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THE READS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2026 - TimesBOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026 - Guardian2026 FICTION HIGHLIGHTS - ObserverWHAT TO READ IN 2026 - Financial TimesBOOKS YOU NEED TO READ IN 2026 - BBC CultureTHE MOST HYPED BOOKS WE CAN'T WAIT TO READ IN 2026 - Elle MagazineThe past is never done with: always the song continues Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as 'son of nobody'. As sole translator and interpreter of the Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its modern footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the three-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn't frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition and grief. In this masterpiece of myth and history, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live - then, now and always.

The past is never done with: always the song continues Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as 'son of nobody'. As sole translator and interpreter of the Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the three-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn't frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love and grief. In this masterpiece of myth, history and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live - then, now and always.

A gambler on the run. A widow with deep pockets. A pair of criminal brothers with a secret agenda. The new instalment of the quirky, inventive and charming mystery series featuring widow Mrs Pargeter - whose late husband was absolutely NOT one of the most notorious villains in Essex (the very idea). Mrs Pargeter''s friends know two important details about her marriage to her late husband. First, that it was blissfully happy. And second, that Mr Pargeter was not a man to bring his work home with him. So, while the chance of her ever being asked by the police what he did for a living is, naturally, remote, Mrs Pargeter would be able to reply, in all honesty, that she doesn''t know. What she does know is that Mr Pargeter''s former associates are all respectable members of society, and if they were ever criminals, they are now 100% reformed. So when she learns that Short Head Shimmings, her late husband''s former accountant, has fallen on hard times, she springs into action, chequebook at the ready. But Short Head has borrowed from the wrong people, and the infamous Batinga Brothers aren''t out for his money - they''re out for blood. The only way to save Short Head is to dismantle their criminal empire. But how can the highly law-abiding Mrs Pargeter, whose only weapons are her charm, her quick wits and her little black book of Mr Pargeter''s contacts, hope to do such an impossible thing? Cosy mystery-meets-crime caper in this witty, light-hearted and terribly British novel from CWA Diamond Dagger-winner Simon Brett, which is perfect for fans of Richard Osman, Janice Hallett, Robert Thorogood and M.C. Beaton.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE AWARD 2025'Life-affirming' JANICE HALLETT'Full of compassion and hope' ELISSA SOAVE'A masterpiece' CAROLE HAILEYMargaret - an elderly widow who just wants to be left with her memories and her quiet, contained life. Claire - newly divorced, downsizing into the neighbourhood and way too busy to mend a broken heart. Gerard - a tearaway twelve-year-old who hates his name but loves his little brother and sister. Gerard is a bright kid, but trouble always follows him. No one really knows what it's like at home; he's used to carrying a lot on his small shoulders. Gerard doesn't always make good decisions. One morning, he makes a very bad one, upending not just his world, but the lives of Margaret and Claire too. Both heart-breaking and life-affirming, This Bright Life is a story of messy lives, second chances and the many hands it takes to build a boy.

Hope and Summer Bailey are gearing up for their infamous Halloween party, but a tarot reading featuring the Magician spells doom. Especially when a dead body is found at the party venue!Everything a magician does is an illusion. A trick. A lie . . .With just days until Halloween, preparations are in full swing for the Bailey sisters'' annual spooktacular bash! To help a friend in need, the location has moved from Bailey''s Boutique - much to the chagrin of some of their customers. Yet Hope and Summer still plan to make the ghoulish gathering a success. That is until a Tarot reading spells doom!The sisters try to heed the warning of the Magician card, but avoiding strangers is easier said than done when a truck load arrives on their doorstep. Soon their ''new friends'' are causing mayhem. Especially when one of them is discovered at the party venue - dead.With only their friends as possible suspects, Hope and Summer don''t know who to trust anymore. Did the murder victim learn something he shouldn''t have? Or was he simply collateral damage? One thing''s for sure, the sisters must be wary of magicians bearing treats!In the fun fourth instalment of the Fortune Telling Mysteries, the Bailey sisters find themselves once again in the middle of a murder investigation foretold by the Tarot. Fans of Wendy Corsi Staub and Anne George will enjoy!

An original spin on the crime novel in which the race to gain the rights to an author''s backlist proves to be more head-scratching - and deadly! - than the plots in his books. "Another absolutely brilliant book from Ripley" - Booklist Starred Review The Librarian It''s been two decades since mystery writer Duncan Torrens was last published. I should know, I was his editor. So why a blogger would turn up asking questions about the rights to his books is beyond me . . . The Reader That librarian Roly is a bit odd. You''d think he''d be happy with my blog''s research into a largely forgotten author, but he''s . . . resistant. If I can get into Duncan''s home - and his mysterious garden shed - I know I''ll find what I''m looking for . . . The Publisher Torrens'' books are crying out for a revival. I just need that blogger, Jacon, to work out who holds the rights to his backlist. Then I can acquire them before Duncan''s old publishing house realises they''ve missed a trick! The Editor I never worked directly with Duncan before he died, but if someone is sniffing round, there must be money involved. I just need to find out what''s happened to the rights before they do . . . The Writer After twenty years, will the sudden interest in this author''s forgotten mysteries reveal a dark - and deadly - twist? Told from the point of view of five unreliable narrators, none of whom can be trusted - The Librarian, The Reader, The Publisher, The Editor and The Writer - this amusing and darkly intriguing novel is a refreshingly fun, subversive take on the crime fiction genre.

A brilliant neurodivergent female sleuth colliding with an FBI agent with a secret. A crime that is not all it seems. A page-turning, red-herring-filled murder mystery, perfect for fans of Nita Prose, Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz. "A clever series kickoff featuring a sleuth who opens the often misunderstood world of autism to a wider audience" - Kirkus Reviews Starred Review Ada Latia is twenty-four years old. She used to be the youngest millionaire in the cosmetics industry. She used to be married. Now, she spends her time studying ways to communicate with aliens. After all, aliens could not possibly be more cruel or deceitful than other humans. Ada''s spiteful ex-husband Rex believes autistic people like her are monsters, so she''s not surprised when he calls her to share a clickbait article gleefully shouting that one autistic child has killed another at a special school in Idaho. Rex just means to hurt her, but when Ada reads the article, it''s not the lies about autism being fake that catch her eye: it''s a disturbing photograph of the dead child. The image of the girl is perfect - too perfect. As if someone has committed a murder, and then carefully staged the scene to cover it up. Ada reports her suspicions to the FBI, and the case crosses the desk of her old classmate Henry Bloodstone, who invites her to assist him. Ada''s not a trained investigator. It''s painful for her to come up against situations she''s not an expert in. She barely remembers Henry, even though it''s clear that he remembers her. But the death is a mystery - and Ada, who counts murder as one of her special interests, has never learned to let a mystery go.

A brilliant neurodivergent female sleuth colliding with an FBI agent with a secret. A crime that is not all it seems. A page-turning, red-herring-filled murder mystery, perfect for fans of Nita Prose, Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz. "A clever series kickoff featuring a sleuth who opens the often misunderstood world of autism to a wider audience" - Kirkus Reviews Starred Review Ada Latia is twenty-four years old. She used to be the youngest millionaire in the cosmetics industry. She used to be married. Now, she spends her time studying ways to communicate with aliens. After all, aliens could not possibly be more cruel or deceitful than other humans. Ada''s spiteful ex-husband Rex believes autistic people like her are monsters, so she''s not surprised when he calls her to share a clickbait article gleefully shouting that one autistic child has killed another at a special school in Idaho. Rex just means to hurt her, but when Ada reads the article, it''s not the lies about autism being fake that catch her eye: it''s a disturbing photograph of the dead child. The image of the girl is perfect - too perfect. As if someone has committed a murder, and then carefully staged the scene to cover it up. Ada reports her suspicions to the FBI, and the case crosses the desk of her old classmate Henry Bloodstone, who invites her to assist him. Ada''s not a trained investigator. It''s painful for her to come up against situations she''s not an expert in. She barely remembers Henry, even though it''s clear that he remembers her. But the death is a mystery - and Ada, who counts murder as one of her special interests, has never learned to let a mystery go.

It''s harvest time and trouble is fermenting for Virginia winemaker Lucie Montgomery in this warm-hearted, twisty mystery featuring small-town rivalries, buried secrets and full-bodied murder. When a vineyard accident during harvest season leaves Lucie Montgomery without a valuable employee, it''s her worst nightmare. But before she can search for a replacement, there''s more bad news: Paul Merchant, her winery manager''s husband, is found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool. Police rule Paul''s death an accident, but his wife insists he was murdered because of his leadership of Don''t Pave Paradise, a conservationist group lobbying to keep the region''s beautiful country roads unpaved. And six weeks ago, Paul''s predecessor also died under mysterious circumstances. As Lucie is drawn into investigating Paul''s death, she discovers more than one motive for the crime - and more than one person in their close-knit community who wanted Paul dead. And when she finds an old photo of a beautiful local heiress who died tragically in a fire eighty years ago among Paul''s papers, she starts to wonder if the modern-day crime might have roots in the past. Either way, someone is determined to make sure Lucie, who''s agreed to continue the work of Don''t Pave Paradise, hits a dead end before she even gets started. Even if it means committing murder. Again. Ellen Crosby''s Wine Country novels are "compulsively readable" (Publishers Weekly) and "a treat for oenophile mystery fans" - if you haven''t met Lucie before, curl up with a glass of wine and jump right in!

Masked balls, duels and murder: musician, sleuth and free man of color Benjamin January is caught up in a shocking crime in this gripping nineteenth-century mystery set in New Orleans.February, 1841. It''s Carnival season in New Orleans. Free man of color Benjamin January - a surgeon turned piano player, with a talent for attracting trouble - is playing at an opulent masked ball when, little to his surprise, a quarrel breaks out between two guests, and his services are requested at a duel. Young planter Bastien Damoreau has accused a recent arrival to town of passing himself off as white - an insult not to be borne.The duel results in the stranger''s death. But when January examines the body, he''s disturbed to realise that young Damoreau couldn''t possibly be the killer, as the dead man was shot from behind . . . January knows it''s murder, but this is white people''s business, and calling attention to himself is not a risk he can afford to take. So when Detective Abishag Shaw asks if he''ll investigate, he declines - a decision he will later come to regret. Murder in the Trembling Lands by NYT-bestselling author Barbara Hambly is the latest instalment of the critically acclaimed historical mystery series featuring "winning character" Benjamin January, who "nimbly mov[es] through parts of history we should all know better" (The New York Times)

Despite their status as intellectual giants of the twentieth century, John Berger and Susan Sontag's artistic collaboration - and intense friendship - remains virtually unknown. Published for the first time, To Tell a Story offers a glimpse into their shared history that spanned nearly a quarter-century. From sources such as their eponymous film broadcast, rare personal letters and archival recordings, the composite fragments build a portrait of a relationship that was often lively and challenging, sometimes trivial and always affectionate. Berger and Sontag's voices echo throughout these pages, riffing off the other as they grapple with their respective concerns. Above all, their conversations reveal a deep reciprocal admiration and an exchange of ideas about storytelling, the self and society that informed their own work.

In Traversal, Maria Popova traverses the border between life and death, chance and choice, chemistry and consciousness: what makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? How do we safeguard our love of truth from our lust for power? What slakes our longings and what redeems our losses? Popova illuminates our various instruments of reckoning with these questions - our telescopes and our treatises, our postulates and our poems - through the intertwined lives, loves and legacies of visionaries both celebrated and sidelined by history, people born into the margins of their time and place who lived to write the future: Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Fanny Wright. Woven throughout their stories are other threads - the decoding of the insulin molecule, the invention of the bicycle, how nature creates blue - which come together to create a rich tapestry of life's meaning; exploring what it is that makes life alive and worth living. By turns epic and intimate, Traversal explores the universe between cells and souls to reveal the world, and our lives, in a dazzling new light.

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST NEW DEBUT'Echeruo's dazzling bildungsroman throws out ideas like firecrackers. . . It's quite a ride' Financial Times'Echeruo proves a hypnotic, mind-bending talent in this extraordinary novel' AFUA HIRSCH'A breathtaking meditation on time and memory' STEPHEN BUOROEzeani is no ordinary child. He sees things others don't. Despite the burden of these visions, his precocious nature blossoms into genius and Ezeani grows up to be a gifted mathematician and physicist. When he leaves Nigeria and his adoring family behind to study at Cornell in the US, he remains haunted by his most persistent vision, Anyanwu, the Sun God. While Ezeani is adjusting to his new life in America, Anyanwu's presence takes on an increasingly sinister and malevolent form - and chaos reigns. It's enough to make anyone lose their grip on reality. The Comfort of Distant Stars is a bold coming-of-age tale blending physics, philosophy and Igbo cosmology, examining how we understand our place in the universe. It ponders the big questions we all ask ourselves about the nature of time and of being - ultimately revealing the startling vulnerability of the human mind.

My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life - my adult life, that is - which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling . . .In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Anna is new to the city, introverted and naive, and Peter's experience, wide circle of friends and thirst for adventure captivate her. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and, eventually, a crushing betrayal.As Anna's life becomes less predictable, she uncovers deeper layers of herself. Her journey gives an intimate portrait of a woman embracing herself as she is, and claiming the life she yearns for.

There is something special about the night. For many, dusk and evening conjure thoughts of starlit skies, romance, bedtime stories and rest. For others, the small hours mean fear, vulnerability and sleeplessness. At night things go bump, the familiar world becomes mysterious and uncanny; owls and bats take wing, foxes prowl. With new material delving deeper into all things nocturnal, Overnight is a hymn to nighttime wildlife, travel, dreams and art. Along the way, Dan Richards meets a fascinating array of people who labour while the rest of us sleep, and brings their work into the light. From night terror chills to the warmth of dawn on the summer solstice, Overnight will change the way you think about the hours after dark.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2026 SO FAR My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life - my adult life, that is - which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling . . . In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Anna is introverted and naive, and Peter's experience, wide circle of friends and thirst for adventure captivate her. Her obsessive longing for him leads to marriage and, eventually, a crushing betrayal. As Anna's life becomes less predictable, she uncovers deeper layers of herself. Her journey gives an intimate portrait of a woman embracing herself as she is, claiming the life she yearns for.