Virago looks forward to 2025
As 2024 draws to a close, we want to share what we’re excited about for 2025 . . .
NEW FICTION
Ordinary Love by Marie Rutkoski
There’s no such thing as an ordinary love story. Ordinary Love is an electric love story and a novel the entire Virago team fell for immediately. It’s the story of Emily and Gen, who were lovers in high school and coincidentally reconnect when they’re in their 30s, after their lives have taken very different paths. After years of heartbreak, missed chances and misunderstandings, will they finally get a second chance at first love?
Here’s just some of the praise for the book so far:
‘Almost unbearably beautiful. Ordinary Love is extraordinary’ Emilia Hart, bestselling author of Weyward
‘Profoundly moving’ Emily St. John Mandel, bestselling author of Station Eleven
‘Tender, truthful and gorgeously written’ Samuel Burr, bestselling author of The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers
The Dilemmas of Working Women by Fumio Yamamoto
The Japanese bestseller
We know readers can’t get enough of Japanese fiction, and this book is very special indeed. In this classic Japanese bestseller, published in English twenty-five years after it took Japan by storm, the lives of five ordinary women are depicted with irresistible humour and searing emotional insight. For anyone who’s loved Butter, Convenience Store Woman or Breasts and Eggs.
Once the Deed is Done by Rachel Seiffert
The brilliant new novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Dark Room and A Boy in Winter.
‘Once again, Rachel Seiffert uncovers a little regarded realm of history, here exploring the pain and confusion of displaced persons at the end of the Second World War’ Tim Pears
Northern Germany, 1945. Dead of night and dead of winter, a boy hears soldiers and sees strangers – forced labourers – fleeing across the heathland by his small town. The end days are close, war brings risk and chance, and Benno is witness to something he barely understands – but he will not be able to carry this secret alone . . .
‘Rachel Seiffert writes short, fast narratives about the big historical events that have shaped our time’ The Times
El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott
The thrilling, twisty new novel from bestselling writer Megan Abbott: a story about three sisters who join an exclusive women’s club which promises to empower its members, but will actually put them in mortal danger… El Dorado Drive is a nail-biting, brilliantly dark story about class, money, women in mid-life, and the decline of the American dream.
And early readers are already going crazy for it:
‘Tense, chilling and beautifully written, El Dorado Drive is an absolute knockout’ Harlan Coben
‘A smart, twisty, and riveting family drama’ Karin Slaughter
‘Suspenseful as all hell but also beautifully observed’ Dennis Lehane
Ghosts in My House by Eleanor Crewes
This spine-tingling and striking graphic novel follows four occupants of the same house over a century, and the ghosts that haunt them all. Published in time for Halloween, this is for fans of Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol and Sheets by Brenna Thummler
Praise for The Times I Knew I Was Gay by Eleanor Crewes:
‘Funny and super relatable’ Alice Oseman, author of Heartstopper
‘It’s for everyone. Candid, authentic and utterly charming’ Sarah Waters
NEW NON-FICTION
Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have by Deborah Frances-White
From the bestselling author of The Guilty Feminist, a book for anyone who’s sick of avoiding the shouting – and shouting into the void
‘If you have ever felt shut down, this book is a godsend’ Emma Thompson
We are understandably scared to have conversations about flammable subjects. But Deborah Frances-White is even more scared of not having them.
Having grown up in a cult, she knows the value of freedom of speech, critical thinking and the ability to disagree while really fighting for change. In her new book, she encourages us to ask difficult questions, really listen and know when to negotiate and when to resist. Most importantly, she explores how to change minds, including our own. And she argues that we don’t need to agree on everything in order to find a way out and a way forward on some of the biggest issues in today’s world.
Are you ready to talk?
The Mind Electric by Pria Anand
‘Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks and the best of medical writing. Fascinating’ Abraham Verghese
A young woman channelling the voice of the Holy Spirit. A mother whose children have been replaced by changelings. A family cursed by a mysterious inability to sleep. Neurologist Pria Anand’s patients come to her with myriad peculiar symptoms, but they all have something in common: their diagnosis always hinges on a story. And these stories demonstrate again and again the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that the strangest symptoms experienced by any single individual can show us something universal about being human.
Surreal by Michèle Gerber Klein
The long-awaited, definitive biography of Gala Dalí, which unmasks this famous yet little-known queen of the twentieth-century art world.
Gala was a heroine whose originality captivated people wherever she went, and her life story has everything : glamour; drama; true love, twisted love; ambition; money; art; defiance and daring. In this vivid, detailed rendering, Michèle Gerber Klein has brought Gala out of the shadows to reveal a charismatic figure who played a pivotal role in the art world, yet has never received the full recognition she deserves.
The Work We Need by Hilary Cottam
Hilary Cottam, author of Radical Help about which the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland wrote, ‘this might be the most important book you read this year’ now turns to the subject of the future of work.
Drawing from a fascinating range of sources, from historians to trade unionists, philosophers and crucially, to hours of original research through workshops, Cottam writes of the history of work and shows how we are on the threshold of a new work revolution. She looks at work as a cultural as well as economic force and has identified Six Principles– Basics, Meaning, Time, Care, Play and Place — which could alter the place of work in all our lives. Crucially, she is an optimist who believes we can work better and therefore live better too.
It’s Terrible The Things I Have To Do To Be Me by Philippa Snow
‘An essential cultural critic’ Lauren Elkin
How does an icon become an icon? How did Anna Nicole Smith model herself on Marilyn Monroe? What connects Lindsay Lohan with Elizabeth Taylor? How is self-made beauty Pamela Anderson like trans bond girl Caroline ‘Tula’ Cossey?
In a series of interconnected essays about pairs of famous women, award-nominated essayist and art critic Philippa Snow explores the echoes and connections between a constellation of female stars and lays bare the artful and gruelling demands of femininity – from the golden age of Hollywood to the Instagram era.
The Little Book of Positive Birth Stories by Claire Fulton
Collected by doula and hypnobirthing coach Claire Fulton, here are thirty true stories from a diverse group of ordinary people representing a wide array of experiences. There are hospital births and home births; inductions, caesareans and vaginal deliveries. Things rarely go quite to plan, and there are moments of surprise, frustration and unexpected comedy along the way, but all of the stories deliver comfort, reassurance and a happy ending. A beautiful hardback – the perfect gift for yourself or anyone in your life who is about to give birth.
NEW ON THE VIRAGO MODERN CLASSICS LIST
An iconic new design for the list
In January 2025, our elegant and iconic new design for its Modern Classics list will land: a love letter to the original ‘green spines’, reimagined for today’s reader.
The new Modern Classics look with ten handpicked ‘classics-with-bite’ showcasing the dazzling range of the list, from beloved novels to acerbic essays, unsettling masterpieces to feminist gamechangers. The ten titles include provocative classics from Muriel Spark, Gayl Jones and Patricia Highsmith, BookTok favourite Girl, Interrupted and the Sunday Times bestseller Fran Lebowitz Reader.
Edith’s Story: The true story of how one young girl escaped the Holocaust by Edith Velmans
‘Both memoir and meditation, it is moving and wise . . . neither sanguine nor sentimental about the Holocaust and man’s capacity for evil’ Independent
‘One of the best and most moving memoirs I have ever read’ Ruth Rendell
The inspiring and deeply moving true story of ‘the Anne Frank who lived’, about how one girl survived the Nazi occupation of Holland by hiding in plain sight – a testament to courage and hope in the darkest times.
Fish Tales by Nettie Jones
The dazzling lost classic: acquired by Toni Morrison, championed by Gayl Jones, and almost forgotten for forty years, Fish Tales is a fierce, fearless modern classic for our own fragmented times.
‘Candid, fast and alive’ Raven Leilani
Lewis Jones is a party girl on the edge. Bankrolled by her husband Woody and accompanied by her fellow hedonist Kitty Kat, a hustler who knows all the best spots, Lewis bounces between the demimonde of 70s New York and affluent Black Detroit in a fractured haze of lovers, cocaine parties and champagne baths. But her wild pursuit of freedom is upended when she meets the handsome, erudite, cruel Brook – the only man who won’t allow her to take control.
After Midnight by Daphne du Maurier
Last but definitely not least, since we know how excited people are about this collection from the reaction when we announced it…
Introduced by the international bestseller Stephen King, this is stunning new hardback collection brings together thirteen of du Maurier’s greatest uncanny stories for the first time – including ‘The Birds’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’.
From murderous desires to supernatural forces, du Maurier’s masterful short stories stare into the dark heart of our relationships: between men and women, humanity and nature, love and obsession, the future and the past. Whatever you do, don’t look now . . .
