Can't-Wait Wednesday: Cape Fever by Nadia Davids & Needle Lake by Justine Chapman

   

 Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released!

Cape Fever by Nadia Davids
Publication: December 9th, 2025
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover. 240 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"From award-winning South African author Nadia Davids comes a gothic psychological thriller set in the 1920s, where a young maid finds herself entangled with the spirits of a decaying manor and the secrets of its enigmatic owner.

I come highly recommended to Mrs. Hattingh through sentences I tell her I cannot read.

The year is 1920, in a small, unnamed city in a colonial empire. Soraya Matas believes she has found the ideal job as a personal maid to the eccentric Mrs. Hattingh, whose beautiful, decaying home is not far from The Muslim Quarter where Soraya lives with her parents. As Soraya settles into her new role, she discovers that the house is alive with spirits.

While Mrs. Hattingh eagerly awaits her son’s visit from London, she offers to help Soraya stay in touch with her fiancé Nour by writing him letters on her behalf. So begins a strange weekly meeting where Soraya dictates and Mrs. Hattingh writes—a ritual that binds the two women to one another and eventually threatens the sanity of both.

Cape Fever is a masterful blend of gothic themes, folk-tales, and psychological suspense, reminiscent of works by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Daphne du Maurier, and Soraya Matas is an unforgettable narrator, whose story of love and grief, is also a chilling exploration of class and the long reach of history."

This sounds fantastic, I love the setting and premise and have high hopes!

Needle Lake by Justine Chapman
Publication: December 2nd, 2025
The Dial Press
Hardcover. 256 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"“A searing, unforgettable novel that captures the intense and dangerous alchemy of girlhood.”—Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman

And once, after Elna came to stay, I watched a man drown there on Christmas Eve, his body trapped beneath the ice.

Fourteen-year-old Ida was born with a hole in her heart. Forbidden from most physical activities and considered strange by her teachers and peers, she prefers spending time alone, memorizing countries and capitals on her globe and imagining the world outside the tiny logging town of Mineral, Washington.

One afternoon, in walks her cousin Elna, there to stay for a few weeks. Ida hasn’t seen Elna since they were children, and she’s immediately drawn to her older cousin, who’s everything Ida is not: confident, glamorous, charismatic, and daring. Elna lives in San Francisco, a city Ida has seen only as a dot on her globe. She doesn’t treat Ida like she’s a fragile kid whose heart might give out at any moment. She isn’t scared off by Ida’s quirks and fixations. Ida is enraptured.

Then, on Christmas Eve, a man dies out in the woods near Mineral, and the two cousins suddenly share a secret beyond the scope of anything Ida has dealt with before. Fear begins to mix with the reverence Ida feels toward her cousin, especially when she discovers Elna is hiding more than she ever suspected. Brimming with lush prose and careful observation, Needle Lake is an arresting portrait of girlhood and the overwhelming, sometimes dangerous intensity of adolescence."

I'm not entirely sure if this sounds like something that's quite up my alley, but I'm intrigued enough to check it out!