Here are my favorite covers of the new-to-me books I read this year.

Stone and Sky  (2025) Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London #10)

DAW

Cover by Stephen Walter & Patrick Knowles

Of course the new Rivers of London cover was going to make it on here.

I adore everything about these covers.

Mystery, Queer

Peter Grant: Midnight Riot (2011), Moon Over Soho (2011), Whispers Under Ground (2012), Broken Homes (2014), Foxglove Summer (2014), The Hanging Tree (2017), The Furthest Station (2017), Lies Sleeping (2018), False Value (2020), Amongst Our Weapons (2022)

Rivers of London: The October Man (2019), Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection (2020), What Abigail Did That Summer (2021), Winter’s Gifts (2023), The Masquerades of Spring (2024)

Rogue Community College (2024) David R. Slayton (Liberty House #1)

Blackstone Publishing

Cover design by Sarah Riedlinger

This cover doesn’t tell you much about the contents of the story (it’s in the same world as the Adam Binder books, by is barely urban fantasy, taking place mostly in a pocket/crossover  space in that world). But I don’t care.

But look at the details: the glowing brickwork! the felt! the stitching! the dinosaurs!

Queer

Adam Binder: White Trash Warlock (2020), Trailer Park Trickster (2021), Deadbeat Druid (2022)

Fae & Human Relations by Sarah Wallace and S.O. Callahan:

Fire Spells Between Friends (#2) (2024), Shade Spells with Strangers (#3) (2025)

Self-published

Cover by Caras Alexandra

I picked up the first book in this series because of the cover, and these books continue the trend.

You get the feel of the story (historical fantasy) as well as the interactions between the characters: in the first book is a friends to marriage story, with a non-binary romantic lead. The second is strangers who aren’t quite sure if they fully trust each other with their feelings or if they can overcome the class differences between them.

Historical, Romance, Queer

Fae & Human Relations: Breeze Spells and Bridegrooms (2024)

Viscounts & Villainy  (2025) Allie Therin (Roaring Twenties Magic #3)

Carina Press

As always, cover artists for Harlequin titles are unlisted and seem to be unfindable. Which is incredibly annoying.

Allie Therin has gotten such excellent covers for this series, I really wish the artist(s) were credited.

Mystery, Queer

Magic in Manhattan: Spellbound (2019), Starcrossed (2020), Wonderstruck (2021)

Roaring Twenties Magic: Proper Scoundrels (2021), Once a Rogue (2023), Viscounts & Villainy (2025)

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea (2022) Rebecca Thorne (Tomes & Tea #1)

Self-published

Cover by Irene Huang

To be completely honest, this cover feels a little busier than I prefer (I wish the title stood out just a but more) but it so completely depicts the feel of the story I’m more than willing to let that slide.

It’s cozy, but you can see one character has her sword at easy reach by her side, even as she relaxes with her cup of tea.

Cozy, Queer

The Monster of Lightower Library: A Lamplight Short Story (2025) Morgan Stang (Lamplight Murder Mysteries #1.5)

Self-published

Cover design by Etheric Design

I love a border on a fantasy book. It’s a simple cover but the artist did an fantastic job with those few elements, making the whole thing eye-catching and lovely.

Steampunk, Queer

Lamplight Murder Mysteries: Murder at Spindle Manor (2022), The Monster of Lightower Library: A Lamplight Short Story (2025), Murder on the Lamplight Express (2023), Murder on Hunter’s Eve (2024)

Bookshops & Bonedust  (2023) Travis Baldree (Legends & Lattes #1)

Tor

Cover by Carson Lowmiller

Travis Baldree has again won the cover lottery.  We’ve got Viv, Fern, and Potroast–and Potroast is perfect here. I mean, the look in his eyes as he stares at the baked good in Viv’s hand!

We also get the cozy feel of the book store, while Viv’s sword remains prominent (she’s at the start of her days of adventuring here, not the end as in Legends & Lattes).

Delightful.

Cozy, Queer

Legends & Lattes (2022)

All Accounts Settled (2025) Drew Hayes (Fred the Vampire Accountant #9)

Self-published

Cover by A.M. Ruggs

This is clearly a Fred book, with the books and blood, but is also distinct from the previous covers. No accounting on this cover, but then there’s not really any accounting in this story as we wind up the series.

Fred, the Vampire Accountant: The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant (2014), Undeath & Taxes (2015), Bloody Acquisitions (2016), The Fangs of Freelance (2017), Deadly Assessments (2018), Undeading Bells (2019), Out of House and Home (2021), Posthumous Education (2022)

Supernatural Crimes Unit: NYPD: The Thin Blue Ley-Line (2025) Keith R. A. Decandido

Blackstone Publishing

Cover by Jeff Wong

I just now saw the similarity between this cover and Rogue Community College. In this case it’s a fabric police badge rather than a banner, but the stitching details are there. Do I think they’d have a werewolf on their badge? Not really, but it does make it clear this is an urban fantasy rather than straight-up police procedural.

Mystery, Queer

Help Wanted (2018) J. Emery (Ashveil Academy #1)

Self-published

Cover by Eva I

This is another cover that caught my eye and convinced me to read the description.

It’s a simple cover with only a few elements, but it’s put together all but perfectly to catch the eye and make me wonder what is happening here.

Queer, Romance

Once again, self-published books swept the fantasy cover category, with six covers making my favorites list, and Blackstone media coming in second and Harlequin with a dunce cap in the corner for not listing the artist.

It’s time for the round-up of the year in reading, and once again rereads dominated, although in part it was due to the number of audio books I listened to this year: 63 (35%).

I’m doing this in January for the first time, to try and encourage myself to read more new-to-me books through the end of the year, as in the past I held off reading new books after I’d written my yearly round-up posts.

To make things easier on myself, I created yet another spreadsheet, just for my favorite of the year, and I created running list with the information I use for my round up, so in theory all the gathering of data has already been done. We’ll see now how that worked.

Because I’ve been doing so much rereading for the past five years, I’ve removed the recency limit I’d been using for awhile.

I’ve also started noting cover artists in my review posts (and in fact I’ve been going back and looking for cover artists for older books. For fantasy/SF books I found resources, like Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) that had much of the information I wanted, but have yet to find a similar resource for mystery novels; we’ll see if I can find something useful for romance novels.

As always, once I’ve written a post, I’ll link it here.

Covers

Fantasy
Mystery
Romance
Non-Fiction

Books

Fantasy
Mystery
Romance
Science Fiction
Non-Fiction
Audio