For Top Ten Tuesday this week I’ve been refreshing my memory about the authors I read last year for the first time. There were 19 of them, but only some of them interested me enough to want to read more of their work.
Here are my 10 most interesting discoveries.
I’ve included links to the books I’ve reviewed so far.
1. Chloe Hooper
The Arsonist by the Australian journalist/author Chloe Hooper was the only non-fiction book I read in 2025. It’s a riveting exploration of the Black Saturday bushfires, one of the most devastating wildfires in Australian history, and questions whether whether the man held responsible, truly did commit the crime.
2. Benjamin Wood
British author Benjamin Wood has written five novels but I’d not heard of him until the novella Seascraper was selected for the 2025 BookerPrize longlist. It’s a gem of a novel about a yearning for a different way of life.
3. Rebecca F Kuang
I’d heard of Kuang before her novel Yellowface was published in 2023 though I’d heard she mostly wrote fantasy novels which is a genre that doesn’t hold much appeal for me. I only read Yellowface because I found a copy in a Little Free Library. Now I’m interested in going back to an earlier novel which was a New York Times best seller — Babel.
4. Rhidian Brook
It’s taken me far too long to get to read Welsh author Rhidian Brook. After reading The Aftermath, a novel about animosity and reconciliation in post-war Germany, I definitely want to explore more of his other novels. The good news is that I do have one novel already in my TBR — The Testament of Taliesin Jones which I’m going to earmark for Wales Reading Month 2026
5. Rhys Davies
Another Welsh author that slipped through the net is Rhys Davies which is embarrassing given he was so prolific — he wrote over 100 stories, 20 novels, and an autobiography. I read Selected Stories during Wales Reading Month’25 and fell in love with the way he depicted working class life in the valleys of South wales.
6. Taylor Jenkins Reid
I’m a latecomer to this author. I ended up reading two novels by her last year — The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Carrie Soto is Back — both highly entertaining. There are four more novels by her for me to explore including her latest Atmosphere, published in 2025.
7. Rachael Mead
Another Australian author made it onto my “read more by” list on the strength of Application of Pressure which follows the trauma-filled lives of two paramedics in Melbourne. I see she has a more recent book which is a reimagining of the life of Nel Law, the first Australian woman to set foot on Antarctica. I don’t know anything about this woman but I’m intrigued to find her described as a ground-breaking artist whose work flourished amid the ice caps.
8. E. F Benson
Bought on a whim from a charity shop, Mapp and Lucia by E. F Benson was far more entertaining than I anticipated. It’s a wonderfully comic tale about two women who each want to be the Queen Bee of their town. After I finished it I learned that this is actually the fourth title in a series written between 1920 and 1930. Plenty more to explore clearly.
All the authors I’ve listed above are writers whose work I definitely want to delve into more deeply. I’m less sure about the final two on my list because they are debut authors. You can never tell whether they’ll be able to pull of a second novel equal in quality. I’m interested enough however to keep an eye open for what they do next. I might have to wait a long time though since there is no indication as yet that either author has a new book due for publication shortly.
9. Ferdia Lennon
I struggled to get into Glorious Exploits and wasn’t sure I’d finish it in time for the book club discussion, but I ended up loving this imaginative tale of theatrical endeavour set in ancient Sicily.
10. Priscilla Morris
Morris based her novel Black Butterflies on the experience of some of her family members during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s. It’s a deeply moving account of how people become innocent victims of political power games.