šĀ 9 New Releases for a Cozy/Sexy/Spooky Fall
Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and this is a podcast about the pleasure of reading, where I share curated reading lists, author rankings, chats with my bookish friends, and more. If you too take pleasure in reading, I hope that you will subscribe and share the show with a friend. Cheers to your next best book. Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading, a podcast about the many joys and pleasures of reading where I, your host, Amelia Hruby, share curated lists of books that I have read and loved or hope to soon read and love.
Amelia Hruby:And today, I am here with a list of nine new releases for a cozy, sexy, spooky fall. Now this list is very much in the spirit of Libra season and Scorpio season. We have the full range of cozy, tender hearted, mystical reads to sexy, sultry, romantic reads to spooky, scary books for the horror lovers among us, like myself. I have put the books in a sort of spectrum from cozy through sexy into spooky. So as you listen along, you can choose your own adventure.
Amelia Hruby:You can know if you like to stay on the cozy side of things or if you want to venture toward the sexier reads or go all the way to the spooky books first. You can find them all linked in the show notes and just stay tuned for my commentary on each read. Before I talk about these books, I do want to say that I myself have just published a new book this month. It is called Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media. And it is a philosophical and spiritual manifesto for anyone who is looking around the Internet right now and thinking, I don't know if I wanna be here anymore.
Amelia Hruby:If you are sick of liking, commenting, subscribing, or scrolling, this book is for you, and you can find it at yourattentionissacred.com. I will also link it in the show notes. If you love this show, if you love how I talk about books, and you're curious what I might write in a book of my own, please check it out. It's linked in the show notes. I'm so grateful for you tuning in and for your support.
Amelia Hruby:Okay. Now let's dive in, shall we, to this list of nine new releases for a cozy, sexy, spooky fall. As I said at the beginning, these books are on a spectrum from cozy to spooky. So we are starting with the coziest book, in my opinion, on this list. And I'll also just add here that all of these books came out in 2025, I think between early summer and now.
Amelia Hruby:And they are all out when this episode releases. So I'm not talking about things that are coming out in November, December. These books came out this year. You can get your hands on them right now. And most of them, I have either already read or purchased a copy for myself.
Amelia Hruby:And the others I have gotten from the library because this truly is my fall TBR. So let's dive in with our coziest read first. The first book I wanna recommend is A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandana. This was recommended to me by my friend, Nick. Thank you, Nick, because I read this last weekend and loved it.
Amelia Hruby:It is a five star read for me for fall. So knowing that, let me read you the synopsis so that you might see if you feel inclined to add it to your fall TBR. As Sarah Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great aunt Jasmine from the very recently dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her guild. Now she is slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily, helps Jasmine run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guest shenanigans, tries to keep said talking fox in check, and longs for a future that seems lost to her.
Amelia Hruby:But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power. Enter Luke Larson, a handsome and icy magical historian who arrives on a dark autumn evening and just might know how to unlock the spell's secrets. Luke has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the madcap goings on of the inn, and is definitely not about to let a certain bewitching innkeeper past his personal walls. So no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help Sarah with her spell. Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful guild is a lot for anyone.
Amelia Hruby:But Sarah Swan is about to discover that she doesn't have to do it alone, and that the weird wonderful family she's made might be the best magic of all. How sweet is that? Right? This is a sort of grumpy sunshine romance, although it's a little bit of a grumpy grumpy romance. And what I loved about it was how homey it feels.
Amelia Hruby:The magical inn that Sarah runs with her aunt Jasmine is such a unique and heartfelt setting. I could really visualize it in my mind as it was described. And I think that what makes this book so great really is the cast of characters around our main love interests. I loved Clemy, that semi villainous talking fox, and I loved Sarah's nephew, I think, Theo. I loved the resurrected bone rooster that you'll have to read to learn about, as well as the other visitors or guests at the inn that we meet along the way.
Amelia Hruby:So this is definitely a heartwarming, cozy read that features plenty of fall scenes like tea drinking, early mornings, dusty nights, and a little bit or a lot of romance along the way. So that was A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandana, my coziest recommended new release for fall. The next book I'm recommending that is just a little less cozy, I think, than A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping is the continuation of one of my favorite series. I actually recommended this series in my early episode on magical series for romantic witches, I think, where I talk about all of these different series that blend romance and magic. So there is a new book in the witch lore series from Hazel Beck, and it is called Dragon Fires Everywhere.
Amelia Hruby:Let me read you the synopsis. Newly minted historian of the soon to be ascended Riverwood Coven, Georgie Pendle has always played her part. So why does she feel like an outsider in her own life? Duped and dumped by her boyfriend, Georgie finds herself dismissing love as a fairy tale. But when the words she reads aloud from an enchanted storybook, free a dragon shifter, everything changes.
Amelia Hruby:Georgie finds herself drawn to the dragon in ways she didn't think were even possible for her. And her dragon with his fiery golden gaze, all but claims Georgie as his own. But beneath his scorching intensity lies a secret, one that stretches back into the ancient past. With the Joywood coven still finding ways to upend the new order of the witching world, Georgie and her coven will need to prove themselves up to the task of being in charge, and right the wrongs their predecessors committed, if they can uncover the truth. Because something is missing, something that will stop the Joywood once and for all, something that only a historian and an ancient dragon can find.
Amelia Hruby:So this series is set in the magical Midwestern town of Saint Cyprian. And in the first four books of the series, we set up and sort of go through this rivalry between the Joywood Coven, who have been in power and done some problematic things to say the least, and the Riverwood Coven, who are up and comers and sort of have a different sense of moral clarity. And all of that plays out in the first four books, but in this book, we get a dragon. There are not dragons in the other books. So I'm very excited for this new entry in the series, and I know from the other books that it will be peak coziness, peak fall with, of course, a little bit of magic and dragons now.
Amelia Hruby:So that is dragon fires everywhere by Hazel Beck. Up next is another romance that I just picked up at my local Barnes and Noble. And honestly, it feels like the setup of this book could not be made more for me. It's called Ghost Business by Jen DeLuca. So in this book, we have clashing ghost tour providers.
Amelia Hruby:Sophie has grown up in Boneyard Key, Florida, and her love for its supernatural history led to her creating a business around a ghost tour that she leads. But then a newcomer to town, Tristan, enters the scene, and he is the son of a fortune five hundred businessman. He used to do ghost tours as his fraternity fundraiser. So he launches a rival ghost tour in Boneyard Quay. And essentially, from there, we have an enemies to lovers romance.
Amelia Hruby:There's also apparently an expletive filled rant that goes viral, as well as plenty of spookiness in the story. I am so intrigued by this book. One, because as a small business owner, I like reading books about businesses, but also because it's set in Florida, which is not where I think of for a fall romance or a ghost tour book. But it promises to be spooky and sexy, and I think there's some romantic coziness along the way. So again, that is Ghost Business by Jen DeLuca.
Amelia Hruby:Up next, we move even farther into the sexy part of our cozy, sexy, spooky spooky spectrum with a new romance from Olivia Dade that's called Zom Rom Com, which I love because I love a rhyme, and Zom Rom Com is a very fun rhyme. And honestly told me all I needed to know about this book, or at least made it clear that I definitely wanted to read it. So here's the synopsis. When Edie Brandstrepp attempts to save her sweet, seemingly harmless human neighbor from the first major zombie breach in two decades, she's stunned to be saved by him instead. As it turns out, he's actually a super old, super surly vampire.
Amelia Hruby:But for all her neighbors newly revealed cynicism and lethality, Gaston Max Boucher is unexpectedly protective. He wants her to stay in his safety bunker until the breach is resolved. As they unravel a sinister conspiracy to set zombies loose on the world again, The duo meet a host of lovable allies and discover they're not the only ones willing to fight for the future of humanity. Despite the awful timing, Edie finds herself falling for the vampire who's helping her save the world. But all their dangerous plans could end their future before it even begins.
Amelia Hruby:I love a paranormal romance in October particularly. So I was really excited to see this when it came out a few months ago. And honestly, I can't wait to read it. It's probably gonna be my next read. Olivia Dade always writes great sexy romances.
Amelia Hruby:Often, she has fat main characters, which I love, and I say fat as a fact, not a pejorative. And I just really can't wait to dive into this one. I feel like it's definitely going to have a bit of a funny tone since it claims to be a rom com, but also bring in that sexiness of all of Dade's romances and the spoofiness of a literal zombie outbreak and vampires. What more could I want in a fall romance? Alright.
Amelia Hruby:Up next, we are gonna go to romantasy land with the new book Arcana Academy by Elise Kova. Now I will say upfront, this is a chunk of a book. I got it from my library and was like, oh, we're at five forty four pages. Okay. I also will say upfront that it is the first book in a series that is not completed.
Amelia Hruby:So I know for some of my friends and listeners, that means you don't even wanna know what it's about. But for those of you who are intrigued, let me tell you what Arcana Academy is about. Clara Graceward has survived the underworld of Eclipse City through thievery, luck, and a whole lot of illegal magic. After a job gone awry, Clara is sentenced to a lifetime in prison for inking tarot cards, a rare power reserved for practitioners at the Elite Arcana Academy. Just when it seems her luck has run dry, the academy's enigmatic headmaster, prince Calus, offers her an escape.
Amelia Hruby:Calus believes that Clara is the perfect tool to help him steal a tarot card from the king, and use it to recreate an all powerful card, long lost to time. In order to conceal her identity and keep her close, Callis brings Clara to Arcana Academy, introducing her as the newest first year student and his bride to be. Thrust into a world of arcane magic and royal intrigue, where one misstep will send her back to prison or worse, clarifies that the prince she swore to hate may not be what he seems. But can she risk giving him power over the world and her heart? Or will she take it for herself?
Amelia Hruby:I feel like this book reminds me a bit of the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J Maas, just from the descriptions and having read the first few chapters. And I'm very intrigued as a lover of tarot cards. I have my own tarot podcast called My Tiny Tarot Practice. I'm really intrigued to see how tarot is woven in. I have read a few romantasy books that try to weave in tarot and like reference cards from the major or minor arcana, and some of them are more successful than others.
Amelia Hruby:So when I've dipped my toe in, this one intrigues me, but I will have to share my final opinion after I have read the whole book and or series. So if you love tarot and you love romantasy, you might want to pick up Arkana Academy by Elise Kova for your fall TBR. That means we're over halfway through our list. So let me share another book that takes us more toward the spooky end of this spectrum. My next recommended read is probably the dark academia book of the season.
Amelia Hruby:I've been told it's also a bit of a romance. I would not put it in the romantasy category, but maybe you could. And that is Catabasis by R. F. Kuang.
Amelia Hruby:Now you may know R. F. Kuang from her super famous book Babble or the also very famous Yellow Face or maybe even the best selling Poppy War trilogy. She has won a lot of awards. Her books are very widely read.
Amelia Hruby:She also has a number of very fancy degrees and I believe is pursuing a PhD at Yale. So she's really impressive and people love her books. The only one I have read is Yellowface, which I really enjoyed. And I was not a huge fan of Babbel. I didn't finish the book on my first attempt to read it.
Amelia Hruby:So I wasn't sure that I was gonna pick up Catabasis. But the thing that just kept hooking me is my own personal history as a PhD student. And this book essentially is about two PhD students who go to hell to try to get a recommendation letter from the professor that they have maybe had a hand in how he ended up in hell. So I'm just really charmed by the sort of irony of having to go all the way to hell to get a rec letter, which is a little bit how academia feels at times. And as a result, I decided to pick up this book even though I did feel a little worried that it might be kind of dense for me or just a little overwrought, which is sometimes how I feel about books that are just like about academia and have a lot of literary references.
Amelia Hruby:So all of that said, let me read you the synopsis so you can decide for yourself if this is a book you want to add to your TBR. Alice Law has only ever had one goal, to become one of the brightest minds in the field of magic. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality. Her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
Amelia Hruby:That is until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault. Grimes is now in hell, and she's going in after him. Because his recommendation is the key to her future, and he could hold her dreams in his now incorporeal hands. Unfortunately, her rival Peter Murdoch has come to the very same conclusion. With nothing but the records of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, bundles of chalk to draw the pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across hell to save a man they don't even like.
Amelia Hruby:But hell is not like the storybooks say. Magic isn't always the answer. And there's something in Alice and Peter's past that could forge them into the perfect allies or lead them to their doom. That sounds fun, doesn't it? I really feel like I was drawn in to the like academic trauma adventure.
Amelia Hruby:Maybe that's not your thing. Maybe it is. I will say that I did purchase a gorgeous sprayed edge copy of this from Barnes and Noble. And it has these like beautiful amulet that says hell is other people on it, which I appreciate. So I'm really hopeful for this one.
Amelia Hruby:If you've read it and love to hear from you, you can leave a comment on Spotify or find me on StoryGraph and let me know what you thought. And I will report back when I finish it in one of my seasonal wrap ups. My next recommended book for your fall TBR is Play Nice by Rachel Harrison. Now, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you might know that I really like Rachel Harrison's work. She has written so many different books and all of them have this really great, like sarcastic, spooky tone that I can't really think of anyone else who's writing quite like she does.
Amelia Hruby:So she's written books about werewolves, about cults, about vampires, about witches, and this new book of hers, Play Nice, is about a haunted house. I'll read you the synopsis, and then hopefully you'll join me in reading it this fall. Cleo Louise Barnes leads a picture perfect life as a stylist and influencer. But beneath the glossy veneer, she harbors a not so glamorous secret. She grew up in a haunted house.
Amelia Hruby:Well, not haunted, possessed. After Cleo's parents' messy divorce, her mother Alex moved Cleo and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon, or so Alex claimed. That's not what Cleo's sisters remember, or what the courts determined when they stripped her of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent. She even wrote a book about her experience in the house.
Amelia Hruby:After Alex's sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Cleo and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Cleo sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only as the home makeover process begins, Cleo discovers there might be some truth to her mother's claims. As memories resurface and Cleo finally reads her mother's book, a sinister presence in the house manifests, revealing ugly truths that threatened to shake Cleo's beautiful life to its very foundation. Dun dun dun.
Amelia Hruby:As I said before, I love Rachel Harrison's writing. I find her books to be very fun, and they always have a sort of spooky theme and tone. But I never find them really scary, which is also something I enjoy. I can read these really late at night. I'm not gonna get scared or feel afraid.
Amelia Hruby:I'm just gonna enjoy myself and go to bed. So if that's your vibe, I definitely recommend, even before reading it, Play Nice by Rachel Harrison. Okay. Two more recommended new releases to go. Up next, I wanna tell you about The Bewitching by Sylvia Moreno Garcia.
Amelia Hruby:Sylvia Moreno Garcia is the author of Mexican Gothic, which was super popular and I read a few years ago and really enjoyed. And this new book from her is a multi generational horror saga about three women in three different eras who encounter witchcraft. There is also an academic in this one. So that seems to be a theme for me. And the main characters are this young academic Minerva, her great grandmother, Nana Alba, and a horror writer named Beatrice Tremblay, who Minerva is researching in her graduate thesis.
Amelia Hruby:And and as she does so, she discovers that Tremblay's most famous novel was inspired by a true story. And then as Minerva starts going like deeper and deeper into that true story, she realizes that there seemed to be some overlaps with the stories that she heard from her great grandmother growing up. Minerva starts to suspect that there may have been a dark presence, perhaps a witch that interacted with both Nana Alba, her great grandmother, and this famous writer Beatrice Tremblay. And having made that connection, she starts to perhaps, I think from the synopsis, pull that witch into her own life and start experiencing inexplicable things. So I started reading this book in the summer.
Amelia Hruby:I bought it right after it came out. And I paused because I was like, this book needs to be read on a dim day with a big mug of tea and a blanket. I wanna read it by candlelight. I was like, this book is so fall that I need to not read it in, like, the bright sun of August. So I'm really excited to dive back in now that the weather is finally turning to fall where I live.
Amelia Hruby:And that means it is just about time for me to read The Bewitching by Sylvia Marino Garcia. And that takes us to my ninth new release for our cozy, sexy, spooky fall. We have officially met the spooky end of the spectrum. We are in the horror genre now. And my final rec for you is a book that I just got from the library and I'm super excited to have my hands on.
Amelia Hruby:And that is The Whistler by Nick Medina. Let me read you the synopsis. Harry Hautard was on the verge of fame, gaining a gaining a following and traction with his eerie ghost hunting videos. Then his dreams came to a screeching halt. Now he's learning to navigate a new life in a wheelchair, back on the reservation where he grew up, relying on his grandparents care while he recovers.
Amelia Hruby:And he's being haunted. His girlfriend Jade insists he just needs time to adjust to his new reality as a quadriplegic. That it's his traumatized mind playing tricks on him. But Henry knows better. As the specter haunting him creeps closer each night, Henry battles to find a way to endure, to rid himself of the horror stalking him.
Amelia Hruby:If he isn't able to confront his past and the events that changed his life, this dread, this phantom may plague him forever. So this book is based on a native superstition that says you should never whistle at night because you might attract bad spirits or evil things. And so at the start of the book, someone whistles at night, and Henry believes that that is what has caused all of his problems. The author, Nick Medina, is an enrolled member of the Tunica Biloxi tribe from Louisiana, and often brings social issues and native American folklore into his writing. So I have not read his other books, but Sisters of the Lost Nation has been on my TBR for quite a while.
Amelia Hruby:So if I like this one, I think I will pull that one back to the top of my TBR. He also contributed to an anthology that I have read most of the stories in called Never Whistle at Night, an indigenous dark fiction anthology. So I believe that his story in that book was about blood quantum and had a sort of different lens than the story of this book. But after I read The Whistler, I will definitely go back and check out more of his work. And that my friends was our final book.
Amelia Hruby:So we've now talked about nine new releases for a cozy, sexy, spooky fall. I'm taking you through the full spectrum. And as a reminder, beginning with the coziest and going to the spookiest or even scariest, here are the nine books I mentioned in this episode. The first was A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sanguit Madonna. Then dragon fires everywhere by Hazel Beck, ghost business by Jen DeLuca, zomb rom com by Olivia Dade, arcane academy by Elise Kova, play nice by Rachel Harrison, Catabasis by RF Kuang, The Bewitching by Sylvia Moreno Garcia, and The Whistler by Nick Medina.
Amelia Hruby:Now that I see all of that together, and I'm looking at the stack of all these books sitting on my desk, I am gonna sign off because I really wanna go read. Like, what am I doing recording this? I wanna be reading these books. So as always, if you enjoyed this episode, please, please, please leave the show a five star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or anywhere else that you like to listen. I really appreciate those votes of confidence, and they tell other new listeners that there are folks here who already love the show.
Amelia Hruby:So please do leave us a rating and review. Please check out these books. Get them from your library. Get them from a local bookstore. Or if you get them at the links in the show notes, I'll receive a small affiliate payment that I take as a thank you for the book rec.
Amelia Hruby:And I've also put a link in the show notes to a wish list I have of books that you can buy for me through Bookshop, and they will get shipped right to my house. And if you send me a book, I will review it here on the show. I'm working on some single book episodes, some minis, like five minutes on a five star read. So I'll have some more episodes coming your way this fall. But for now, thanks so much for being here, and cheers to your next best book.