From Coyoacán to Mitteleuropa, to London, Baghdad, and back again, books are taking us places this year. We’ve combed far and wide to fish out the 26 new releases that we’re most excited to crack open in 2026.
One theme stood out among the rest: movement. These writers, from debut novelists to tried-and-true literary legends (welcome back, George Saunders) will sling you from end of the globe to another, unpicking place, migration, revolution. A father and son are rocked by the effects of the Great Famine on a windswept peninsula in Ireland, 1865. A Tarot card illustrator called Pixie flits from Jamaica, to Devon, London and Brooklyn. A little girl turns 13 in the heat of an Uruguayan summer, the same summer a mysterious stranger comes to town. From the kitchen sink to the international stage, great changes are taking place.
It’s a fitting mindset for 2026: the Year of the Fire Horse. According to the Chinese zodiac, 2026 is a year to run fast and run hard, take bold leaps, and reject stillness. It’s a period defined by intensity, urgency, decisive action and…quick reading? You’ll certainly need to move fast for this list:
1. Land: A Novel by Maggie O’Farrell
On the heels of the success of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell is back with another tear-jerking tale of a family in the aftermath of tragedy. Tomás and his 10-year-old son Liam are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, the country is still reeling from the Great Hunger, and the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
2. Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy
Followering her revealing memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, McCurdy is tackling yet another tale of toxic love. 17-year-old Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Hurting. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all? Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher.
3. Vigil by George Saunders
In his first novel since 2017’s Booker prize‑winning Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders has returned to that strange purgatory between life and death. This time, our protagonist is ghostly death guide Jill “Doll” Blaine, except her latest charge isn’t like her usual clients. Unrepentant oil tycoon 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?
4. Fancy Work: Unpicking Past Lives by Alice Hattrick
Blending biography, memoir and art criticism, Hattrick explores the life of the embroidery designer May Morris and her circle, exploring a lineage of artists who have used textiles as a means of resistance – to understand better their own queer identity, family ties and fractious working conditions in an ableist society.
5. Nymph: A Novel by Sofia Montrone
Call Me By Your Name for a new generation, this is a study of queer desire set against a time-worn Italian hotel. Owned by her nonna, Leo’s return to her family’s estate is knocked sideways when she meets Dolores, an American girl who sets something alight in Leo that she didn’t know existed.
6. Frida’s Cook by Florencia Etcheves (trans. by Beth Fowler)
Mexico City, 1939: Young and determined Nayeli Cruz flees from her Oaxaca home to arrive in Mexico City with neither friends nor prospects. Alone and armed only with her sharp wit and talent in the kitchen, she finds herself employed in La Caza Azul, the home of Frida Kahlo.
7. The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski
The crumbling Gothic mansion of Thornwalk, long-term home of the Gilbert family, is being handed over to a chain of luxury “historic” hotels. Millions will be spent in its restoration. But for every so-called improvement, what will be lost? This family saga follows the five fatherless Gilbert children as they are cast adrift on the tides of the 20th century.
8. Lázár: A Novel by Nelio Biedermann (trans. by Jamie Bulloch)
At the turn of the 20th century, the Lázár family welcomes their newest member – a baby boy with translucent skin and light-blue eyes who looks nothing like the rest of his family. A sweeping, historical epic, this drama takes readers through the last days of the Hapsburg Monarchy, onward to the Hungarian National Uprising of 1956, as seen through the eyes of one ancient family and their strange new heir.
9. John of John by Douglas Stuart
From the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo, this third offering from one of the greatest Scottish writers working today leaves Glasgow and takes us to a small village in the Outer Hebrides. Cal is a young man returning home to his father and grandmother, but when he returns he will also be drawn back into a world of suppressed emotion and terrible secrecy.
10. HOLY BOY by Lee Heejoo (trans. by Joheun Lee)
A K-Pop idol is kidnapped by four obsessive fans in this poignant Korean novel. Lee delves into the dark underbelly of Korean society to deliver all the thrills of Butter or Stephen King’s Misery alongside an analysis of fame, obsession, the dark undercurrents of female desire, and the precarity of love.
11. Plastic by Matthew Rice
Set during a single twelve-hour night shift in a factory, Plastic is a book-length poem exploring the life of the industrial worker turned poet. Bringing together memoir, ekphrasis and satire, plastic is based on Matthew Rice’s experience working in a plastic moulding factory for ten years.
12. Bait by Eugenia Ladra
Paso Chico is hot, humid and claustrophobic; a fishermen’s town full of street dogs and dusty roads. And yet, everything changes the summer of Marga’s thirteenth birthday, when she meets Recio. He appears like an apparition, revealing the strange, twisted dynamics of the town’s inhabitants. As cargo ships wait on the viscous river, a sea of mud and secrets is unleashed, love and violence living side by side in this small rural town in Uruguay.
13. Ruins, Child by Giada Scodellaro
In the liquid style of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, Giada Scodellaro’s second offering is set in an undetermined time, in what may be the future. Centred on six women sharing a space in some sort of crumbling apartment tower, Ruins, Child has irresistible sweep, wit, and prickly splintered truth.
14. Glyph by Ali Smith
The legendary Ali Smith is back with an anti-war novel. A follow-up to 2024’s Gliff, this sequel follows sisters Petra and Patch as they reflect on the death of their mother. In classic Smith style, this modernist take on war, death, and what it means to witness violence involves visions of ghost horses and meditations on the societal, economic and political state of the world.
15. Floodlines by Saleem Haddad
In the summer of 2014, three estranged sisters are drawn back into each other’s orbits through the discovery of their late father’s lost paintings. As Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar lay claim to his legacy, the truth about the family paintings unfurls, and the women are forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore their family apart.
16. Odessa by Gabrielle Sher
When Yetta, a bright, quick teenage girl living with her family in early 20th century Russia, is murdered in a Gentile attack, her father fumbles through his knowledge of ancient Jewish texts to bring her back. By some miracle, Yetta is returned – but although she looks the same, Yetta is not the girl she once was.
17. Self Worth by Emma Tholozan (trans. by Emma Ramadan)
Anna is a philosophy major who hates her job. Having given up on her brilliant academic careers, she is now a warm-up act for a TV talk show. Anna’s only consolation in her relationship: she and Lulu have true love. Until one day, Lulu starts vomiting money. Anna wonders: should she be worried about his health or should she do her best to make sure he never stops?
18. Pixie by Jill Dawson
It’s the turn of the 20th century and Pamela ‘Pixie’ Colman Smith is an artistically gifted young woman, despite lacking classical training. Across Jamaica, Devon, London and Brooklyn, her tale is one of twists and turns, séances and secrets, successes and devastation. Pixie, the latest from Whitbread and Orange Prize-shortlisted author Jill Dawson, tells the story of the illustrator behind the still-iconic Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck and her wild, transcontinental life.
19. Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael
Manchester 1849. Elizabeth Gaskell, newly famous author of Mary Barton, visits a young Irish prostitute in Manchester’s New Bailey prison. The girl is about to be discharged onto the Manchester streets, where her old life of poverty and violence await her. Elizabeth is determined to help her and soon, the two women’s lives are inextricably tied together.
20. Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
Closing Whitehead’s acclaimed Harlem trilogy in exuberant and kinetic style, Cool Machine finds Ray Carney betting on one last big job against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Reagan-era New York.
21. Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam
A white bimmer hurtles down Manchester’s curry mile, carrying three brown boys in pursuit of a wild night out. It’s an evening of chaos and mischief – three boys with nothing to do and something to prove – of course there’s gonna be trouble. And look, what the boys don’t know: this night might just be their last.
22. Cosmos by Lucia Odoom (trans. by Hunter Simpson)
Cosmos came to Europe from Ghana as a boat refugee. Now, he is a bottle collector living in Copenhagen, sleeping under the open sky in city parks. By night, he writes messages to his family back home in Woe and by day he navigates the city streets with The Crows, a tightknit group of migrants he has befriended.
23. Jean by Madeleine Dunnigan
One afternoon in 1976, teenagers Jean and Tom share a look across the grounds of Compton Manor, a boarding school for boys with problems. Their gaze marks a secret intimacy, one defined as much by violence as by friendship and desire. As the boys’ connection deepens, so too does the risk that surrounds it.
24. Honey in the Wound by Jiyoung Han
A sister disappears and returns as a tiger. A mother’s voice compels the truth from any tongue. A granddaughter divines secrets in others’ dreams. These women are all of one lineage – a Korean family split across decades and borders by Japanese imperialism. Jiyoung Han’s debut novel is a powerful multi-generational drama that shines light onto the twentieth century’s darkest corners and gives voice to those who bore witness.
25. Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack
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.
26. Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor
Over a hot summer in New York a painter falls for a priest, in this captivating love story from the Booker-Prize shortlisted Brandon Taylor. Wyeth is a newcomer to New York, a young Black painter who is trying to find his place in the contemporary Manhattan art scene. Then he meets Keating, a white former priest struggling with his faith. But as the men grow closer, the differences between them become more stark, until Wyeth and Keating must decide what they are willing to risk – for art and for love.