If, like me, your life is built around a succession of cheap thrills, you’ll appreciate the sensation of pre-ordering a book, failing to remember you’ve pre-ordered it, and then receiving a delicious surprise when it plops through the letterbox a few weeks later. 2026, the National Year of Reading, is already threatening to provide plenty of mouthwatering literary treats to buy and instantly forget about.
Maria Semple and Catherine Newman created two of my favourite recent, funny reads, Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Sandwich respectively. Both are back in the new year with highly anticipated new novels, Semple’s Go Gentle, concerns a stoic philosopher upended by love (out in April), while Newman’s Wreck, about the beautiful messiness of family life, is an early January treat.
Another supremely funny book, Jennette McCurdy’s memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died was a monster hit and one of last year’s highlights. Her debut novel, Half His Age, described as a funny, sad, thrilling work about sex, class, desire, and power, is also out in January.
A new Maggie O’Farrell is always cause for celebration, and Land, a multigenerational epic family saga, is sure to have the awards juries twitching. Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur was arrested and jailed after the publication of her Women Without Men in 1990 (she now lives in exile). This defiant tale of Iranian female freedom is published here for the first time in March, translated by Faridoun Farrokh.
Suggested Reading
The New World’s cream of arts and culture in 2025
I’m deliriously excited about the May release from one of my literary heroines, Too LA: The Letters, Sent and Unsent, of Eve Babitz. More Hollywood royalty telling tales out of school hits the shelves in March, with Liza Minnelli’s candid memoir Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!
Michael Pollan follows up his brain-expanding This Is Your Mind on Plants with a February journey into consciousness entitled A World Appears. Daisy Fancourt looks at the therapeutic benefits of creativity with Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives (also out in February), while I’m eager to delve into Tom Overton’s new biography of art critic, broadcaster and novelist John Berger; The Storyteller has a September release.
Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain, investigates the mysterious death of Zac Brettler, who posed as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch, in April’s London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth. While April also sees the remarkably titled The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared, Rosa Campbell’s look at the strange life and legacy of sex educator and feminist thinker Shere Hite.
One of the more sobering, if essential, books of 2026 will be Gisèle Pelicot’s A Hymn to Life: Shame has to Change Sides (out in February, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver). Gisèle recounts her life before and after the trial of her husband and 50 other men charged with various sexual offences against her, and her determination to change the law and face her attackers, while still retaining her passion for life. A vital read.
Dale Shaw is a television and radio writer, journalist, screenwriter and musician
