My most anticipated books releasing in 2026

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The publishing calendar for this year is looking incredibly strong. Here are the eight books releasing in 2026 that I am most looking forward to and why.

Across these eight books there is a time-traveling influencer, an alien encounter, a multigenerational epic, the long-awaited return to Prythian, and a new novel from a Booker Prize winner whose work I have yet to explore. I hope that at least one of these gets added to your 2026 reading list.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Of all the books releasing in 2026, this might be the one I am most looking forward to. Caro Claire Burke’s debut opens with a unique premise. Natalie Heller Millis is a ‘tradwife’ influencer with millions of followers, selling a vision of pioneer domesticity from her ranch. She has a handsome husband, six children, and spends her time posting photos of homemade sourdough and jam.

Then one day, Natalie wakes up in 1805.

The buzz around this novel has been huge, with early readers giving excellent feedback. I’ve heard that it is darkly funny, introspective, and unsettling in equal measure.

The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer

Marcus Kliewer’s debut, We Used to Live Here, started as a Reddit story on the r/nosleep forum. If you’ve read it, you’ll understand why it became a best-selling full-length novel.

The Caretaker is Kliewer’s second novel. Macy Mullins is broke and responsible for her younger sister when she spots a Craigslist posting: caretaker needed, three days of work, competitive pay. She takes the job, but what happens over those three days is apparently a relentless descent into something seriously horrifying.

I’ve heard that the tensions are relentless from first page to last. Having read We Used to Live Here last year, I’m not surprised at all to hear this. I’m hoping that the second novel lives up to the first.

Celestial Lights by Cécile Pin

Cécile Pin’s debut, Wandering Souls, was one of my favourite reads of 2025. Celestial Lights is her second novel, and it has already been pegged by Vogue as one of the best books of 2026.

The novel opens on 28th January 1986, the same day the Challenger shuttle breaks apart shortly after launch. At the same moment, in a small English village, Oliver Ines is born. Ollie grows up with glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom walls and a fixed idea of where his life is going. Decades later, he is one of the most distinguished astronauts of his generation. When a billionaire offers him the chance to lead a ten-year mission to Europa – one of Jupiter’s moons – he accepts. On his long journey, Ollie recounts his time on Earth, the relationships made and broken, and he wonders what will be waiting for him when he returns.

This book appears to be a character study, set in space. Having adored Wandering Souls, I am so excited to see what Pin pulls off next.

The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva

Sticking with the space theme. In March 1980, scientists determine that a pattern of light in the sky is a message from an exoplanet eleven light-years away. There is intelligent life on this planet, and it knows we exist. What follows is a family saga, following the Girard family as they navigate ordinary life with the knowledge that humanity is not alone in the universe.

I’ve heard this compared to Arrival and Wild Dark Shore – two stories I loved. If you enjoy a story that is able to reconcile vast, worldly themes with personal, intimate ones, it sounds like this novel might be for you.

ACOTAR 6 by Sarah J Maas

In March, Sarah J Maas appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast and confirmed what the fandom has been waiting five years to hear: the sixth books in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series will be published in October 2026, followed by a seventh in January 2027.

This series is a guilty pleasure of mine. I read it after my flatmates convinced me it was worth the time commitment (seeing the 800-page A Court of Silver Flames on their shelves had always intimidated me). I’m glad I did; it was a chance to bond and connect, and I really did race through the series.

No title has yet been confirmed. No cover or official details on perspective. I’m excited to unravel the mystery alongside my friends.

John of John by Douglas Stuart

I’ve never read any of this author’s work, but I know it all incredibly critically acclaimed.

The novel follows John-Calum Macleod – Cal – who runs out of money after art school and takes the ferry home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. He returns to his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and pillar of the local Presbyterian church, and his grandmother Ella, a Glaswegian who has kept a fragile peace with her son-in-law for decades. As seasons pass, the equilibrium in this family begins to shift.

This is a novel about a young gay man returning to a world shaped by faith and expectation, and about things left unsaid between fathers and sons.

I expect this to be difficult and moving, and I expect it to be very good.

Land by Maggie O’Farrell

After Hamnet, I vowed to read more of O’Farrell’s work.

Land is releasing this summer, set in Ireland in 1865, in the long shadow of the Great Hunger. The story follows Tomás and his reluctant son Liam as they work for the Ordnance Survey, mapping the island for the British – a task Tomás intends as a record of what was lost.

An unsettling encounter on a remote stretch of coastland sends the family in an unexpected direction.

Land covers many themes: separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonisation and rebellion. Early reviews call it expansive, affecting, devastating. I expect this book to leave me with similar feelings that Hamnet left me with: absorbed, and then a little wrecked.

Country People by Daniel Mason

North Woods was one of the seven best books I read in 2025. I’ve been looking forward to whatever Daniel Mason wrote next since I finished it.

Country People appears a different book in register – looser, warmer, funnier. Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband and father, twelve years late on his PhD on Russian folktalkes, the owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a region with no truffles, and increasingly aware that he has become a disappointment to himself if not to everyone around him. When his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a college in Vermont, the family relocates from California for a year, and Miles decides – again – that this will be the year he sorts himself out.

What draws me to explore more of Mason’s work is his ability to make ordinary life feel so significant, without straining to do so. A lighter note on which to end a list that is otherwise fairly heavy going.

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live slow, read more.

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