2025 looks to be another great year for books. What are you excited about reading? On our list, we have heists, Minnesota, Indigenous horror, true crime, strange drawings, Nobel Prize winners (and not-winners), and scandals. Books mentioned on this episode:

• To Steal From Thieves by M.K Lobb
• Passing Through a Prairie Country by Dennis E. Staples
• The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne by Kate Winkler Dawson
• Strange Pictures by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rion
• We Do Not Part by Han Kang, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
• Barley Patch by Gerald Murnane
• The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips

Stay tuned for the rest of our most anticipated reads next week.

For our very first Keep It Fictional Book Chat episode for 2025, we practise some self care and decide to do a free play episode, where we can read whatever we want. What is the first book you read this year? Books mentioned on this episode: The Art Detective: Adventures of an Antiques Roadshow Appraiser Paperback by Philip Mould, Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba, translated by Lisa Dillman, and A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston.

Corene, Emma, Sadie, and Virginia share their top five books of 2024, and their honourable mentions. Political intrigue, burnout, dragons, mermaids, murder, bookstores, skateboarding, memoirs, assassins, mollusks, poetry... we have got them all.

Listeners, what are your favourite books of the year?

This is the episode where Corene and Virginia read books by translators who are also authors, but what is the real reason behind this episode's choice of topic, other than the fact that they both love and respect translators so, so much?

Books mentioned on this episode: Toward Eternity by Anton Hur and Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato.

Romancing another human being is clearly not satifisying enough so we're going to take to the next level today. Books mentioned in this episode:

• The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
• Immortal Cowboy by Alexis Morgan
• I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming
• Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard

Talking cats. Disappearing cats. Prescription cats. Non-existent cats? Today's episode contains all kinds of cats, and all kinds of opinions about cats. Books mentioned on this episode:

• If Cats Disappear From the World by Genki Kawamura, translated by Eric Selland
• We'll Prescribe You a by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda
• What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Alison Watts,
• The Cat Who Caught a Killer by LT Shearer

Emma, Liz, and Virginia talk artificial intelligence and robots on this week's episode. Books mentioned: The Singularity by Dino Buzzati, translated by Anne Milano Appel, Carole and Tuesday by Morito Yamataka, and Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle.

Today's episode is all about books that give us the Fall vibes. As per usual, our three librarians have slightly different takes on the season. What kinds of books do you like to read during the Fall season? Books mentioned on this episode: The Dagger and the Flame by Catherine Doyle, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, translated by Eric Ozawa, and The Avian Hourglass by Lindsey Drager.