Adult Fiction Picks - Autumn 2025
Here are our adult fiction picks for autumn 2025! Have a browse through to help focus your gift buying for this season, and beyond!
No Friend to This House (Natalie Haynes)
This is what no one tells you, in the songs sung about Jason and the Argo. This part of his quest has been forgotten, by everyone but me . . .
Jason and his Argonauts set sail to find the Golden Fleece. The journey is filled with danger, for him and everyone he meets. But if he ever reaches the distant land he seeks, he faces almost certain death.
Medea – priestess, witch, and daughter of a brutal king – has the power to save the life of a stranger. Will she betray her family and her home, and what will she demand in return?Medea and Jason seize their one chance of a life together, as the gods intend. But their love is steeped in vengeance from the beginning, and no one – not even those closest to them – will be safe.
Based on the classic tragedy by Euripides, this is Medea as you've never seen her before.
He will stay like this forever, Robert's arm draped round him. They will be forever twenty. Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he's off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls - and never leave his side.
Together they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow - its botanical gardens, the Barras market, a whole hidden city - all the while loving each other behind closed doors. With the world on the brink of war, their unrivalled talent will take them to Paris, Rome, London. They will become stars as the bombs fall, hosting wild parties with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest.
Stunningly reimagined, The Two Roberts is a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and class. It is a love letter to MacBryde and Colquhoun, the almost-forgotten artists who tried to change the way the world sees - and paid a devastating price.
We Love You, Bunny (Mona Awad)
In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracised and then seduced by a clique of her saccharine sweet, rich girl cohort (who call one another ‘Bunny’). An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus Workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with wondrous yet deadly consequences.
When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies’ side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers — and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny. Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete standalone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to a dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever dream, Mona Awad.
The Midnight Secret (Karen Swan)
The mysteries of St Kilda are finally revealed. The Midnight Secret is the epic conclusion to Karen Swan's historical Wild Isle series, set in Scotland.
Jayne Ferguson has always been a keeper of secrets – especially her own . . .
If there’s one thing Jayne Ferguson has learnt in her life, it’s that every blessing comes with a curse. She married the most handsome man on the isle of St Kilda - but he’s a bully. She inherited her mother’s gift of second sight - but only ever foresees her fellow islanders’ deaths. She has learnt to keep to herself, treading in the shadows and shirking the highs for fear of the lows.
When a needless death strikes at the heart of her home, Jayne’s bad marriage becomes worse and she finds solace with an unlikely friend. Glimmers of happiness tantalise her, though there’s no possibility for anything more, especially once word comes of St Kilda’s evacuation.
But as evacuation draws near, tensions on the island rise. Secrets are being forced to the surface, passions and enmities erupting with equal violence. A man is killed, as Jayne knew he would be, and her closest friends Effie, Mhairi and Flora are each implicated.
On the mainland, the villagers scatter into new lives, hoping distance means refuge. But then Jayne has another of her dreams and she knows the past isn’t done with them yet.
The Midnight Secret is the fourth and final book in Karen Swan's sweeping, bestselling Wild Isles series, following on from The Last Summer, The Stolen Hours and The Lost Lover.
Love's A Witch (Tricia O'Malley)
She’s hexed. He’s vexed. And for Scotland’s most magical small-town, their feud might just spell disaster.
Sloane MacGregor swore she’d never return to Briarhaven, but with her twenty-fifth birthday looming – the day witches come into their magic – her grandmother summons her and her sisters back for one tiny task: break the centuries-old curse haunting their bloodline.
Knox Douglas, Briarhaven’s grumpy mayor, has worked tirelessly to make his town a haven for magical folk. The last thing he needs is a cursed MacGregor wreaking havoc. It doesn’t matter he once crushed on her. For the sake of Briarhaven, Sloane has to go.
But magic has other plans – and in Briarhaven, love really is a witch.
The Killer Question (Janice Hallett)
The answer is murder.
The question is whodunnit? A quiet country pub stands empty, its windows boarded up. And its kindly landlords, Mal and Sue Eastwood, are missing.
What could have happened? A lot of strange events occurred in the days before the Eastwoods disappeared. A murdered man pulled from the nearby river. An eccentric couple on a houseboat who claimed to be led by a spirit guide. And a mysterious new team who suddenly appeared and began winning every round at the weekly pub quiz - much to the anger of the locals. They must have been cheating, but no one could figure out how...
Can you crack the case of the missing landlords? Someone's not been playing fair, so get the drinks in and see if you can get a perfect score.