To be honest, though, I don’t buy many physical books these days because I’m running out of storage space and already have more than enough books to read. My collection of comics is another story for another day. So, most of the new books I buy are ebooks, which I read on my tablet.
Here are some of the novels I came across that, in my view, are worth reading or watching out for this year.
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...
The Midnight Train is described as “A magical, time-travelling love story” from the world of The Midnight Library.
Viking/Penguin Random House
May 26, 2026
304 pages
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On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?
Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonisation and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.
Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group—a division of Penguin Random House
June 02, 2026
400 pages
———
Then those futures start to arrive in unexpected ways, the years and decades pile up between them, the art world seduces and disappoints and frustrates them. And they have to figure out, again and again, what it is to be an artist, and who and what to love.
Contrapposto is a wild and beautiful novel about two friends who believe they can change the world, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.
Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group—a division of Penguin Random House
June 09, 2026
432 pages
———
The last time we saw the women of Big Little Lies—Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata, and Bonnie—their children were five years old. If someone wasn’t invited to a birthday party, feelings were hurt. But ten years have passed and the kids are in high school, navigating all of the drama that accompanies teendom (goodbye playdates, hello drugs, sex, and alcohol).
When the high school principal receives a threatening package in the mail, word quickly spreads throughout the community and parents are in an uproar. But Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata, and Bonnie have other things to worry about. Celeste’s mother-in-law, Mary Louise, is behaving oddly—is it old-age forgetfulness and bluntness or something more sinister? Madeline is facing perhaps the biggest challenge of her life, Jane is at a dangerous fork in her marriage, Bonnie has realized there’s only so much solace in yoga. And Renata? Renata is living her best life—revenge is sweet.
When a stranger begins lurking around the school asking supposedly innocent questions, this tightly connected group of women must finally face the full repercussions of the big little truths they have and haven’t shared with their kids. Because the stakes are now much higher than not being invited to an ice-skating party—and the ice has never been thinner for any of them.
Crown Publishing, a division of Penguin Random House
August 25, 2026
464 pages
———
She has performed this sacred duty 343 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 others. The powerful K.J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?
Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamouring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s post-death future.
With the wisdom, playfulness, 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.
Penguin Random House
January 27, 2026
192 pages
———
Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.
Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.
A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.
Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group—a division of Penguin Random House
April 07, 2026
400 pages
———
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.
Picador, a literary imprint at Pan Macmillan
September 17, 2026
320 pages
Have any of these novels caught your attention? Which 2026 novels are you looking forward to reading?
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