The Reading Agency Reveals 2025 Quick Read Book Covers

The Reading Agency has unveiled the Quick Reads book jackets for its 2025 titles.

Now entering its 19th year, Quick Reads is a flagship initiative to help new readers access the power of reading and to help lapsed readers get back into the habit

Quick Reads are short, accessible, and affordable great reads by diverse authors, available in bookshops for just £1 a book, or free to borrow from libraries. They support The Reading Agency’s charitable mission to empower more people to read and to solve the nation’s adult reading crisis.

The six titles will also be gifted as part of World Book Night 2025, The Reading Agency’s annual drive to create a nation of readers, on 23 April 2025.

World Book Night gifting in 2025 will take place via partnerships between local organisations and public libraries. Thousands of Quick Reads will be handed out through public libraries to community organisations across the UK, including food banks, homeless shelters, prisons, and workplaces.

Organisations can get in touch with their local library authority to discuss a partnership for gifting.
As free, accessible community hubs, libraries will also support new readers with their gifted book and ongoing reading journey.

2025’s Quick Reads feature original stories by the crime writer Fiona Cummins with A Boy Called Saul, and the award-winning novelist Leila Aboulela with A New Year.

There are also abridged versions of Dr Alex George’s 2023 bestseller, The Mind Manual: Mental Fitness Tools for Everyone, Abir Mukherjee’s 2016 debut novel A Rising Man, and Cathy Rentzenbrink’s inspiring guide to putting your life on the page, Write It All Down, which was published in 2022. The sixth title is the novella The Surprise Visitor from romance writer Cathy Bramley.

2025’s Quick Reads writers are passionate about promoting reading.

Tapping into younger audiences is Dr Alex George. The TV doctor, author, and Youth Mental Health Ambassador to the government, has made a mark for making health more accessible to millennials and beyond.

Cathy Bramley volunteered as a teenager for the Right to Read scheme, and Fiona Cummins was inspired to take part because of her father’s struggle with reading and writing after he left school at 14.
Leila Aboulela said that for her it was “extra special” to write a story for readers who reflect her main character – an immigrant whose first language was not English.

Cathy Rentzenbrink’s presence on the list is significant as she is a former project director of Quick Reads – a role inspired by her father, who didn’t learn to read and write until she encouraged him to do so as an adult. Cathy said it was a “great honour” to become a Quick Reads author: “I hope my words will support people to start writing as well as reading, as everyone has a story to tell.”

Karen Napier, CEO, The Reading Agency, said: “Many avid readers become writers themselves. We’re incredibly proud that Cathy is a 2025 Quick Read author with her book that explores the healing power of writing, particularly as Cathy worked as project director of Quick Reads before stepping down to pursue her writing career. She has done incredible work supporting readers and writers alike, and is a great advocate for the power of both.”

To date, Quick Reads has collaborated with over 30 publishers and produced over 140 titles since 2006, with over 5 million copies distributed, and over 6 million library loans.

Evidence shows that regular reading has far-reaching social impacts; improving health, wellbeing, life chances and social connections. Adults who read for just 30 minutes a week are 20% more likely to report greater life satisfaction. However, only half (50%) of adults now read regularly, down from 58% in 2015, and 1 in 10 find reading difficult.

Karen added: “We’ve chosen a range of titles, covering crime fiction, romance, and mental health, by diverse authors to ensure we appeal to a wide readership. Crime fiction and romance are both gateways into reading, so it’s terrific to welcome Abir Mukherjee, Fiona Cummins and Cath Bramley to this year’s list.
“Reading can be hugely beneficial to mental health generally, and Dr George’s title of course, very specifically supports mental wellbeing, which we know is a nationally pressing issue. The hope is these titles and authors appeal to those who perhaps wouldn’t ordinarily pick up a book, as well as to lapsed readers.”

About The Reading Agency

The Reading Agency is a UK charity with a mission to empower people of all ages to read.

Evidence shows that reading improves health and wellbeing, life chances and social connections. The Reading Agency champions access to the proven power of reading by providing activities for all ages.
Working with public libraries, prisons, hospitals, and other community settings, we reach over two million people a year. But with a UK population of over 67 million that’s not nearly enough.

We want to get more people fired up about reading because everything changes when you read. Get in touch today to find out more about what we do and to help us on our mission.

www.readingagency.org.uk | @readingagency

About Quick Reads: A Tool for Social Change

Quick Reads are short, accessible, diverse, and affordable books written by bestselling authors, specifically designed for adults who are less confident readers or have lost the reading habit. These books serve as a powerful tool for social impact and behaviour change by:

Providing an accessible entry point to reading for adults with low literacy skills.
Offering a way back into reading for lapsed readers.
Boosting reading confidence and enjoyment, particularly among young adults who face the most
barriers.
Promoting diverse representation in literature to engage a wider audience.
Addressing time constraints by offering short, engaging reads
The Need for Change
Recent findings from the Reading Agency’s ‘State of the Nation in Adult Reading: 2024’ report highlight stark trends:

Only half of UK adults (50%) now read regularly, down from 58% in 2015.
35% of UK adults are ’lapsed readers’ who have dropped the reading habit.
15% of the population are non-readers, an 88% increase since 2015.
11% of people find reading difficult, rising to 22% among young people (16-24 years).
30% of people struggle to finish what they’re reading, and 28% find it hard to focus on reading for more than a few minutes.

These statistics underscore the urgent need for intervention to improve adult literacy and reading engagement across the UK.

In 2025, Quick Reads is sponsored by Penguin Random House and Hachette with additional funding support from The Foyle Foundation.

Quick Reads 2025 Author Bios

Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela is an award-winning novelist whose work has received critical recognition for its distinctive exploration of identity, migration, and Islamic spirituality.
Her novels have been translated into fifteen languages and include Bird Summons, Minaret, The Translator, The Kindness of Enemies, Elsewhere, Home (Fiction Winner of the Saltire Book of the Year Awards) and River Spirit (A New York Times and Scottish Herald Best Book of the Year). Aboulela was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She grew up in Sudan and in her mid-twenties moved to Scotland where she now resides.

Leila’s Quick Read:

A New Year

Recently widowed, Suad (75) moves in with her son and his family in the Scottish countryside. This is her traditional right, to be cared for by her family, not to be left alone in London dependent on the kindness of strangers. After a warm welcome by her son, his wife and children, Suad settles into her new life.

However, as the months pass, her relationship with her daughter-in-law deteriorates. Things come to a head when the frustrated daughter-in-law orders her to leave the house, and Suad’s son rents out a small flat for her in the nearest village. Broken hearted, Suad must come to terms with the unthinkable. What shocks her is that her daughter-in-law in not a white woman from a different culture.

She is Muslim and a distant relation. There was a time when Suad had loved her as a daughter. However, living in the West for decades has changed the younger woman’s values. She is no longer bound by traditional duty, and she is unable to tolerate the older woman’s unreasonable demands and criticisms. For the first time in her life, Suad finds herself living alone. It is a new life she had not been prepared for. Her late husband had protected her from the first day she had arrived in Britain and in London she had enjoyed an active community life with regular visits to the mosque.

Now she must be as independent as any other British woman her age! It is a shock and, at first, she feels she will die from disappointment. Instead, her anger is energizing and rejuvenating. She will prove to her son and her daughter-in-law that she does not need them. She can manage on her own, she can make new friends and enjoy a different way of life in Scotland.

Cathy Bramley

Cathy Bramley is a British author of sixteen romance novels, and has sold almost two million copies worldwide. Her books have hit the UK best sellers’ list and have been nominated for several awards including the British Book of the Year 2023.
Cathy has been a lover of stories since she was a small child and used to beg her mother to take her to the library every week for new books. Cathy didn’t start writing until 2013, before that she ran a PR and Marketing agency for many years. Her books are often about ordinary women doing extraordinary things. Cathy has two grown up daughters and lives in a small village in countryside in the middle of England.

Cathy’s Quick Read:

The Surprise Visitor

Claire and Lisa might not have seen each other for years, since Claire married a vicar and moved away twenty-five years ago, but the two women’s friendship is just as strong as it ever was. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, texts and weekly calls, the two friends have made their long-distance friendship work and if they were to see each other tomorrow, they ’d pick up exactly where they left all those years ago, wouldn’t they?

Claire has done all right for herself; Lisa is in awe of the beautiful vicarage she lives in with its big kitchen and landscaped gardens. And Claire is really proud of Lisa for making her way in the world as a driving instructor. Especially as she struggled at school with undiagnosed dyslexia, the teachers labelling her as lazy, telling her she wouldn’t amount to much if she didn’t work harder.

Claire and Lisa always say they ’d love to meet up. But in reality, although they ’ve have had lots of opportunities to do so over the years, both of them have secretly avoided it. Because the truth is that Claire doesn’t live in the house she sends pictures of to Lisa, she’s the cleaner for the real owners since her husband left her for the choirmaster. And since a car crash gave Lisa a fear of driving, she now writes very successful spicy romance books, a fact that she has hidden from ‘vicar’s wife’ Claire for fear of being judged. But when Lisa finds herself stranded on a broken-down train in Claire’s home town and decides to pay her oldest friend a surprise visit, will they still be friends by the end of the day?

Fiona Cummins

Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former journalist and a graduate of the Faber Academy Writing a Novel course. Rattle, her debut novel, was the subject of a huge international auction and has been translated into several languages. It received widespread critical acclaim from authors and reviewers. She has since written bestsellers The Collector, The Neighbour, When I Was Ten, Into the Dark and All of Us Are Broken in which she introduces DC Saul Anguish, a brilliant young detective with a dark past. Fiona lives with her family in Essex.

Fiona’s Quick Read:

A Boy Called Saul

It’s time to go back to the beginning . . .

Raised in an abusive family, Saul Anguish is a clever but troubled teenager with a dark past and a love of nature. Etta Fitzroy is a former police detective who now lives in New York, but is called back to London to help in a missing persons case. Saul and Etta had met two years before when five-year -old Clara Foyle was kidnapped by a serial killer, whose evil deeds had left scars on them all. When Saul discovers a ‘graveyard’ on an island near his home town in Essex and Etta comes to investigate, they will have to look back to the past, and Saul will have to decide who he can trust.

Dr Alex George

Dr Alex George is a TV doctor, author, and Youth Mental Health Ambassador to the government.
Alex has become a well-known and respected figure amongst healthcare professionals in the UK, from his years as an A&E doctor, bringing the nation accessible and reassuring advice directly from the frontline throughout the pandemic.

Alex is on a mission to improve mental health support for young people, and has become prolific throughout the UK in his campaigning for Early Support Hubs. He has a hugely successful podcast, Stompcast, which promotes the importance of walking in nature for mental and physical wellbeing.
In November 2021, he presented his first full length documentary for BBC One and Children Need, Dr Alex: Our Young Mental Health Crisis. He also hosts his own radio show on Classic FM, Uplifting Classics, which explores the relationship between classical music and wellbeing. Across his platforms, Alex has become a leading voice in mental and physical health and wellbeing, and uses his platform to make health and medicine more accessible to millennials and beyond. His first book, Live Well Every Day was published May 2021. Alex’s first children’s book, A Better Day: Your Positive Youth Mental Health Handbook was published in September 2022.

Alex’s Quick Read:

An abridged version of his bestselling book, The Mind Manual: Mental Fitness Tools for Everyone. It helps readers assess their mental health, complete with a mental health toolkit to help readers thrive.

Abir Mukherjee

Abir Mukherjee is the Times bestselling author of the Wyndham & Banerjee series of crime novels set in Raj-era India which have sold over 400,000 copies worldwide and been translated into 15 languages. His books have won numerous awards including the CWA Dagger for best Historical Novel, the Prix du Polar Européen, the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing and the Amazon Publishing Readers Award for E-book for the Year.

Alongside fellow author, Vaseem Khan, he also hosts the popular Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast, where every fortnight, joined by special guests from the media and literature, he takes a wry look at the world of books, writing, and the creative arts, tackling everything from bestsellers to pop culture.

Abir grew up in Scotland and now lives in Surrey with his wife and two sons.

Abir’s Quick Read:

An abridged version of the first book in the Wyndham detective series, A Rising Man.

India, 1919. Desperate for a fresh start, Captain Sam Wyndham arrives to take up an important post in Calcutta’s police force. He is soon called to the scene of a horrifying murder. The victim was a senior official, and a note in his mouth warns the British to leave India – or else. With the stability of the Empire under threat, Wyndham and Sergeant ‘Surrender-not’ Banerjee must solve the case quickly. But there are some who will do anything to stop them…

Cathy Rentzenbrink

Cathy Rentzenbrink is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Last Act of Love, A Manual for Heartache, Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books and Everyone Is Still Alive. It took her twenty years to wrestle her own life story on the page and she loves to use what she has learnt about the profound nature of writing the self in the service of others.

Cathy has taught for Arvon, Curtis Brown Creative, at Falmouth University and at festivals and in prisons, and welcomes anyone, no matter what their experience, education, background, or story. She believes that everyone’s life would be improved by picking up a pen and is at her happiest when encouraging her students to have the courage to delve into themselves and see the magic that will start to happen on the page.

Cathy’s Quick Read:

An abridgement of Write It All Down, a guide to putting your life on the page.

Complete with a compendium of advice from amazing writers such as Dolly Alderton, Adam Kay and Candice Carty Williams, this book is here to help you discover the pleasure and solace to be found in writing; the profound satisfaction of wrestling a story onto a page and seeing the events of your life transformed through the experience of writing a memoir.

Perfect for seasoned writers as well as writing amateurs and everyone in between, this helpful handbook will steer you through the philosophical and practical challenges of writing, whether you’re struggling with writer’s block or worrying what people will say. Intertwined with reflections and exercises, Write It All Down is at once an intimate conversation and an invitation to share your story.