Every new year brings new stories, fresh voices, and much-anticipated returns from readers’ favourite authors. In 2026, what are you looking forward to reading the most? Literary fiction, thriller, fantasy, or romance?

Here are the most anticipated books of 2026

1. Vigil by George Saunders

Publication Date: January 27, 2026

Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favourite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.

She has performed this sacred duty three hundred and forty-three times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the powerful K.J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?

Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of an epic, complicated life. Crowds of people and animals—worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead—arrive, clamouring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room, a black calf grazes on the loveseat, a man from a distant drought-ravaged village materialises, two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s post-death future.

With the acuity and explosive imagination we’ve come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.

2. How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley

Publication Date: January 22, 2026

Summer, 1986. Tween sisters Georgie Ayyar and Agatha Krishna welcome their aunt, uncle and young cousin – newly arrived from India – into their house in rural Wyoming, where they’ll all live together. Because this is what families do. That is, until the sisters decide that it’s time for their uncle to die.

To understand why, you need to hear Georgie’s story. It’s one of violence hiding in their house and history, of her once-unshakeable bond with her sister, of being an Indian-American girl in the heart of the West. Her account is cheeky, unflinching and infectiously inflected with the trappings of teendom: pen pal letters, how-to guides, games of MASH and teen-magazine-style quizzes. And the tale she weaves is either:

a) a vivid portrait of an extended family
b) a moving story of sisterhood
c) a playful ode to the 80s
d) a murder mystery (of sorts)
e) a ruthless meditation on history and language, trauma and healing, and the meaning of independence

Or maybe it’s really:

f) all of the above.

3. The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara

Publication Date: January 23, 2026

From the award-winning author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line comes a stunning historical novel set in nineteenth-century Tibet that follows two outsiders—an Indian schoolteacher spying for the British Empire and an English “lady” explorer—as they venture into a forbidden kingdom.

1869. Tibet is closed to Europeans, an infuriating obstruction for the rap¬idly expanding British Empire. In response, Britain begins training Indians—permitted to cross borders that white men may not—to undertake illicit, dangerous surveying expeditions into Tibet.

Balram is one such surveyor-spy, an Indian schoolteacher who, for several years, has worked for the British, often alongside his dearest friend, Gyan. But Gyan went missing on his last expedition and is rumoured to be imprisoned within Tibet. Desperate to rescue his friend, Balram agrees to guide an English captain on a foolhardy mission: After years of paying others to do the exploring, the captain, disguised as a monk, wants to personally chart a river that runs through southern Tibet. Their path will cross fatefully with that of another Westerner in disguise, fifty-year-old Katherine. Denied a fellowship in the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London, she intends to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa.

As Balram and Katherine make their way into Tibet, they will face storms and bandits, snow leopards and soldiers, fevers and frostbite. What’s more, they will have to battle their own doubts, ambitions, grief, and pasts in order to survive the treacherous landscape.

4. Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

Publication Date: January 13, 2026

For the three Flynn daughters, it’s been disastrous since their parents opened up their marriage. Abigail, the eldest, is dating an ex-soldier several years her senior, nicknamed ‘War Crimes Wes’. Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist. And the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to a wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone – or something – is monitoring the town’s citizens.

Casting a shadow across their lives is Paul Alabaster, a nefarious local billionaire. Rumours of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with Alabaster’s machinations sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy – one that may just, finally, bring them closer together.

5. Brawler by Lauren Groff

Publication Date: March 5, 2026

Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region – from New England to Florida to California – these nine stories reflect and expand upon a single shared theme: the ceaseless battle between the dark and light in all of us.

Among those caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling; a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult; a mother blinded by the loss of her family; and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by human fallibility, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.

Precise, surprising and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated fracture points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and survival. It is a timeless, stunning achievement from one of the very best short story writers working today.

6. Kin by Tayari Jones

Publication Date: February 24, 2026

A yearning for their missing mothers pulls Vernice and Annie apart. It will take a devastating tragedy to bring them back together, in the spellbinding new novel from award-winning author Tayari Jones

Vernice and Annie are ‘cradle friends’, born days apart in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, both destined never to know their mothers. The girls are inseparable, bound by a friendship far deeper than sisterhood. But this is the American South in the 1950s. Black girls like Vernice and Annie have to fight for every opportunity they can, and neither one can build the future they hope for in Honeysuckle. 

Gradually, inevitably, the girls drift apart. Vernice pursues her education; Annie is lured by the promise of a heady first love affair and a growing obsession with finding her mother. But her search pulls her even further into a world of danger that soon leaves her oldest friend battling to save her.

7. The Midnight Train by Matt Haig

Publication Date: May 26, 2026

When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop?No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there.

The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. 

To see what kind of person you really were.

For Wilbur, his best days were with Maggie, the love of his life. On his honeymoon in Venice.

Before he gave it all away.

He wishes he could go back and live differently. But to do so risks everything . . .

8. Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead

Publication Date: July 21, 2026

1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energised by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his beloved wife, Elizabeth, a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.

1983. To some, Carney’s friend and partner in crime, Pepper, is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he’s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favour to Elizabeth, he’s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you’re uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence – Pepper is a native speaker.

1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie’s death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie’s son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he’s spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.

9. Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

Publication Date: January 20, 2026

Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: Mr Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn’t know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn’t? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it’s just enough that he sees her when no one else does.

Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is a rich character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles—or attempts to overcome them—in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved.

10. You With the Sad Eyes by Christina Applegate

Publication Date: March 3, 2026

Christina Applegate came of age on sets and stages, expected to be on time, with lines learned, ready for lights, camera, action. Performing began as a financial necessity and became an emotional escape from a tumultuous home life in the infamous Laurel Canyon scene of the 1970s and 80s. She first gained stardom as an audience favourite playing Kelly Bundy in the sitcom Married…with Children and went on to captivate a vast fandom during her five-decade-long career.

In You with the Sad Eyes, Applegate will unveil the full story of her years in the public eye, and the painful moments the public didn’t see. She writes about gravitating to the grunge that defined the 90s and finding belonging in the legendary scene at The Viper Room; sparkling on set with fellow comedy icons in the soon to be canonized franchise Anchorman; sharing her love of dance on stage in the Broadway revival of Sweet Charity; and returning to the Emmy stage to a standing ovation in 2024 after her diagnosis of MS. She’ll dive into the darker moments underpinning her outward success: her relationship with her mother who fought addiction and won, even in the wake of her father’s abandonment; the self-doubt and body dysmorphia that have dogged her from a young age; and the abuse and depression that eroded her health. Her path is ever lit, though, by lifelong friends, chosen family, and her experience as a mother. By working through her legacy on the page, Applegate invites readers to take her hand and hear a story not even those closest to her know fully.

You with the Sad Eyes boldly presents a formidable and iconoclastic woman who has had to let go of her acting career, of her ability to dance, of her sense of physical power, but has always fought to find a new and even more fulfilling way of being. The pain will be matched by the joy, the losses mitigated by the extraordinary, the weight of life lifted by Applegate’s signature comedic genius.

In her own words, “I truly believe that books can make people feel less alone. That’s why I’m doing this. You with the Sad Eyes won’t be some big violin scratching for my life. But it will be real. It will be filled with the ups and downs, the humour and grief of life.

11. Liar’s Dice by Juliet Faithfull

Publication Date: April 28, 2026

Dolores and Mita grow up in rural Brazil in lockstep, speaking their own secret language, leading the carnival parade in matching dresses, even sleeping curled around each other. But when Mita develops a degenerative illness, their parents decide to send her to a hospital in their father’s native London. There is no Dolores without Mita, and now Mita is gone, with no goodbye and no promise as to when they will see each other again.

When the family moves to Rio, the girls’ parents aspire to fit in with a glamorous group of expats. They act as if Mita never existed, but Dolores fiercely guards her twin’s place in their family. In her stodgy British school, Dolores struggles to learn to read and write—until she meets Andrea, a headstrong girl from the dangerous part of town. As the government cracks down on dissenters and people disappear, Andrea introduces Dolores to a new side of life—and how to survive it. With her new community, Dolores is willing to do whatever it takes—lie, gamble and steal—to get her sister back and bring her family back together.

Set in a country where repression and silence are the fabric of everyday life, Liar’s Dice captures the precarious intensity of coming of age in a volatile time and the cost of keeping family secrets. Atmospheric and intimate, Dolores and Mita’s story attests to the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood, and the courage it takes to hold fast to love—no matter the cost.

12. Sing the 50 United States! by Dr Seuss (Posthumous)

Publication Date: June 2, 2026

In this never-before-seen picture book featuring Dr Seuss’s signature rhyming style, readers will delight in naming the 50 states alongside the beloved Cat in the Hat! Funny, engaging, and educational, this book is ideal for Seuss fans and collectors of all ages. Sing the 50 United States features original, previously unpublished text by Dr Seuss and brand-new illustrations inspired by his sketches.

At the end of the book, you’ll find a Publisher’s Note about how this project came to be, including archival images of the original text and sketches by Ted Geisel–a.k.a. Dr Seuss!

13. This Wretched Alchemy by Tina Mars

Publication Date: November 10, 2026

BETRAYAL.

In a fractured realm ruled by warring noble Houses and the tyrannical Prime, the most coveted power lies in god-shards – divine fragments that grant extraordinary abilities to those who possess them.

Revel’s brother was murdered in pursuit of one.

A DEADLY GAME.

For avenging him, Revel’s life is on the line. Forced into a treacherous bargain, she must compete in the Call – a bloody contest of heirs vying for the throne – on behalf of her enemies, and assassinate the realm’s most formidable alchemist, the Warbringer.

Victory means her family’s freedom. Failure means death.

A MONSTROUS POWER.

The Prime sets the heirs on a brutal race to find the god-shard that could shift the balance of the realms. Everyone wants to win, but Revel just wants to kill. Except the Warbringer isn’t the monster she was promised. Bound by secrets of his own, he is as dangerous as he is disarming.

With betrayals mounting and desire warring with duty, Revel must decide who to trust in a game where even the gods have their favourites. This Wretched Alchemy by Tina Mars is a dark, slow-burning enemies-to-lovers romance where love and loyalty become the very weapons that could destroy everything.

A LOVE THAT CAN CUT DEEPER THAN ANY BLADE.

14. A Far-flung Life by M.L. Stedman

Publication Date: March 3, 2026

Outback Western Australia, 1958: for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a remote sheep station, Meredith Downs. A million arid acres, it’s an ocean of land, where the weather is a capricious god, and time still roams untamed.

One ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds, the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. Then, instead of leaving wounds to heal, Fate comes for them yet again, in a twist of consequences that will cause one of them to lose their life, and another to sacrifice theirs for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide, as he is forced to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.

15. The Ghosts of Indian Small Towns by Ruskin Bond 

Publication Date: January 10, 2026

India’s small towns, like its villages, once had a magic all their own. It was where many Indians lived, but now they are rapidly emptying, as more and more residents move to the big cities in search of lucrative jobs and the rather dubious joys of living in sprawling metropolises. As Ruskin Bond, the country’s foremost chronicler of small town life, writes: ‘Villages become small towns, small towns become big towns or even cities, and cities become megacities. In my ninety years on this cherished land, I have seen this transformation take place. One day, the nation will become one big city.’

The rapid urbanisation of India has made ghost towns of some of its iconic places. This book is an elegy to all that we are losing as small towns are buried under a mass of concrete and pollution. It is also an evocation of everything that was worth celebrating about these tranquil, memorable places that were to be found right around the country.

16. Fieldwork as a Sex Object by Meena Kandasamy

Publication Date: June 10, 2026

What are you prepared to risk for your beliefs?

Amrita has a past. In London, she goes by Amy – the cool girl who’s more woke than you – but spends most days gallivanting with the rest of Little India.

That is, until a deepfake scandalous video of her ‘forwarded many times’ by meddling WhatsApp aunties suddenly appears, all at once, everywhere. The next morning, she’s being publicly stoned in the digital town square by anonymous Hindu incels. Along with an ex nicknamed the Child Soldier and her suitably lower-caste bestie, Nirmala, she decides to take a page out of the Kardashian family playbook.

Will they succeed in flipping the public narrative, or has she unknowingly fed herself into the belly of an invisible beast that will not rest until she is below ground?

Fieldwork as a Sex Object is an incendiary novel about race, politics, sex, sexuality and the insecurities that drive people to do what they do.

These titles represent just a small section of what readers will be talking about in the months ahead, but each one offers a distinct invitation into worlds worth exploring. Add them to your TBR, pre-order your favourites, and settle in. 2026 is a year of reading you won’t want to miss.

If I have missed your anticipated novel, please feel free to mention it in the comments section for others to discover it as well.