From big-name authors Colson Whitehead, George Saunders and Maggie O’Farrell to buzzy debuts and powerful non-fiction, these are the titles you’ll want to add to your reading pile this year.
1. Prize winners
One look at the 2026 publishing slate confirms that reports of the death of the male novelist have been greatly exaggerated. For starters, a quintet of former male Booker Prize winners make their return this year. January sees a new novel by George Saunders, who won the prestigious prize in 2017 for Lincoln in the Bardo. Less than 200 pages and taking place on one night, Vigil is a more compact story than its predecessor, though it sees Saunders return to themes of death and the afterlife, as a ghost tries to guide a dying oil tycoon towards redemption. In March there’s Howl by Howard Jacobson (a Booker winner in 2010 for The Finkler Question), described as a “tragicomic portrait of one man’s unravelling in an absurd, twisted world”.
Out in January – the same month that he celebrates his 80th birthday – Julian Barnes’s Departure(s) is the writer’s final book, and a suitably reflective one. A hybrid of fiction and memoir, it tells the story of a married couple first introduced by the book’s narrator, Julian. A reckoning on ageing, illness and mortality, it also sees Barnes reflect on his own blood cancer diagnosis during the Covid pandemic.
Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart’s third novel, John of John, is about a young man who, after graduating from art school, returns home to a remote Scottish island. Stuart, who wrote the book while living on the Outer Hebrides for 16 weeks, describes it as: “a story about looking for love… a story about looking for self”. And Yann Martel, whose Life of Pi won the Booker all the way back in 2002, returns with Son of Nobody, a retelling of the Trojan war through the eyes of a foot soldier in ancient times and a modern-day classical scholar.
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Other notable returns in 2026 include Irish author Sebastian Barry, whose The Newer World takes readers back to the late 19th Century and the aftermath of the American Civil War. Capital author John Lanchester’s first book in eight years, Look What You Made Me Do, is a black comedy about a woman who suspects a hit TV show is about her own marriage.
2. Summer must-reads
Many of the year’s most eagerly awaited titles will land just in time to weigh down your holiday suitcase.
With the film adaptation of Hamnet a hot favourite this awards season, Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel will be on many people’s minds in early 2026 – but come June there will be a brand new one to get excited about. Land is inspired by O’Farrell’s great-great-grandfather, who worked for the Ordnance Survey [a government mapping service] in Ireland in the 1850s. It tells the story of a father and son mapping the land shortly after the country’s Great Hunger.
June also sees a new book from Ann Patchett called Whistler. A surprise encounter at an art gallery between a middle-aged woman and her former step-father – a man she hasn’t seen for four decades – leads them both to reexamine their lives.
Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss was a word-of-mouth success story in the UK in 2021, so anticipation is high for her follow up, Sophie, Standing There – coming late summer and billed by its publisher as “a sharp and funny reflection on obsession and loneliness”.
And Andrew Sean Greer, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 novel Less, returns with Villa Coco, the tale of a 21-year-old American man who takes a job in Italy working for a 92-year-old aristocrat. Greer says he wanted to write “a charm novel… the kind of warm and funny story packed with characters and incident and description”. With that promise, plus a Tuscan setting, it’s set to be a staple on sun loungers.
Speaking of sun loungers, Emma Cline’s Long Island-set The Girls (2016) was spotted all over them a few years ago. Her next novel, Switzy, out in September, is a darkly humorous tale of an ageing corporate executive on his final pilgrimage to a clinic in Switzerland.
3. Literary delights
The prolific Elizabeth Strout puts aside the familiar worlds of Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge for a new, stand-alone story, out in May. The Things We Never Say is set in a coastal village in Massachusetts and introduces us to Artie Dam, a teacher hiding a secret. Strout’s prose rarely disappoints, and the prospect of a brand-new cast of characters is one to relish.
Likewise, a new Emily St John Mandel novel is always an event, and she returns with her seventh in the autumn. Mandel’s speculative fiction has felt increasingly close to the bone in recent years (2014’s Station Eleven was set in a world devastated by a rapidly spreading virus), and in Exit Party, she is once again holding up a mirror to the world and imagining where it could be heading. Described by the publisher as “a story of crimes committed and loves lost across space and time”, it begins in 2031 in a US “at war with itself”.
At first glance, the title of Deborah Levy’s next book, My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein, suggests she is releasing another of her beloved “living autobiographies”. But this is fiction, albeit in an inventive form, blending a portrait of Stein with a story of friendship and self-discovery.
In April, Where’d You Go, Bernadette author Maria Semple returns with another off-beat tale, Go Gentle, this time about a contented divorcée whose life suddenly starts to unravel.
Gwendoline Riley’s most recent novel, My Phantoms, saw her compared to Chekhov. For her follow-up, The Palm House, she turns her attention to friendship, focusing on two middle-aged friends whose relationship is tested by the trials of their everyday lives.
Friendship is also the subject of Louise Kennedy’s Stations, which tells the story of Róisín and Red, who first meet as teenagers in Ireland in 1982. Kennedy’s debut Trespasses was one of the highlights of 2022, so this follow-up is keenly awaited. As is Kin, the new novel from Women’s Prize winner Tayari Jones, about two childhood friends in the segregated American South whose lives go in different directions.
This year also sees Colson Whitehead conclude his Harlem trilogy, following up Harlem Shuffle and Crooked Manifesto with Cool Machine, set in 1980s New York.
4. Powerful page-turners
If it’s compulsive plot that hooks you in, there are plenty of gripping reads ahead.
Francis Spufford’s Nonesuch, out in February, blends historical fiction with fantasy for an alternative history of The Blitz that features time-travelling fascists. The Bookseller calls it “ingenious” and says it will “win hearts, minds and prizes”.
Crime fiction fans have a new Tana French to look forward to in the spring with The Keeper, the third and final instalment in her Cal Hooper trilogy.
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In May, Matt Haig follows up the ridiculously successful The Midnight Library with another time-travel adventure, The Midnight Train.
Japanese fiction has been one of the big literary success stories of the past few years, and Asako Yuzuki’s Butter one of the biggest hits, selling more than one million copies globally. Yuzuki’s new book, Hooked, again translated by Polly Barton, is a tale of food, friendship and loneliness.
Conclave author Robert Harris heads back to Ancient Rome for Agrippa, the story of Marcus Agrippa, friend and deputy of Emperor Augustus. Its cast of characters include Antony, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.
For something cosier but potentially just as compelling, The Golden Hours will see Louisa Young continue her aunt Elizabeth Jane Howard’s much-loved Cazalet Chronicles, picking the family saga up in 1962.
5. Daring debuts
Alongside the familiar, there are new names to discover, too. Harvard professor Tara Menon’s Under Water has amassed plenty of pre-publication buzz, selling into 32 languages. It’s a story of friendship set against the backdrop of two huge natural disasters: the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and 2012’s Hurricane Sandy.
Patmeena Sabit’s Good People, about a family of Afghan immigrants in search of the American dream, is partly inspired by Sabit’s own story, her family having fled Afghanistan when she was just one month old. Smallie by Eden Mckenzie-Goddard explores the Windrush scandal through three generations of a Bajan-British family. The book’s editor was behind breakout debuts including The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and Alice Winn’s In Memoriam, so clearly has an eye for an exciting new voice.
The ripple effects of Miranda July’s hugely successful All Fours can be seen in several debuts this year that address sex, desire and monogamy. A Little Bit Bad by Cassandra Neyenesch concerns a woman who has an affair with her neighbour’s roofer. In Elisa Faison’s Skin Contact, a 30-something couple try out an open marriage.
Irish writer Ana Kinsella’s Frida Slattery As Herself follows an actress and a writer-director who first meet in a pub in their 20s, charting their relationship through 15 years from Dublin to London, New York and LA.
Former child star Jennette McCurdy’s hit 2022 memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died will soon become an Apple TV+ series starring Jennifer Aniston. Meanwhile, McCurdy has turned her hand to fiction. Her debut novel, Half His Age, out in January, is about a 17-year-old yearning after her creative writing teacher.
Social media comes under the spotlight in Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear – which is already being turned into a film starring Anne Hathaway. She’ll play Natalie, a successful tradwife influencer who one days wakes up in the past, and is forced to live the reality of the “old-fashioned” lifestyle she’s built her career promoting.
6. Poignant true stories
Marriage is the focus of some of this year’s most anticipated memoirs too.
Belle Burden’s Strangers is based on a viral New York Times Modern Love essay and charts the collapse of a 20-year marriage during the pandemic. Siri Hustvedt’s Ghost Stories is a moving account of the 43 years spent with her husband, the late writer Paul Auster.
One of the biggest publishing stories of the year will be Gisèle Pelicot’s A Hymn to Life, out in February. In December 2024 Pelicot’s husband and 50 other men were convicted of her rape and sexual assault. Her decision to speak out and insist that “shame must change sides” made her a symbol of strength around the world, and her story promises to be a difficult but powerful read.
Other memoirs hitting the shelves in 2026 include Lena Dunham’s Famesick, a “frank, deeply personal reflection on illness, fame, sex and everything in between”, and Liza Minnelli’s Kids, Wait Until You Hear This!
Finally, one of 2026’s non-fiction highlights is sure to be the new title from Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain. Like those books, London Falling is an expansion of a New Yorker article, this time about the tragic death of 19-year-old Zac Brettler, who fell from a luxury London apartment into the River Thames. As always with Radden Keefe, there’s much more to the story than first appears.
Credit: BBC
