The next novel from Taylor Jenkins Reid was announced a little while ago. Atmosphere is “an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program and the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.” Long-time readers of CR will know how much I’ve enjoyed Reid’s previous novels — Daisy Jones & the Six, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and Malibu Rising are particular favourites — so it should come as no surprise that Atmosphere is one of my most-anticipated novels of 2025. North American and UK editions have already been announced. Here’s the synopsis:
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilots Hank Redmond and John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere is due to be published by Ballantine Books in North America (June) and Hutchinson Heinemann in the UK, on June 3rd, 2025.
Also on CR: Reviews of Daisy Jones & the Six and Malibu Rising
I’m a relative newcomer to Jess Walter‘s work, and thus-far I’ve only read his short fiction — all of which has been superb, and I can’t recommend 
Next summer, 
A fantastic tale of identity, crime, and the long tail of violence
The excellent second novel in the Martini Club series
In March 2025, readers will be able to get their hands on The Summer Guests, the second novel in Tess Gerritsen‘s Martini Club series. The Spy Coast was, somewhat surprisingly, the first of Gerritsen’s novels that I read, and it left me very keen to read more. As I finished it, the sequel had already been announced by Thomas & Mercer (North American publisher), and yesterday I noticed that the cover artwork had been unveiled for both the UK and North American editions. One of my most-anticipated reads of next year, here’s the synopsis:
Civilian Reader 