Heading into its 19th year, The Reading Agency's flagship Quick Reads initiative has unveiled it's 2025 titles. Helping new readers access the power of reading and helping lapsed readers get back into the habit, six new titles have joined the Quick Reads catalogue. 

What are Quick Reads?

Quick Reads is an annual initiative set up by UK charity The Reading Agency that offers short, accessible, affordable books written by bestselling authors. These books include abridged versions of popular titles or whole new stories from bestselling authors. 

These books have been specifically written to engage with emergent, reluctant and lapsed readers in order to spread the joy of reading and the multitude of benefits it brings. Quick Reads are designed to be accessible and enjoyable, with the ambition to promote diverse representation in literature and remove barriers to reading. They also address time constraints with shorter, engaging reads.

The Quick Reads titles are perfect for using as a whole group college, workplace, prison or community read as they are accessible to a broad range of reading abilities as well as having a wide appeal.

The Benefits of Reading

Studies show that reading for pleasure has a multitude of benefits. It has been found that those who read for pleasure have higher levels of self-esteem, better sleeping patterns and more resilience. Regular reading has also been found to have more far-reaching social impacts and has been linked to improving health, wellbeing, life chances and social connections. 

In spite of this recent research showed that half of all adults in the UK don’t read regularly for pleasure, and 1 in 6 – that’s 8.5 million – struggle to read at all.

The Reading Agency’s survey also found that 15% of UK adults have never read regularly for pleasure, and 35% used to read but have stopped. 

Quick Reads for 2025

To date Quick Reads has collaborated with over 30 publishers and produced over 140 titles since 2006. There have been over 5 million copies of the books distributed and more than 6 million library loans. This year the six new Quick Reads titles include three original stories and three abridged books. The books will be published on the 11th April and they will retail at £1.

The three original titles this year are:

A Boy Called Saul by Fiona Cummins

A New Year by Leila Aboulela

The Surprise Visitor by Cathy Bramley

The three abridged titles rounding out this year's Quick Reads releases are:

The Mind Manual by Dr Alex George

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee

Write It All Down by Cathy Rentzenbrink

Karen Napier, CEO, The Reading Agency, said: “They’re designed to be an entry point for readers to discover, or rediscover, the joys and benefits reading is scientifically proven to bring. We also recommend Quick Reads for anyone who struggles with reading, for a variety of reasons including dementia, brain injury recovery, attention deficit, dyslexia, and other reasons.”

Where can I get Quick Reads?

The 2025 Quick Reads are available in libraries, from bookshops and from The Reading Agency's online shop.

You can order the 2025 Quick Reads from LoveReading with 10% off and know you'll be donating 25% of the cost of the book to help get more books into UK schools.

Until 10am on the 14th February Charities, social enterprises, prisons, food banks, hospital libraries, workplaces and other community-based organisations can pre-order the Quick Reads books with a 30% discount at the Quick Reads shop. 

In addition, public libraries will be gifted thousands of Quick Reads to hand out to community organisations across the UK on World Book Night, including food banks, homeless shelters, and prisons.

Organisations can get in touch with their local library authority to discuss a partnership for gifting.

Check out the £1 2025 books below and to see the full range of Quick Reads dive into our Quick Reads category here.

For more reading recommendations, check out our collection: Books to Help Non-reading Adults Find Their Reading Mojo.

@ReadingAgency

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