison: Life of the Artist, the decade-in-the-making account of the painter by art scholar Mark Forman, and artist Dick Frizzell’s memoir, Hastings: A Boy’s Own Adventure.

Children of Radium is Welsh writer Joe Dunthorne’s remarkable investigation of his Jewish great-grandfather, who made chemicals for the Nazis.

Fascinating biographies to come in the next few months include Sue Roe’s Hidden Portraits, the stories of six remarkable women who loved artist Pablo Picasso; Electric Spark, an account of Muriel Spark by the brilliant biographer Frances Wilson, in September; a new take on Gertrude Stein in August and one on the Brothers Grimm in October.

Former finance minister Grant Robertson has a memoir out next month, Anything Could Happen, in which he writes about his early life, his love of music and his political career.

In September, there’s a memoir from Lionel Richie, called, inevitably, Truly.

In October, famed Kiwi singer Suzanne Lynch releases her memoir, Yesterday, When I Was Young. And later that month, Sir Anthony Hopkins, who has played characters from Claudius to Nixon to CS Lewis to Hannibal Lecter, remembers the lows and highs of his extraordinary life in We Did OK, Kid.

In December comes Cameron Crowe’s memoir The Uncool. As a teenager, the film-maker and journalist interviewed the likes of Led Zeppelin, David Bowie and Bob Dylan for Rolling Stone magazine before writing and directing films such as Almost Famous.

Engaging Your Brain

Proto is science writer Laura Spinney’s fascinating account, employing archeology, genetics and linguistics, of how a language used by a small tribe 5000 years ago in what’s now Ukraine splintered into daughter languages, today spoken by a big part of the world.

In The Buried City, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the head of the archaeological park at Pompeii, delivers insights into new excavations and what has been found.

In The Age of Diagnosis, renowned neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan offers a contrary view about the apparent rise of conditions such as ADHD and long Covid.

This month, there’s Failed State, by political analyst Sam Freedman, on why Britain feels broken and what might be done about it.

In August comes Tiffany Jenkins’ Strangers and Intimates, which traces the fascinating idea of private life through history and why it’s in peril in a digital world.

Fatherhood, by Augustine Sedgewick, asks how the role of dads in society and the family has changed over time. Also next month is Plain Life, a collection of philosophical essays from Australian writing professor Antonia Pont about living a quieter, less anxious existence.

In September, Lamorna Ash’s Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever explores whether there’s a renewal of spirituality among Gen Z. There’s a memoir from Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me. Also that month, Hinemoa Elder returns with Ara, a guidebook on how to think about thinking that is rooted in Māori culture.

In October, acclaimed British journalist Helen Lewis follows up her history of feminism, Difficult Women, with The Genius Myth, which explores the idea that elevating a class of special individuals warps our understanding of creativity and society.

In November, British novelist Zadie Smith releases Dead and Alive and Irish writer Anne Enright has Attention, both collections of essays on life, art and the world.

Great Books for the Young

Korean Kiwi Graci Kim’s very readable Dreamslinger is the first in a planned series. Aria, 14, has a genetic gift of great – but dangerous – magic and heads to a dreamslinger competition in Korea where she will find her own community and identity.

Also recommended are the second graphic-novel adaptation of Erin Hunter’s Warriors: The Prophecies Begin series, and Soman Chainani’s witch crime-solver tale Coven.

In September comes a new intermediate grade/YA novel from Elizabeth Knox. In Kings of This World, Vex has the power to make others do what she wants. Soon after she arrives at a new school, she and friends are kidnapped and Vex must figure out what the kidnappers want and why.

Matariki ki te Ao is Rangi Matamua and Miriama Kamo’s world overview of the star cluster aka Pleiades and Subaru, now in te reo.

Just out is The Wild Robot on the Island, the follow-up to Peter Brown’s novel that many young ones will probably know from The Wild Robot movie.

Rachael King’s rock tween Violet Grumble returns in August with The Case of the Angry Ghost, and Li Chen’s sleuth returns in Detective Beans: Adventures in Cat Town.

Not quite a children’s book, but later in the year, British author Gyles Brandreth offers Somewhere, A Boy and A Bear, a biography of both author AA Milne and his creation Winnie-the-Pooh.