Best new reading of 2025

This year I reread, as usual, books by Georgette Heyer, Rex Stout, P.G. Wodehouse and some other eternals. Here are some of my favourites of books new to me. First, fiction: Jonathan Coe, The Proof of My Innocence (2024): a brilliant mystery and novel. Maurice Druon, the first four books in the Accursed Kings sequence (1955–57): I saw Druon named as the second-best French historical novelist, and…