There’s been plenty to keep bookworms busy in 2026, with buzzy debuts, bestselling authors returning with new work and plenty of unexpected page-turners joining the shelves. Whether you’re after a gripping family drama, a swoony romance, a fantastical escape or a thought-provoking work of non-fiction, you’re in the right place to find your next read.
Polly Barton’s What Am I, a Deer? is an offbeat, obsessive debut about reinvention, romance and karaoke, while Hannah Mathewson’s The Age of Blood and Magic brings together billionaires, vampires and a vicious succession battle. Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs follows three sisters whose fascination with a corrupt billionaire takes them somewhere increasingly dark, while Madeleine Dunnigan’s debut, Jean, is a queer coming-of-age story set in a boys’ boarding school in the 1970s. If you loved Asako Yuzuki’s viral read, Butter, you’ll be thrilled to learn that the author has returned this year with Hooked, an unsettling exploration of friendship and obsession.
