The Reading Agency Reveals Authors for 2025 Quick Reads
The Reading Agency has announced its exciting line up of Quick Reads authors for 2025. They are Leila Aboulela, Cathy Bramley, Fiona Cummins, Dr Alex George, Abir Mukherjee and Cathy Rentzenbrink.
Quick Reads are short, accessible, diverse, and affordable great reads at just £1 a book. They are written by bestselling authors, supporting The Reading Agency in its charitable mission to empower more people to read and to solve the nation’s adult literacy crisis.
Now entering its 19th year, Quick Reads is a flagship initiative to help new readers access the power of reading and lapsed readers get back into the habit.
The six Quick Reads titles will be available for just £1 in bookshops and are free to borrow from libraries. They are used across the country in colleges, prisons, trade unions, hospitals, and adult learning organisations. The six titles will also be gifted a part of World Book Night 2025, The Reading Agency’s annual drive to create a nation of readers, on 23 April 2025, with thousands of Quick Reads handed out through public libraries to community organisations across the UK, including food banks, homeless shelters, prisons, and workplaces.
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.
Quick Reads: What Can Reading do for you?
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.1
Studies have shown reading for pleasure enhances empathy and understanding. Those who read for pleasure also have higher levels of self-esteem, better sleeping patterns and more resilience. Non-readers are 28% more likely to report feelings of depression.2
Considering the wide impacts reading can have on us, personally and professionally, this year’s 2025 Quick Reads campaign will be asking the nation: What can reading do for you?
“In the fast paced, digital world we live in, we often have to sift through lots of noise and distractions which can negatively impact on our mental health and wellbeing. Reading can provide a mindful, focussed, and meaningful outlet. Our Quick Reads are a way to entice reluctant and less confident readers to experience the benefits reading can bring, and hopefully hook them into a reading habit, thanks to the brilliant stories on offer from some of the UK’s leading bestselling authors at work today.”
Karen Napier, CEO, The Reading Agency
About the Books
Leila Aboulela is an award-winning novelist whose novels have been translated into 15 languages. She was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Leila grew up in Sudan and now lives in Scotland.
Leila’s Quick Read, A New Year, follows the story of widow Suad, who moves in with her son’s family in the Scottish countryside, until relations break down with her daughter-in-law as they clash over their different approach to tradition, values, and duty, leaving Suad alone to learn to live as an independent woman.
Cathy Bramley is a British author of sixteen romance novels and has sold almost two million copies worldwide. Her books have hit the UK bestsellers’ list and have been nominated for several awards including the British Book of the Year 2023.
Her Quick Read, The Surprise Visitor, follows Claire and Lisa who haven’t seen each other in 25 years, but make their long-distance friendship work with weekly calls. However, both are hiding secrets and maintaining lies. So, when Lisa pays Claire an unexpected visit, their friendship is put to the ultimate test.
Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former journalist. Rattle, her debut novel, was the subject of a huge international auction and has been translated into several languages. She has since written several bestsellers.
Her Quick Read, A Boy Called Saul, follows the clever but troubled teenager with a dark past, Saul Anguish. A grim discovery on an island near his home town in Essex leads Saul, and a former police detective, to look back to the past when the pair met two years earlier when a five-year-old was kidnapped by a serial killer, whose evil deeds left scars on them all.
Dr Alex George is a TV doctor, author, and Youth Mental Health Ambassador to the government. 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 Quick Read is 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 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.
Abir’s Quick Read is an abridged version of the first book in the Wyndham detective series, A Rising Man. The historical crime novel set in India in 1919 received rave reviews, with Ian Rankin dubbing it ‘A thought provoking rollercoaster’.
Sunday Times bestselling author 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 uses 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.
Her Quick Read is an abridgement of Write It All Down, a guide to putting your life on the page. It offers a compendium of advice to help writers discover the pleasure and solace found in writing. The helpful handbook steers the reader through the philosophical and practical challenges of writing, intertwined with reflections and exercises.
In 2025, Quick Reads is sponsored by Penguin Random House and Hachette with additional funding support from The Foyle Foundation.
- Findings from The Reading Agency 2024 report: The State of the Nation’s Adult Reading Adult Reading Research Report | The Reading Agency ↩︎
- Stats from The Reading Agency Reading Facts.pdf ↩︎
