Books I’m looking forward to in 2026
A new year means new books, and 2026 looks like it’s going to be epic. Weird girl fiction and horror appear to be going strong, which I’m super happy about. Authors whose work I’ve loved previously are back from more, including Catriona Ward, Harry Baker and Emily St. John Mandel. Alongside those gems, we’ve got a hoard of debuts to get me wishing there was more of their work to devour.
As my book wishlist for 2026 is out of hand, I’ve managed to edit it down to a top 40. Which ones will you be reading?
The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson – 8 January
Carwyn and Rhian – the last in a long line of sheep farmers – are living out a brutal year on their hillside farm, deep in the mountains of North Wales.
When Carwyn discovers a buried prehistoric ruin in one of the fields on their land, his curiosity quickly descends into obsession. His wife, Rhian, meanwhile, is confronted with the growing realisation that the man with whom she shares her life and home is becoming a frightening stranger.
As the harsh winter closes in, Rhian finds herself alone with her increasingly unrecognisable husband, and the mountains, and the looming megalithic stones.
Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven – 15 January
Los Angeles, 1964. For two decades, Del and Dinah Newman and their sons, Guy and Shep, have ruled television as America’s Favourite Family. Millions of viewers tune in every week to watch them play flawless, black-and-white versions of themselves. But now the Sixties are in full swing, and the Newmans’ perfection suddenly feels woefully out of touch.
Ratings are in free fall, as are the Newmans themselves. Del is keeping an explosive secret from his wife, and Dinah is slowly going numb. Steady, stable Guy is hiding the truth about his love life, and rock ‘n’ roll idol Shep may finally be in real trouble.
When Del is in a mysterious car accident, Dinah decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires Juliet Dunne, an outspoken young reporter, to help her write the final episode. But Dinah and Juliet have wildly different perspectives about what it means to be a woman, and a family, in 1964 America.
Can Dinah Newman bring her family together to change television history?
Or will she be cancelled before she ever had the chance?
Esther is Now Following You by Tanya Sweeney – 29 Jan
You’re the love of Esther’s life. You just don’t know it yet…
Esther first sees Ted walking in a park in London. They lock eyes and for a fraction of a second, she feels something she’s never felt before.
She starts by reading up about his life in Canada and his work as an actor. Then she watches every interview with him online. It isn’t long before she’s joined Ted’s fan site online where her and the ‘Tedettes’ stalk his every move.
When Ted gets a new celebrity girlfriend, Esther decides that things have gone far enough. She leaves her husband, takes all their savings, and buys a one-way ticket to Canada.
After all, Ted might not know it yet, but they are meant to be together – he just needs a little bit of persuading…
Vivian Dies Again by C.E. Husle – 29 January
Time heals all wounds. Except blunt force trauma.
Vivian Slade is a cautionary tale. The wrong side of thirty, she’s no longer the life and soul of the party – she’s a party of one. But she’s determined to turn over a new leaf, even if that means going to a family gathering where everyone hates her.
Turns out, someone really hates her – enough to push her off a balcony to a very messy end. But then Vivian wakes up! Only to be murdered again. And again. Stuck in a baffling time loop, Vivian’s only ally is a sleep-deprived waiter who just wants to finish his shift. Will Vivian be able to solve her own murder? Only time will tell…
Cruelty Free by Caroline Glenn – 3 February
A disgraced movie star returns to Hollywood 10 years after the kidnapping of her young daughter intent on seeking revenge, for fans of Monika Kim and Rachel Yoder.
Ten years ago, Lila Devlin was an A-list actress with a movie star husband and a beautiful baby girl, Josie. When Josie was kidnapped out of her home and never seen again, Lila’s previously pristine public image twisted into that of an Unfit Mother. Driven mad by the hungry press, incompetent cops, and relentless true crime-obsessed “fans,” she disappeared into anonymity.
Now, Lila Devlin returns to LA with a grand vision for a radical new skincare brand to reinvent herself and honour Josie’s legacy. She’s prepared to move into the next chapter of her life with forgiveness in her heart, when an encounter with a parasitic blogger ends with him dead. Lila suddenly discovers forgiveness isn’t nearly as satisfying as a body hitting the floor.
With the help of her devoted publicist Sylvie, Lila begins a relentless, blood-soaked hunt through LA. Giving her skincare the edge it needs, they introduce a secret ingredient–revenge-sourced–from the bodies piling up. But as the company’s success skyrockets and Lila begins unraveling the truth behind her daughter’s kidnapping, her murderous side hustle threatens the life she’s painstakingly rebuilt.
Both a striking portrayal of grief and womanhood, and a twisting, cynical satire on celebrity and toxic beauty standards, Cruelty Free is an ambitious debut from a talented star on the rise.
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash – 5 February
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.
Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo – 5 February
Yosep is a K-pop idol with millions of adoring fans. But for four of them, a poster on the wall just won’t cut it. They have a plan―a perfect, foolproof plan―to get their idol all to themselves.
Kidnapping Yosep seemed like the ultimate act of love. But inside a secluded mansion, plagued by paranoia and with their grip on reality slowly loosening, the women use increasingly disturbing strategies to keep Yosep in their possession. As their angel’s halo slips and their perfect plan unravels, the women must fight not only to keep him, but to keep their secret buried – at all costs.
Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack – 10 February
A 32-year-old sex worker has just killed extremist political hopeful Meat Neck. Holed up in an off-the-grid cabin in the woods, she now has only two days, her wits and a high-speed internet connection to save her own life.
Her best bet is to reach out to the wildly popular feminist investigative podcast Justice for Bimbos. In a hastily-typed series of emails, the newly-minted “Murder Bimbo” explains how she was recruited and then trained by a cabal of code-named US agents to take out Meat Neck.
But, when she starts a new set of emails, this time addressed to her ex-girlfriend, we begin to realize that Murder Bimbo might not be the unsuspecting cog she claims to be.
In a time where ‘truth’ is more flexible than ever before – who really is Murder Bimbo? And what will she do next?
He’s the Devil by Tobi Coventry – 12 February
Simon has always been a good boy. He’s invariably employee of the month at the seasonal small plates restaurant where he works, he neurotically tidies his home, he keeps on top of repairs on behalf of his twenty-something, permanently-abroad landlord and tries to do right by everyone. But when his best and only friend, Josh, moves out of their shared flat, Simon is lonelier than ever – until in moves a new flatmate, the strange (and strangely sexy) Massimo.
But Massimo’s brought something with him. Odd sounds emerge from Massimo’s room, smells of earth and meat drift through the corridor and Simon’s nights fill with disturbing and tantalising dreams. Massimo is awakening something in Simon, something wild and exciting and horrifying that could be the end of him – or maybe a new beginning. But whatever’s in Massimo, whatever’s in the flat, isn’t finished. It wants more …
He’s the Devil is a wickedly funny, chillingly suspenseful modern day horror story, painfully relatable to anyone who has ever had to share their living space with someone they’d honestly just rather not share it with.
I’ll Be the Monster by Sean Gilbert – 12 February
A homicidal couple embarks on a luxury holiday to save their marriage.
After years of secrets and self-restraint, they’ve reached breaking point. But three days into the trip, they run into Benny, an acquaintance from their Cambridge days. And Benny is desperate to reminisce about a time – and a person – they would rather forget.
Darkly funny and razor-sharp, I’ll Be The Monster follows a dangerous game of cat and mouse as it plays out under the stifling heat of the Mediterranean sun. From a major new talent in literary fiction, this gripping debut is a love story about the worst people you know – and of what happens when a change of heart occurs too late.
She Made Herself a Monster by Anna Kovatcheva – 12 February
Yana, a vampire hunter, rides into Koprivci promising salvation. The village’s curse has endured for many years and rumour has it that Anka – whose parents died on the night of her birth – is to blame. But enduring the villagers’ suspicion is the least of Anka’s worries; now she has reached womanhood, she can no longer avoid the odious marriage that seems to be her only option.
When animal corpses start to appear in the village square and eggs filled with blood are found in the chicken coops, panic rises. The villagers look to Yana for hope. She knows all about the monsters that stalk the night, monsters that only she can vanquish. But Yana is a liar. And monsters come in all different forms.
Yana and Anka become unlikely allies in hatching a plot to save both Koprivci and Anka from their fates. But then their plan takes on a horrifying life of its own…
I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200 by Robert Brockway – 16 February
To bright and anxious eight-year-old Kay Washington, the worst thing in the world is being alone with the quiet. That’s why Eddie Video makes the perfect imaginary friend: He’s smart, he’s loud, he loves pulling pranks, and he’s always there to chase away the silence.
To mid-forties, down-on-his-luck Ivan, the worst thing in the world happened when he lost his imaginary friend. Now cursed with the ability to see everyone else’s, Ivan makes a living by killing the imaginary friends of adults who couldn’t let go. But when one of Eddie Video’s “pranks” goes too far, Ivan agrees to make an exception and help Kay.
Only Ivan will soon learn that Eddie Video is nothing like the talking ostriches, star bears, and goblin princesses he’s encountered in the past, and it’s going to take a lot more than clumsy haymakers and steak knives to bring him down. A balance of comedy and catharsis, this dual-narrative tackles both the fear of growing up and the scars our childhood leaves behind.
Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward – 19 February
High in the mountains sits Nowhere, a verdant valley surrounded by walls of rock. People have lived at Nowhere for centuries, though never for long, and rarely happily. Its last owner was its most famous: movie star Leaf Winham, who built Nowhere House as a refuge to hide from his fame… and to hide his crimes. Only when Nowhere House went up in flames were the graves discovered, the last resting places of lost young men who would never go home.
Years later, Nowhere valley has become a sanctuary for runaway children, a place where adults cannot enter. Drawn by this promise, fourteen-year-old Riley pulls her brother Oliver from his bed in the middle of the night, hoping to find a new family. But the Nowhere Children are fierce in defending their valley and their secrets. For something dark lives in the ruins of Nowhere House, something that asks a terrible price for sanctuary…
Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg – 26 February
Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her bathroom-less studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she’s being plagued by perpetual, spiking stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plant propagations to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise $14,000 for a week of private life support for Daisy.
In the dungeon of her stream, Dell is in control, banishing those who don’t abide by her terms of engagement and steadily rising up the platform’s ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. On a dare, she discovers that she has a talent for eating spicy food, and her streaming fame explodes as her pepper consumption graduates from jalapeño to habanero to ghost. Finally, Dell is good at something―but as her behaviour becomes riskier and riskier and a troll-turned-incel threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.
Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell’s livestream, Just Watch Me careens us through a nonstop week in the life of this charismatic misfit with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg’s debut is both an incisive, zippy tragicomedy about the internet economy as well as a moving meditation on love, loss, and forgiveness.
Motherfaker by Anna Brook-Mitchell – 26 February
Meet Barri Brown. Respected teacher. Upstanding citizen of Guernsey. Down for a bit of law-breaking . . .
Barri is preparing for a year’s paid maternity leave but there’s a catch:
She isn’t pregnant.
With seven foam bumps, a wardrobe full of smock dresses and a great pregnancy heist planned, all Barri has to do is blag it until she can disappear for good, without getting caught and being sent to prison for fraud. Child’s play.
But can she really get away with telling the mother of all lies?
Big Nobody by Alex Kadis – 5 March
For Constance ‘Connie’ Costa, life is just beginning. She dreams of leaving behind her dull, dreary life in ‘70s East London, shaking off her deeply embarrassing Greek-Cypriot community of interfering Aunties and pretend ‘cousins’, and running away with her best mate Vas (fellow misfit; NHS specs; soul of a poet). She is determined to take her rightful place alongside her hero, David Bowie, onstage at Wembley Stadium.
Only one thing stands in her way: her father, The Fat Murderer. No longer content with being an absolute imbecile and general abomination of nature, he has dialled up his campaign to ruin Connie’s life ever since the untimely death of her mother.
If she ever wants to claim the destiny that is rightfully hers, Connie has only one option left: to kill him.
Tender by Harry Baker – 5 March
After reading The Sunshine Kid and seeing him live, I’m really looking forward to Harry Baker’s latest collection of poetry.
Tender captures all the tiny, fragile, perfect moments of new life and, with it, new parenthood. Full of sleepless wonder and with his characteristic wit and warmth, Harry Baker offers snapshots into the intense first 100 days with his son as they get to know each other.
A yawn from a tiny pink mouth, a kind word from a stranger on a difficult day, the weight of a body sleeping against your chest – parents will recognise both themselves and their children in Tender and find consolation in this collection.
Westward Women by Alice Martin – 12 March
It starts with an itch.
In 1970s America, in homes across the country, women ages eighteen to thirty-five begin to slow down.
Tired. Blank. Restless.
Drawn to the Pacific Ocean like it’s calling them home, they abandon their lives — jobs, families, their very selves. And once they reach the West, they vanish forever.
At the center of the story are three young women caught in the pull of something unstoppable.
Aimee follows the trail of her missing best friend to a man called the Piper — known for leading infected women West.
Teenie, afflicted and unraveling, clings to a single memory as she looks out the window of the Piper’s van.
And Eve, a former journalist, is chasing the story that might just consume her . . .
Our Monstrous Bodies by Emma Cleary – 12 March
In the wake of an ill-omened romance with a horror cinephile, Brooke arrives in Vancouver to care for her sister, Izzy, who is facing reproductive surgery. But Izzy’s rapidly decaying apartment building, its hallways stalked by an ominous crone known only as Medusa, offers little refuge to the sisters.
Seeking solace in the films her ex-girlfriend loved, Brooke soon finds traces of horror bleeding from the screen into her life. Old wounds reopen and new frictions surface, and when Brooke begins to exhibit strange symptoms of her own, Izzy’s concern spirals into obsession. The line between self and sister blurs until only one question remains: who, or what, will survive when all unravels?
Through the dual lenses of art and horror cinema, Emma Cleary brilliantly dissects loneliness, motherhood and the body’s threatened autonomy. Eerie and threaded with yearning, Our Monstrous Bodies is a haunting literary debut that blooms with the dark desires we suppress or to which we surrender.
Wretch by Eric Larocca – 24 March
After his husband dies, Simeon Link finds himself overcome by grief and seeking comfort in an unusual support group called The Wretches, who offer an addictive and dangerous source of relief. They introduce Simeon to a curious figure known as Porcelain Khaw—a man with the ability to let those who are grieving have one last intimate moment with their beloved…for a price.
Hallucinatory, fiendish, and destructively beautiful, Wretch transports us to a world where not everything is as it seems, and those we love may be the ones who haunt us most.
The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke – 7 April
Six authors.
One private island.
Seventy-two hours to write the ending.
World-famous author Arthur Fletch is dead. His final novel, the most anticipated book in history, remains unfinished. But the ending won’t write itself.
When six struggling authors are invited to Fletch’s private Scottish island and presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, the plot thickens: whoever writes a worthy ending will receive a game-changing book deal and two million dollars.
Why have they been chosen to attend? Who is behind the invitation? And just how far would they go to secure a place on the bestseller list?
They have just seventy-two hours, a typewriter and a blank page. All they have to do is write…
Starting is often the hardest part. But getting to the end could be murder.
Piper at the Gates by Patrick Ness – 7 April
Not too much to go on here, but it’s Patrick Ness (author of the Chaos Walking trilogy, A Monster Calls and The Rest of Us Just Live Here, so I’m in anyway.
Something has been spotted in the night sky. Something that’s bringing back dreams of Noise, dreams of terror. Brothers Ben and Max have never really gotten on, each being more like one of their parents – Todd and Viola.
But now they will have to come together.
SOMETHING IS COMING.
Femme Feral by Sam Beckbessinger – 9 April
Hyper-competent start up CFO Ellie is 46-year old and like most women, is already juggling too much. Daughter’s not talking to her, husband’s not listening to her, and she’s got a promotion coming up at work. It’s an inconvenient time to be beset by mid-life symptoms: coarse hair in new places, hot flushes, insomnia, losing time, finding bloodstains on all her clothing, howling at the moon.
Her doctor diagnoses perimenopause. But it’s another 28-day cycle that’s taking hold. One involving fur, and teeth, and a not insignificant amount of rage.
Suddenly the troubles in her life – hot flushes, thankless family, spiralling to-do list, oblivious husband, the w*nker promoted above her at work – seem almost. bite-size.
Yesteryear by Caro Calire Burke – 9 April
Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle – and has the social media accounts to prove it. Her charming farmhouse on her working ranch is artfully cluttered, her husband is a handsome cowboy, her homemade sourdough boules are each more beautiful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers and industrial-grade ovens behind the scenes? What Natalie’s followers don’t know won’t hurt them.
Then, one morning, Natalie wakes up in a strange, horrible version of reality. Her home, her husband, her children―they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Is this a hoax? A reality show? A test from God? Natalie knows just two things for sure: this isn’t her perfect life, and she must escape, by any means possible.
Invasive Species by Ellery Adams – 14 April
Something’s not right in Cold Harbor–more so than usual. While this sleepy small town has seen its fair share of monsters in cheating husbands and leering bosses, none are as hungry as Mrs. Smith. The mysterious resident has finally emerged from her crumbling mansion on the hill, mesmerizing the townspeople with her beauty. Her secret? Nine human sacrifices to feed her immortality.
Natalie Scott is more worried about Mrs. Smith blocking her first real estate sale–the one that will take her from stay-at-home mom to working woman extraordinaire. She’s eager to prove herself in a world where the social mores of 1980s suburbia reign, where she’s expected to keep a magazine-perfect home and raise beautiful children, all while sticking to her husband’s budget. Natalie’s two best friends are facing their own demons, and Mrs. Smith and her deep, dark woods are an easy scapegoat for everyone’s problems.
But Natalie’s twelve-year-old daughter, Jill, and her Icelandic housekeeper, Una, can sense something deeper at play. Armed with library books and a whole lot of grit, Jill and Una team up to save the town once and for all. But as the rest of Cold Harbor sinks into anger, fear, and jealousy, they’ll have to confront the question: What does it really mean to be a monster?
You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom by Vincent Tirado – 23 April
When Papi Ramon, the patriarch of the wealthy Abreu family dies, he gives the family one last message in the will: “One of you is el bacà, the demon that I made a deal with. Get rid of them or you will be damned.” Xiomara, the uncontested favourite of Papi Ramon (and therefore the least liked in the family), watches as everyone dismisses this as the joke of a senile old man and demands the lawyer obtain the previous will Papi wrote.
While the lawyer drives back to his office, a storm breaks out, forcing the entire family—Xiomara’s aunts and uncles and cousins—to remain in the house. And the words of Papi’s will hangs over their heads even heavier than the rain clouds. Over the course of the night, scandal after scandal is revealed to the public about the family. Suddenly a tense few hours of surviving her family turns into a vicious night of recrimination, violence, accusations…and murder.
Xiomara is faced with an impossible task: uproot a demon and somehow kill it or excise the ghosts that linger within her own family.
And the clock is ticking…
Fruit Fly by Josh Silver – 23 April
Anyone can write a bestseller. Here’s how.
GO GAY
It’s been seven years since Mallory shot to fame as a literary sensation. But after years of struggling with writer’s block, she’s desperate to resurrect her career before it spirals into obscurity. She needs inspiration to strike – and fast.
GO SAD
Enter Leo – a young struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.
GO DARK
Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. Authenticity sells, and there’s nothing more authentic than real life. She’s the perfect person to tell Leo’s story. Gay, sad, dark – just what the world needs right now. But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide: just how far will she go to pen the perfect story?
Molka by Monika Kim – 30 April
Junyoung and Dahye are colleagues; he has a taste for voyeurism
and she a hunger for revenge.
Molka (n): the Korean term for spy cameras secretly and illegally installed, often to capture voyeuristic images and videos.
Dahye has met the man of her dreams – Hyukjoon, who happens to be the heir to a multi-billion fortune. Till one day, a video of them having sex goes viral. She is all over the internet and he is nowhere to be found.
Junyoung is a nobody; a nothing office worker who harbours a dark secret: in every women’s cubicle, shower and bathroom in his workplace, are cameras – his secret cameras. Junyoung spends his days watching and preying on his unsuspecting female victims.
Soon his perverse obsession turns to Dahye – but, this time, he has chosen the wrong woman to wrong. When Dahye’s pain turns to blind rage – she decides that she will not rest until he has paid in blood…
Honey by Imani Thompson – 7 May
The first time, Yrsa doesn’t intend to kill.
But the Cambridge professor sitting opposite has manipulated her friend, stolen her research. When she flicks the bee into his Sanpellegrino, she thinks he’ll get a nasty sting.
Then he’s dead. And Yrsa, who – let’s face it – has been bored for a while, is alive.
It’s a sweet feeling, finally having some control.
Homebound by Portia Elan – 7 May
Six hundred years. Five interlocking lives. One computer game.
And the many paths that can lead us home.
It’s 1983 and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. But for now she has work to do: her programmer uncle, the only person who understood her, has left her a half-finished game to complete.
What Becks is coding will outlast her by centuries and shape the lives of a scientist, an astronaut and a desperate pirate captain in ways she cannot imagine. It will connect these four pioneering women across centuries, vast oceans and far-distant planets and introduce them to a remarkable robot destined to gather together this disparate crew.
Boring Asian Female by Canwen Xu – 7 May
Elizabeth Zhang knows her place in the world. She knows she’s in the tenth percentile for likability, the seventieth percentile for attractiveness, and the ninety-ninth percentile for academics.
With a hard-working ethic instilled in her by immigrant parents, armed with impeccable grades, Elizabeth thinks she is set for Harvard Law School. Until she is rejected for being too ordinary, which she translates to mean she’s just another boring Asian female. But when her classmate Laura Kim gets in, everything falls apart. Why was Laura accepted? What makes her so interesting?
At first, she follows her because she’s just curious. What Laura eats for lunch. Where Laura shops. The answer for Elizabeth’s failure must lie somewhere in Laura’s life. But still, Elizabeth just can’t see it. The only thing she sees is that Laura has taken her spot at Harvard.
A spot she knows she deserves. A spot that she’ll simply have to take back.
Decomposition Book by Sara Van Os – 7 May
Ava thought the great tragedy of her life would be getting stuck in a dead-end office job, but reality looks even grimmer when she goes on an ill-fated hike with two of her coworkers.
Meanwhile, spiraling from a disastrous falling-out with her mercurial best friend, Savannah retreats to her parents’ empty lake house in upstate New York. Her days blend together in a hazy swirl of clinically concerning overthinking and alcohol—until she chases her nightly bottle of wine with an Ambien and wakes up in the woods behind her house… next to a dead body.
Unfortunately, Savannah is so down bad that this well-preserved corpse offers some compelling friend potential: after all, a dead person can’t judge you, they’re amazing listeners, and they’re not going to leave. This particular dead person also comes with a handy journal detailing her last six months lost in the woods!
Ava, as it turns out, is more than just a cold, lonely corpse. She was funny. She was smart. And Savannah has finally found someone she can talk to… As Savannah spends more time with both the Ava in front of her and the Ava of the journal, she begins to feel something for Ava she hasn’t felt for anyone else—and there’s a good chance letting go would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Is Savannah finally losing her grip? Or has she found what she’s needed all along?
The Stalker by Paula Bomer – 12 May
Robert Doughten Savile, aka ‘Doughty,’ is the son of a once-wealthy, now hard-up family from Darien, Connecticut. Doughty lives in a perpetual cloud of delusion, convinced of his own genius and status. While he has little capacity to accurately assess his own abilities or prospects, he cruises through life on the sheer force of his own sense of entitlement, dropping out of college and landing in the early ’90s in New York City, a place brimming with both prosperity and desperation. He cons his way from a bed at the YMCA into the posh Soho loft of a middle-aged book editor, while pursuing a young bartender, whom he also abuses and gaslights. He spins elaborate tales about his imaginary high-power job in real estate while, in reality, he passes his days watching comedy specials on VHS, smoking crack in Tompkins Square Park, and engaging in occasional sex work in the restrooms of Grand Central Station. His many failures, however, only serve to sharpen his one true gift.
Doughty is a skilled predator, and the damage he inflicts on the women around him is real and remorseless. As shocking as it is illuminating, The Stalker confirms Paula Bomer as a contemporary master of the pitch-black comic novel.
Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa – 21 May
In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had she lived in another time, she too might have found herself held within those walls.
Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE.
It is the first of many signs. Guided by an irresistible impulse, she follows them. Soon, she is trespassing, stealing, absconding from the routine of mother, spouse, daughter, as she uncovers a chorus of startling voices: those of the women who knew this place best. They murmur from archives and old records. They haunt from stairwells and walls. In them – and in one figure in particular — she may find meaning and solace, righteous anger, salvation even. Or her final vanishing?
The Midnight Train by Matt Haig – 21 May
When your life flashes before your eyes, what will matter most?
For Wilbur it was his time with Maggie, the love of his life. Their honeymoon in Venice. Before he threw it all away.
Years later, on the brink of his own death, a train arrives. It can take Wilbur back in time. To relive his most important moments. Soon he realises just how much he would have changed.
An adventure through time, The Midnight Train is a story of love and second chances, from the world of The Midnight Library.
Getting the Electric by Louise Hegarty – 28 May
Are you ready to play?
Have you ever found yourself doom-scrolling, worrying about that weird pain in your leg, only to have your plans for the day completely trashed by the appearance of a literal axe-wielding troll?
What about that time you came across a perfect double of yourself in the street?
Or the gorilla suit you put on one day only for it to fuse with your skin?
When those children went missing from your village, did you know for sure it was the electricity that took them?
And down in the basement of your ancestral family home, what is it that’s making that THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP . . .
Make Strange by Niamh Campbell – 4 June
It begins on an orange afternoon, cool but ruminant, close to Halloween. Sunny, only four years old, looks up from the terrarium-sized tub of toys in the living room and asks, ‘Mama, do you remember when I died?’
Over the course of the next strange, strained year, Sunny will refer repeatedly to her previous lives, and how they ended.
Her parents, Lena and Odhran – who rushed headfirst into family life after an accidental pregnancy and a hasty registry office wedding – are left desperate for answers.
Is their child suffering from disassociation, a psychological disorder, or something more? Has she been contaminated by their own haunted histories – by Lena’s experiences as an indie musician in the era of sleaze, by a shady legacy of madness in Odhran’s family? Can we ever really protect our children? What if we can’t?
Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh – 4 June
Stutley Tillinghast lives a solitary life, ostensibly as the minister of a remote rural parish in Rhode Island. For many decades now, what little human contact he allows himself has been brief, frenzied and bloody, and always ends in a shallow grave in his cellar.
You and I would have a name for what he is, but he prefers not to use it – he has needs, and when they become unbearable, he fulfils them.
Then the girl arrives – 19 years old, she has travelled from the UK to find him. She seems to have his surname, and her resemblance to him is uncanny. She is sick – very sick – and Tillinghast recognises her symptoms all too well. Which means he also knows what she needs…
You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann – 15 June
On retreat in the wintry Alps with his family, a writer is optimistic about completing the sequel to his breakthrough film. Nothing to disturb him except the wind whispering around their glassy house. The perfect place to focus.
Intruding on that peace of mind, the demands of his four-year-old daughter splinter open long-simmering arguments with his wife. I love her, he writes in the notebook intended for his script. Why do we fight all the time?
Guilt and expectation strain at his concentration, and strain, too, at the walls of the house. They warp under his watch; at night, looking through the window, he sees impossible reflections on the snow outside.
Then the words start to appear in his notebook; the words he didn’t write.
Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel – 17 September
2031. America is at war with itself, but for the first time in weeks there is some hope: the Republic of California has been declared, the curfew in Los Angeles is lifted, and everyone in the city is going to a party.
Ari, newly released from prison, arrives with her friend Gloria just as a fragile new era begins. But there are people at the party who shouldn’t be there. Something is very wrong . . .
Years later, living a different life in Paris, Ari remains haunted by that night. Whatever happened at the party fractured her sense of reality – and may hold the key to a very different world.
Exit Party is Emily St. John Mandel’s electrifying new novel about freedom and surveillance, art and survival, love and loss in a broken world.
What books have I missed for 2026?
I’m not sure I’ll get through all of these (financially or timewise), but I’m going to give it a damn good try.
You’ll notice that most of these are published in the first half of the year, so there’s a whole world of late-2026 books I’m excited to learn about. What have I missed, and what can’t you wait to read? Let me know below or via Instagram.
If you liked this post, check out my Top Entertainment of 2025.
