TOP PICKS – November 2025
Welcome to this month’s Top Picks!
Every month, we like to share with you our favourite reads of the month. We’ve rounded up our contributors and asked them each to recommend just one favourite read of the month.
A big thank you to Nils for coming up with this feature, and our contributors for taking part!
Let’s find out what the team has read this month…
Nils: The Book of Fallen Leaves by A. S. Takami
I had such great exciting reads this month so it’s been so hard to choose a favourite!
Iron Road by David Wragg concluded his Tales of the Plains trilogy in such a fantastic way. We meet some new and familiar characters, a heist upon a train and are treated to a very chaotic and hilarious action packed finale. I then read Blood for the Undying Throne by Sung-il Kim and translated by Anton Hur, which was quite the unconventional sequel in that we see past events unfolding rather than moving the current plot forwards. Yet this engrossed me nonetheless.
Next came two buddy reads with my bestie Beth! Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong was an uplifting, heartwarming read featuring two mages, a wagon load of magical artefacts and a town reluctant to accept outsiders, especially from the Guild. This was fun and hit the cosy spot I was looking for. Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett (out next year) was just perfect in every way! Warring mages, magical artefacts (yes again!), cat shenanigans and some great banter, I was fully entertained.
However my Top Pick goes to The Book of Fallen Leaves by A. S. Takami. This is a stunningly written debut which won’t be released until March but it’s one that every epic fantasy lover needs to add to their TBR. There’s so much depth and scope to this novel—an empire facing civil war, warring monks, samurai warriors, demons and gods, and a deep philosophical reflection on the realities of warfare, of taking life. Review to come soon.
Theo: A Good Day to Die by G. R. Matthews
I’ve had an interesting mix of books this month. I finished it with a fun wee cli-fi Novella Down to Earth by Andrew Crowther, which explores what would happen if the ultra-rich and entitled could live out the Musk fantasy of setting up a new ‘perfect’ community beyond the Earth.
Before that, having seen the del Toro’s film version of Frankenstein I thought I’d go back and re-read the source material of the original Mary Shelley novel. What struck me was how much she elided the science – no mention of electricity at all – and focussed on the angst and self-flagellation by Frankenstein himself. There were some contemporary resonances in her portrayal of poverty and in the way society abhorred ugliness as implying an inner sinfulness, while beauty implied virtue.
I’d also taken a look at a child favourite of mine Barbare Sleigh’s Carbonel which with its exotically named eponymous witch’s cat, and tales of children and magic and feline intrigue was one book that launched me into a love of fantasy. In the writing and the plotting it held up better than I at one point feared – a much more resilient text than any of Enid Blyton’s or (dare I say it) the wicked witch of Scotland’s.
However, my top pick of the month goes to my first spec-fic read of November G.R.Matthews upcoming release A Good Day to Die gritty, grim and dark with a first person protagonist who has a sharp wit and a knack for getting into trouble in a richly imagined world as alive with drugs and prejudice as our own.
Theo’s review | Pre-order here
Beth: Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Sanctuary by Heather Fawcett.
I’ve had quite a mixed month for reading. I read such a lot last month that in-between my fantastic buddy reads with Nils, I struggled to click with things. I tried to continue the anthology The Book of Witches edited by Jonathan Strahan but couldn’t find a story to hook me. My SFF Bookclub’s read was The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi but I didn’t get it finished in time, I really disliked the main character so despite how interesting our discussion of it was, I didn’t finish it. I tried to pick up Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomizo but I think it was too soon after reading Murder at the Black Cat Cafe and I didn’t read past the first couple of pages.
However, there are three books I utterly fell in love with: The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong was the cosiest, most wholesome read I’ve had in a while; I finally read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, which isn’t speculative in the least but I had to mention because it’s most definitely a new firm favourite for me.
But my top pick goes to Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Sanctuary by Heather Fawcett. It was a really difficult decision between this and Leong’s, but ultimately I was just so blown away by Fawcett’s writing! I think I’m the only person in the SFF community who hasn’t read the Emily Wilde trilogy (correcting that next month), and I can now see why everyone loves her writing so much. Again, it was a wholesome read, but so magical too, and I adored the setting of Montreal!
Cat: Potions and Peculiarities by Gloria Bottelman
It’s been a good month for me, with many sequels and series conclusions that I enjoy but am always a little sad to say goodbye to.
So my Pick for the month is a fantastic standalone that I’m actually looking forward to revisiting, because I loved being in its world so much! Potions and Peculiarities by Gloria Bottelman is the author’s second book, and has cemented her on my Must Buy list. Her writing style is unique and beautiful, reminding me of Charles de Lint, with a genuinely fun, gripping adventure full of magic, humour and a baddie we can all join in despising! It’s subtly thoughtful, twisty in all the right places and with characters that I loved. The best kind of bookish treat that I heartily recommend curling up with this winter!
Emma: Horned to Be Wild by Honey Phillips
Horned to Be Wild by Honey Phillips has to be my pick for this month and not because of my red flag waving ass whenever I see a minotaur book.
It’s small town goodness with plenty of spice to balance the sweet. If you love cosy smut, massive minotaur members, and some creative characters pick this one up! It’s a standalone but part of a multi-author series.
Definitely one of my favourites of the series, though a special shout out to Foxer Upper by Vivienne Hart. Bet you can’t tell what kind of monster guy that one features. I’m a sucker for a redhead.
Vinay: The Strength of the Few by James Islington
My November to a great extent got occupied with my Dresden Files re-read in anticipation of the new book, Twelve Months, out in Jan 2026. It was also my first time doing audiobooks and it was a great experience. I did around six books in this manner of audiobooks plus reading and its fantastic to be back in this world. I still managed to get three books in November.
Travis Baldree’s Brigands and Breadknives, the sequel to Legends and Lattes was cosy and charming even if a bit more action packed and on-the-road.
MR Carey’s Outlaw Planet was a fabulous genre mixer that combined old style Epic Western of a man (a woman in this case) with a gun (sentient gun in this case) for company stumbling and trying to undo an age old conspiracy. While its a spin-off of Carey’s other world, having not read this, I can firmly say this is one of the best standalone books of the year with fabulous narration and masterful storytelling at work.
The Top Pick goes to The Strength of the Few by James Islington, the second entry in the Hierarchy series. Splitting the narrative into three, the author has kind of written three books in one and has to manage the tempo and urgency throughout which he masterfully accomplishes. But what worked here as it did in the previous case, is how emotional the book gets and the swings that it takes to get there. The emotions sneaks through in certain interactions and elevates this book. While the book does end on a cliff-hanger, it sets the series up for a devastating finale for sure.
Kat: What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher
I only finished two books this month and while Kill The Beast by Serra Swift was a surprisingly engaging read (notable thanks to the stunning audiobook narration by Moira Quirk), the winner has to be the third book in T Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier series, What Stalks The Deep.
A truly horrifying novella that gave me nightmares the one time I was stupid enough to read it before bed. If you’re claustrophobic I would definitely think twice before picking this one up. Great characters, a unique setting, and exactly my kind of horror.
Jonathan: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Read some great stuff this month. Lauren Du Plessis’ Tender is a great horror debut and a novel I will be thinking about for a long time.
Hiron Ennes’ The Works of Vermin is an astounding work of horror-inflected fantasy that is linguistically inventive and deliriously strange – the New Weird’s back, baby.
But unfortunately for both of these books, I read them the same month I was teaching Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering Heights. It was an absolute pleasure revisiting one of my all-time favourites. Wuthering Heights remains the gothic horror novel par excellance, an amazing piece of writing that still has the power to chill to the bone. So Emily runs away with my top spot this month I’m afraid!
Rich: The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes
How’s it another month already? Insert Rust Cohle sadly saying ‘Time is a flat circle’. [ed. I KNOW RIGHT?!]
I’ve been a bit more active, and was able to read a few things. Like Jon, I read Hiron Ennes, but started with their Leech which I was late to the party with. It’s excellent. Language as a parasite surrogate, the role of narrator and being narrated interrelated with, beautiful decadent prose, and just stellar worldbuilding.
What I’ve picked (and reviewed – scheduled for Monday) this month, however, is Ivy Grimes’s The Cellar Below the Cellar. Set after a miyake event, we follow Jane as she navigates the destruction of the globalised electrical grid, but not with tried and tired tropes of apocalypse, instead with revitalising and idiosyncratic depictions of grieving communities, self-sacrifice, and the importance of faith in one another. Absolutely lovely read.
What was your favourite read of the month? Share with us in the comments!
