The Best March 2025 Releases To Pick For Your Book Club

March might be the most bookish month of the year. Between World Book Day, World Poetry Day, and World Theatre Day, the calendar practically begs you to revel in literature's many forms. It's also time to reconsider the past — through Women's History Month — and honor those still fighting to be heard, especially on International Transgender Day of Visibility. The calendar reads like a celebratory syllabus, so it's safe to say March is a month of big conversations.

March also famously brings with it a few hints of springtime, so a well-chosen book club read should tap into all of this vigorous energy. As the days begin to stretch longer and the air warms one degree at a time, these books provide the perfect invitation to emerge from winter's quiet and dive into ebullient discussions with your friends. After all, stirring the mind is how we welcome the season's change.

The anticipation for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Dream Count" is palpable. Over a decade has passed since "Americanah" — her masterful, genre-fluid tale of identity and diaspora — and in that time, Adichie has gifted readers searing essays, moving reflections on grief, and feminist manifestos. Now, her return to long-form fiction arrives as both an artistic homecoming and a challenge to the genre, posed to remind us why Adichie remains one of the defining voices of our time.

Four women stand at a crossroads. Chiamaka, a Nigerian travel writer stranded in pandemic America, watches old relationships flicker in and out of focus. Her best friend, Zikora, a woman accustomed to control, finds herself suddenly at the mercy of betrayal. Omelogor, Chiamaka's cousin and a force in Nigeria's financial world, finds herself questioning everything she once believed about success. And then there is Kadiatou, a housekeeper building a future for her daughter, only to see the foundation crack beneath her.

As pandemic literature moves beyond the immediacy of crisis toward the realm of retrospective reckoning, "Dream Count" stakes its claim in the canon. In this shifting literary landscape, Adichie turns her gaze to the lives left in flux: the fragile intimacies it magnified, and the distances it widened. This is an author who has never been content to write love as a tidy thing. Here, it is messy and mercurial, and as much about absence as presence. "Dream Count" is a story that unspools in the spaces between people, leaving plenty for book club readers to interpret together.

Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? If the "Wicked" whirlwind cast its green-hued spell on you and your circle — taking flight in movie theaters with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo — you may have found yourself wondering the same thing. Now, nearly 30 years after "Wicked" first reimagined Oz in fantasy novel form, author Gregory Maguire returns with "Elphie," a prequel that melts away the myths and pulls back the emerald curtain on the girl we've seen on stage and screen.

From the moment she is born with green skin, Elphaba is an outsider. Neither her mother, restless and reckless, nor her pious father know quite what to make of her. Her sister, Nessarose, is sainted; Elphie herself is feared. She is sharp and observant, already attuned to the cracks in the Land of Oz. But childhood is full of lessons, and hers is marked by loneliness and early wounds. Eventually, her path will lead her to Shiz University.

As "Wicked" enchants a new generation, "Elphie" brews up a deeper look at the making of a witch. A bewitching title for book clubs everywhere, it's bound to spark some spellbinding conversation.

She's been Marvel's unbreakable Jessica Jones, the ill-fated Jane Margolis in "Breaking Bad," and the delightfully devious, morally flexible socialite of "Don't Trust the B– in Apartment 23." But now, Krysten Ritter takes on her darkest mystery yet — as a writer. With "Retreat," Ritter proves herself as a novelist fluent in tension and deceit, tightening the leash to spin an intoxicating, high-stakes crime mystery.

Liz Dawson is a consummate con artist, slipping through rarefied social circles with a practiced ease. When she crosses paths with Isabelle Beresford — a wealthy woman with an enigmatic aura and a beautiful vacant villa on the Mexican coast — Liz spots an opportunity. Here is a chance to break from the hustle, the luring addiction to the con. But what follows is unfamiliar territory. Slipping into Isabelle's identity is effortless. Almost too effortless. Who, exactly, was Isabelle Beresford before she vanished? And is this paradise a paradise at all?

With "Retreat," Ritter returns to fiction after "Bonfire," her brooding debut veined with small-town rot and corporate corruption. Her latest offering is a sleek, sun-drenched noir that sees identity to be as fluid as morality. This serpentine psychological thriller feels straight out of Hollywood's murkiest corners. It's the perfect pick for book clubs who love their drama stylish, seductive, and surreptitious.

In a town sprinkled with pumpkin spice and swirled with cinnamon bun sweetness, romance is the key ingredient in everything. This March, BookTok sweetheart Laurie Gilmore is back, with a romance book we can't wait to get our hands on: "The Strawberry Patch Pancake House." 

The town of Dream Harbor wasn't part of the plan. Top chef Archer built his career in high-end kitchens, not cozy diners, and certainly not the kind where the locals know your name before you've settled in. But a Michelin star won't help him raise a daughter on his own, and a town that looks out for its own just might. Taking over a small-town pancake house might not be his dream, but for now, it's a start.

Iris (who the initiated will have met briefly in "The Christmas Tree Farm") has spent her life in search of the next thing. The next job, the next adventure, the next reason to leave. Stability has never suited her, and she isn't convinced it ever will. So when she's nudged by Mayor Kelly towards a position helping Archer with his daughter, Olive, she balks. A nanny? Her? But money's tight, and Dream Harbor has a way of pulling people in before they even realize they've stopped running. Between stacks of pancakes and a determined little matchmaker, Archer and Iris are startled to find their feelings rising like the perfect buttermilk batter. 

Some stories take you by the hand, and then others shove you headfirst into the fire. "Stag Dance" is the latter. Torrey Peters returns with a collection that pulses with fever-dream intensity. Across three novellas and a novel, she rips open themes of yearning and what it means to be gender nonconforming, letting them bleed and daring your book club to look.

In a logging camp swallowed by the dead of winter, the trees stand as silent witnesses to rough-handed men preparing for an annual ritual: a dance where some will step into women's roles for the night. The oldest, broadest axeman eyes his rival: a younger, sharper, more beautiful man. Elsewhere, a love story festers in the halls of a claustrophobic boarding school thick with old money and cruel games. An obsessive romance spirals into something jagged and dangerous. Amid the neon blur of Las Vegas, a young crossdresser chasing a thrill is caught between the magnetic pull of a mysterious man and the unglamorous unflinching guidance of an older trans woman. And then, the gender apocalypse: a world tipped into chaos by the heartbreak of one woman.

With such a sprawling scope, Peters's literary tetrad offers plenty for reading circles to chew on. Dreamlike and unsettling, knife-edged and macabrely witty, "Stag Dance" demands to be discussed. And with International Transgender Day of Visibility rounding the corner on March 31st, it's only right we recognize these vital stories.

Vampires have been slowly creeping back into the cultural bloodstream — their bite sharper, their thirst more insatiable. Olivia Rodrigo had "Vampire" howling through the airwaves, February 2025 releases dripped "Hungerstone" onto our shelves, and through Lily-Rose Depp, the pale, primordial of "Nosferatu" was resurrected. Now, "Blood on Her Tongue" sinks its teeth into this tenebrous revival, with author Johanna van Veen offering a devilishly fresh take on the mythos.

In a grand estate set in the Dutch countryside in 1887, something is afoot. A young woman lies in bed, wasting further away with each passing day. Her appetite has vanished. Her thoughts are tangled. Her eyes are fixed on something unseen. The doctor says it's a fever of the brain, a temporary spell of madness that will soon pass. But Lucy, her twin, is unconvinced, watching her sister retreat into something unrecognizable. What's waiting beneath the surface? As the walls of their world close in, the answer may be more monstrous than any whispered superstition.

"Blood on Her Tongue" doesn't deliver horror in expected beats. It's a slow, spectral descent, where even the body conspires against you. Van Veen strips vampirism of its usual trappings, leaving behind just the right kind of disquiet for book clubs hungry for the darker edges of desire. Mark your calendars for March 25th. This is horror at its most hypnotic.

In selecting this month's new book releases, we focused on exceptional writing that grips from the very first page. Our curated selection spans a variety of genres, ensuring there's something to suit every book club's taste. Featuring both established authors and emerging voices, this list offers a mix that caters to all kinds of reading interests. Each book also taps into current trends in publishing and broader cultural conversations. Above all, we are confident these books will ignite lively discussions within your circle.